New Arrivals!

About 10pm on the 10th of november, the first contractions started -- Ernesto Elia Bigoloni was on his way, and right on schedule for an 11.11.11 birthday. 36 hours later, at 10am on 12.11.11, weighing in at 3.770kg and 51cm long, he was FINALLY born, a few hours off the mark!  We reckon he couldn't bear the thought of being born into a world with Berlusconi still in power, so he waited for the official resignation before coming out! 

What actually happened was...he had the cord wrapped around his neck, not once...not twice...but three times.  We think he kept trying to come down and would be pulled back.  The first 24 hours or so were manageable, intense contractions, but only every 20 or 30 minutes or so.  But the next 8 hours were absolute hell.  He was super active, perhaps trying to wiggle free? and that made the labour excruciating even in between contractions.  Finally I got the epidural and the last 4 hours were significantly easier to handle, though I was exhausted and the dosage was light so still felt pain, but it was do-able -- those faint thoughts of jumping out the window dissolved and Ernesto was finally born!

The midwife was calm, cool, and fast as lightening -- she freed him from the cord and he was rushed to the newborn ward.  He was completely blue, but they had him breathing in no time.  Apart from his breathing, which was laboured and super fast, everything else about him was fine and healthy and perfect.

Now that my ordeal was over, Ernesto's was just beginning -- the laboured breathing was because he breathed lots of liquid into his lungs during the delivery. His lung capacity was reduced as a result, and he had to pant just to get enough oxygen -- that's too much work for a newborn, and could have caused lack of oxygen and thus brain problems if left alone, so they put him in the incubator with a higher concentration of oxygen inside, so he got more oxygen with each breath.  That kept his oxygen level always over 95%, so he's well and safe from future problems, but it meant he had to stay in the incubator until his lungs were dried out and working normally -- that took 3 whole days.

Poor fella -- all alone in a plastic box for 3 days.  After the first day and a half, they let me take him out for a half hour at a time to try and breast feed him, with oxygen tubes in his nose, but he needed way more cuddles than that.  In the meantime, and completely unrelated, he also developed a neonatal infection and had to take antibiotics, so we were stuck in hospital for a full week.  Now he doesn't like to sit alone -- if he's awake, he wants to be held, and if he's asleep and you put him down, he'll usually wake up!  We have lots of catching up to do, and there are LOTS of arms here that want to hold him, so that's not a problem!

We came home finally on friday, a week after the whole thing began.  We were welcomed by a family so happy and excited to have a new member.  Raff is totally enamoured -- the first thing he said when he saw his new brother was "awwww he's so cute! I love him".  He's also constantly telling us that 'nesto is "dadolable" (adorable...).  His most used phrase now about his brother is "can I pat him?"  Better that he sees his brother like a new pet than a rival!!  

Nina and Mia are also thrilled, of course, and are like two surrogate mummies to him.  And of course we are ALL so glad to have Gramma with us -- I don't know what we would have done without her help, both when we were in hospital and now that we're out.

So, what's with the name?  Ernesto is from Ernst, a German name, and it means "strong".  Though in English "earnest" or sincere is not related to the name, it adds to the strength of the name I think -- it connotes strong honest direct will.  He was named after Che Guevara, whom Gab admires greatly and has studied extensively.  I am not such an expert, but must confess I think he was awfully sexy!  Just now, looking up a photo to stick in, I found mention of his complete name, until just now we never knew he had a middle name...anyone have a guess at what was Che's middle name???  RAFAEL!!!  No WAY.

Anyway, we know its a mouth full -- not easy to call a little baby Ernesto.  Its a heavy and important name, noble and courageous, but not so very pretty.  So you can call him by his middle name if you want, Elia.  Or you can call him 'Nesto (that's what we call him) or you can call him Stino (for Ernestino) or Tito (for Ernestito) or even Ernie if it feels good!  You can call him baby boy or coocoocoo...if you listen closely, you'll often hear me call him "Raffi!"...oops...

Topinambur and Turkey sex

No, don't let the title mislead you, this will not be a poultry porn post featuring certain knobbly roots...just I had planned the whole post this week around my newfound love for Jerusalem Artichokes (topinambur), (and that will come in following paragraphs), but the noble veg was bumped off the priority register by a fresh a miracle that happened only yesterday...

The turkeys had SEX!  and again today!  And maybe again tomorrow!  And for about a week now, we have been getting one turkey egg per day...that means that one of the turkey hens is laying, and one of them is getting laid.... Not sure if they are the same hen, (because only one of the hens has submitted so far) but just in case, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter have all three earned a stay of execution.  If we can get them to reproduce, they will be worth feeding over the winter, and we will be able to produce our own turkeys year round instead of buying the chicks (turkey chicks cost about 10 euros each!)

According to Barbara Kingsolver (in "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle") turkey sex is supremely rare.  I think that may be just american turkeys, but nonetheless, even here the norm is for artificial insemination and mechanical incubation, which means the animals themselves just don't know how to 'do it'.  The big heavy meat birds actually physically can't do it, but our second round of turkeys are a local rustic breed and they seem to be managing just fine.  In fact so long as Natalina, the original turkey hen (a commercial meat hybrid) was around, nothing was happening.  She was too big for the cock and she didn't make eggs, even though she was 3 months older than the other hens.  Now Natalina is in the freezer, and they're getting jiggy every day!  Takes them about an hour too, to get it all over and done with, from dancing and displays to the actual deed.  Funny in comparison with the rooster, who takes never more than 2 seconds...hop on, hop off, hop on, hop off (karate kid cock!)   The video below Gab took to show to some geese experts, trying to figure out if our geese are boys or girls (more poultry sex, hmmm), but there are some nice shots of the turkey cock in the background showing off his stuff...



So now for the originally planned post -- Jerusalem artichokes are THE MOST AWESOME VEGETABLE ever!  We started harvesting them last week, and I started researching what they are and what to do with them...OK, a vegetable that

1) Grows all by itself, in just about every climate, produces up to 5kg of edible root per plant with no work at all, and the biggest challenge is keeping it to its appointed space because it will take over if you let it (now I know what it looks like, I see it wild everywhere)
2) is the highest vegetable source of iron known, and is also full of other essential vitamins an minerals
3) tastes more or less like potatoes, and is filling like a carb, can be roasted, mashed, fried, but also eaten raw and yet has a fraction of the calories of potatoes and other carbs.
4) has been implicated in prevention of diabetes, and directed towards even a cure -- it is a carb, but its sugar is in fructose and Inulin instead of starch, and humans can't digest inulin -- so you get carb satisfaction without any impact on blood sugar and without carb calories.  In fact, it also makes a lovely flour when dried and ground (made bread with it this week, delicious!)
5) IS DELICIOUS

What more can you ask for???  I just love delicious calories that come naturally and wildly, without too much intervention, and the Jerusalem artichoke is just that.  Its actually not an artichoke, and has nothing to do with Jerusalem -- its a type of sunflower, (girasole, and 'jerusalem' comes from that)  and you eat the roots.  Peeled, they can be eaten in any way you eat potatoes.  Long term and winter storage is best just in the ground, dig 'em up when you want to eat them, and they live right through the deepest freeze, so those you don't dig up make next year's crop.  For the deep freeze of winter, they can keep in boxes of damp sand in the cellar, or I read of one gardener that put them in buckets of mud by the back door -- still freezes, but easy to get through.

One warning though...all that undigestible inulin makes for some pretty world class farting!  So add to my list of positives about this veg 6) keeps you entertained for hours with family fart-offs! ("pull my finger Nina!") But don't eat lots before a long road trip...!

Major Milestone -- House plans are signed off

For more than a year now, I've been imagining all the possibilities for our new house. I've tried to think of all the little details that will make life easier, all the things I miss from Canadian houses (closets! Mudroom!)  all the things I love about italian houses (cellar, thick cement everything), and gone through about a million different designs, refining and getting better each time around, and finally we have our final drafts.

I gave my original designs to the architect a few months ago, and he made his suggestions and adjustments, put in the necessary things in order to get the permissions through -- and this is not an easy thing because we are building what is considered highly sensitive parkland, so we are very very very restricted in what would be acceptable to build; in fact, we are only allowed to build at all because the area needs non-intensive farmers that will tend the land properly, and there aren't enough of those around these days, so we have special government dispensation to come in and take care.

And so now, finally, about 5kg of paper all organised into the appropriate folders for the appropriate bureaucrats have gone off the appropriate offices, and within 45-60 days we should have all our permissions set and be ready to build...of course, in 60 days it will be winter, and we can't do anything until spring anyway, but still....

So here are the floor plans -- a few essential things I really really wanted include the mudroom --  a place to sit on a bench and put on boots and hats and coats, with its own entrance and outside the mudroom door will be a bench, bootjack, and fountain for cleaning up before coming inside.  Also the easy access from the kitchen to the cellar.  In the original plans, I had a spiral staircase in the kitchen itself, and then i realised that was dumb...I just had to put the kitchen right by the backdoor staircase.  Imagining trying to navigate a spiral staircase with a crate of 30 jars of jam set me straight pretty quick on that.  Gab was smart enough to realise we would need ramp access to the cellar as well because even a regular staircase will be a pain to access with a 70kg wheelbarrow load of potatoes!

I also insisted on a huge dining space, within the kitchen.  Dining room separate from kitchen dining has just always been wasted space for us, but I need dining space big enough for entertaining, and we can have some biiiiiig parties, so the 10 seater table in the kitchen will have another 12 seater attachment that we will put in a "T" across the top when we have parties.  The sitting area in front of a big open kitchen fireplace was also an essential.  Of course, big kitchen space with sit in island, with all the cooking we'll be doing, that's essential.  Windows in the kitchen, lots and lots.  That's something very uncommon here, and in fact I had to fight for it...Gab and the architect will both see the benefit when its finally built!

A bonus that i love but had not even dared to put in the original design is the loft studio space above the dining area.  Because of the strict building restrictions, we can only have a ground floor, can't over 4m height as an average across the whole...however, there is a high ceiling space right across where its widest, and just enough for a loft comes out right in that space.  The loft will look down on the kitchen and the sitting area, and will have a lovely wooden bridge which will cross the entrance hallway, so you will see that when you look up from both the front and back doors.

5 big bedrooms, so everyone has their private space, and there is a very big linen/general walkin closet by the bathroom.  We only have one "main" bathroom because we're a "pee with the door open" kind of family, and always end up using the same bathroom anyway, so all our bestest bathroom resources will go into one single gigantic super wonderful bathroom, and the other two bathrooms will be just small useful things.  Oh, there's a fourth bathroom in the basement, but I don't think we'll be using that much -- its a just in caser...The laundry room, off the small guest bathroom, has a door directly onto the portico, so laundry will go straight from the washer outside onto the line without any carrying anywhere.  

And here are the computer renderings of the house placed into an actual photograph of the land where it will be built.  The hills in the background are on the other side of the river, the house backs onto a steep cliff down to the river, where will put a nice gazebo as a walking / lookout point.

First, below pictures of the front of the house.  Not shown, the barn would be just to your right as you look at the house in this direction. The house will built with antiseismic armoured cement -- the wooden panneling is just an aesthetic finish that the bureaucrat responsible for passing the externals is particularly partial too -- she has already pre-approved our first drafts, so we know she likes this finish. Also, the scan came out a bit too yellow, the colour of the stucco parts is more biscuit than lemon...

And here is a rendering of the house from the side. This is my favourite perspective, and its what we'll see as we come in from the garden and poultry areas.  The top pic you can see the back of the house and the portico, and the bottom pic is full-on side view, and you can see the barn in the background behind the house.

And here is the rendering of the barn -- the top pic is what you see from the house, and the bottom pic is what you see from the road, and the side the animals access from.  The top doors are hay storage and the bottom is the circuit for the goats -- they go in the small door on the right one at a time to be hooked up to the milking machine in the milking room, then exit the milking room in to the main barn area from inside, then exit the barn from the main double doors in the middle.  Not shown, just around the corner where the wooden panneling is, is the big garage and storage area, and on the "short" side of the barn (so the window on the right side of the top picture) will be my mosaic studio and materials storage area.

Now we just have to wait for all the permissions to come back, and we are set to go!  But first there's a baby that needs to be born (first things first, right! Priorities priorities!)...only a few more weeks now before Ernesto Elia joins us, and I am quite ready...he's getting awfully heavy!!

Everything you ever wanted to know about Chestnuts, and probably a bit more

Chestnuts Chestnuts Chestnuts Chestnuts Chestnuts...for the next few weeks, that's all I'll be seeing in my waking hours and in my dreams...

Chestnuts are an awesome food, though -- they are roughly the nutritional equal to rice (so treat as a carb, not a nut!), and can provide a carbohydrate staple in the diet.  Different from other carbs, though, is that they grow on trees, renewed every year without any special care or special demands on the soil.

All our other carbs, rice, annual grains, corn, soya, are extremely demanding on the environment in so many ways -- they take loads of irrigating, which means salination of the soil as well as draining and ruination of wetlands. They take loads of nutrients from the soil, which means loads of petrolium  based fertilizers in order to use the same fields year after year  -- and without that petrolium based fertilizer, all those beautiful amber waves of grain are absolutely sterile (yeah, bio fuel my ass...hate to break it to the bio fuel believers out there, but the biomass doesn't grow in sufficient quantity without the petrolium based fertilisers...bit of a catch 22 there) They take loads of heavy machinery (also oil dependant) to sow, to harvest, and to process.  Grains on a large scale are simply not sustainable without oil, and as it starts to run out, we will have to learn to do with fewer annual grains and standard carbs in our diet.

But not so for chestnuts.  They just fall from the trees.  You can prune them a bit if you want, and it doesn't hurt to give them a bit of manure around the base, but whether you do or not, they will still make lots of yummy carbolicious fruit, which makes a flour usable like wheat flour (though the bread is not so nice and fluffy).  The problem with chestnuts is in the processing.  They are super yummy and delicious, but their shell and skin is a total PITA to remove. (Mind you, its not a piece of cake to thresh, separate and grind wheat by hand either, and so!)

I've been experimenting and researching all over the internet for other people's experiences and advice, and have tried about 16 million different methods so far (well, maybe 5 or 6...) and still, it takes at least an hour per kilo to prepare and shell chestnuts.  The best method I've found so far is to make a good long cut across the fat belly of the chestnut, then roast in a super hot oven for about 15-20 minutes.  The outside shell gets crackly and peels off easily. The inside skin, if not removed with the shell, comes off easily if you rub and roll the nut around between your hands.  To get just the pulp, rather than the full chestnuts, out its easiest to boil them for a good 40 minutes, without any precuts in the skin, and with a good dollop of oil in the water, then use the sharp tip of a carrot or potato peeler to breach the skin and swirl around/scrape out the pulp.  If you want the chestnuts free, whole, and uncooked (like for making Marrons Glacées), make a cut horizontally all the way around the chestnut, then steam for about 15 minutes.  Still a major pain in the butt, though!

Recipe for Chestnut Pudding: Made this with the first batch, and it is oh oh oh so yummy...
boil 500g of chestnut puree (boil chestnuts, squeeze out the pulp with the carrot peeler, squish any bigger pieces) in 500g of milk.  When it is good and pudding/porridge consistency (about 10-15 minutes i guess), take off the fire and add 150g of icing sugar, a sprinkle of cinnamon and a sprinkle of nutmeg.  Serve warm as a pudding, or save in a jar in the fridge to eat as is or use for a doughnut or crepe filling.

Today was another very productive day -- the inventory of the day is: 3kg of chestnuts roasted peeled and in the freezer for addition to winter soups and such, 5 apple pies (4 in the freezer and 1 on the table), 2 loaves of bread, one big batch of pumpkin soup, half for the table half for the freezer, and a bunch of meatballs...was almost too pooped to come and write the blog, but i figured that binning the first sunday after promising to write every sunday was just too pathetic, so found my second wind and here I am!

The work of the farmer's wife

So Gab spends the day out hoeing and raking and weeding and digging and chopping and sowing and cutting and picking and pruning etc etc etc.  But when his work is done, mine is just beginning.  Its my job to cook and stew and jam and pack and boil and sterilize and dehydrate and blanch and freeze and and and...And I Love It!  Really, I do!  I was worried it would be overwhelming, too much to do and all within a limited timeframe because otherwise everything rots and all Gab's work will have been for nought.  But its not overwhelming, its actually very relaxing and calming.  There's tons to do and the only way to get through it is to do it, so its very zen in that way -- just go with the flow, pick those beans and pod those peas and skin those tomatoes until there are none left to do.  Its even more fun with company, and I really think we have lost something grand when we stopped sitting on the front porch with all the neighbours gossiping and shelling peas.

Anyway, so here is a quick run down of all the cooking and putting away I've done over the last few months with links to the best recipes I've discovered in the process...in order of appearance...

First came the cherries.  About 10kg of black cherries was made into abou 10 jars of jam and 2 pies.  Then 40kgs of sour cherries was made into 10 traditional lattice cherry pies (in the freezer)...the BEST cherry pie recipe ever: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Classic-Sour-Cherry-Pie-with-Lattice-Crust-242514, and I mean EVER...even better than the cherry pah from the Matawa café..., then I burned about 30 jars of cherry jam.  Damn Damn Damn...took about 6 hours to pit the cherries for that batch of jam (even with my awesome cherry pitter machine: http://www.chefscatalog.com/product/93600-leifheit-cherry-stoner.aspx), and I BURNED it.  URG!!!  And the last 15kg went into a fermentation vat, and produced approximately 12 litres of sour cherry grappa...mmmmmmmmm

Then came the peas and beans -- peas were not nearly enough, and we ate them as they arrived, and we know to plant more next year and to treat them differently as well, because they should have been much more productive.  But the beans though...they started giving in June, and still haven't really stopped yet.  I have about 5 big jars of spicy pickled beans put away (bring vinegar to boil with a spice bag with cinnamon stick, mustard seeds, corriander seeds, black pepper corns, and some spicy chillis, blanch beans in vinegar, jar up, cover with boiling vinegar, and seal), and about 20kg of blanched green beans in the freezer for use throughout the winter.  And we eat fresh beans at least three times a week...yum yum yum....

The borlotti we pulled up when they were full and hung the plants to dry, and then once dry, shelled them all, and we have about 3kg of dried borlottis away in glass jars -- that was ALOT of work for not many calories. But they are gooood calories, though, and Mia helped me -- we had fun picking away at them all day long.

Then the along came the plums...from one little teensy Santa Rosa tree we got about 90kg of plums. They were quite literally coming out of my ears.  I made about 60 jars of plum jam, in three different batches and variations, sliced and froze about 5kg, and hot packed whole another 20 jars.  And we still had flats upon crates upon boxes of plums...time to visit the neighbours!  Everybody got the gift of plums this year...Then about 2 weeks after the santa rosa's finished, the damsons came.  With these I made another 20 some jars of jam, some with fresh ginger, and about 18 jars of a FANTASTIC plum ketchup: http://www.food.com/recipe/plum-ketchup-64525 -- excellent as a barbecue sauce, a marinade, and a stir frying sauce, as well as just as ketchup.

And then peppers -- the sweet lombards are pickled and away in jars together with the spicy ones -- I didn't know they were different at the first fruiting, and put them in together...eee, spicy!!  And then loads chopped up in the freezer, and loads pan fried for dinner.  There are about 5kg of classic bell peppers, green and red, in chunks in the freezer waiting for winter stir fries.

In the midst of all this, the herbs are coming and going, so we have bags and bags of parsley, mint, sage, basil and dill chopped and frozen, ready to use.  The basil has come to harvest strength five times this summer, each time we've taken about 2 or 3 crates full -- each crate makes about 1.5kg of pesto (and about 100g of pesto will do for pasta for 4 or 5 people), so I have about 10kg of pesto in the freezer along with tons of just plain chopped basil ready to use, and we gave tons of both basil and parsely to Angelo and his restaurant.  My fave is pesto with walnuts instead of pine nuts.mmmmm

Tomatoes went through 4 proper harvests, but the beefeaters and cherries didn't do so great.  The first beefeater crop was nice, but it didn't do anything afterwards. The Principe borghese were our king crop of tomatoes, and with these (about 10-15kg per harvest) I have put away about 30litres of tomato purée, about 10 litres of tomato sauce, about 8 bottles of whole canned cherry tomatoes, and about 12 bottles of tomato ketchup (super duper yummy -- it will actually run out soon because we go through about a bottle every 2 weeks, and when it does, I don't know how we'll go back to the store bought kind).  Next year we need more tomatoes, and bigger saucier ones.

And in the meantime, we are getting a really generous crop of aubergines (eggplants) which neither of us actually like very much, so what to do with them all?? First we gave away tons, then I learned an awesome recipe for chutney, and made an aubergine apple and fig chutney that is to die for.  Have about 8 jars of that.  Then I pickled a bunch with sweetened spicy vinegar, about 6 jars of that.  And the rest we made into soups and rattatouille to eat right away -- changed my mind about aubergines, and now I'm kind of sad they are almost finished.  I'll put the last of them away in the freezer so we can bring them out for soups and stews in the winter.

The zukes made TONS but we ate them ALL as tiny babies as soon as they were ready -- worried about the classic "too many zucchinis and nobody wants them" problem, we solved this by eating TONS of zucchini flowers, and loads of grilled and stir fried zuchinis picked when they were no bigger than 10cm.  Sweeeeeet.

Also overloaded with potatoes, from the earlies to the maincrops -- we've given away loads, eaten loads, and have about 40kg in the cellar and still another 2 or 3 rows still in the garden.  And that was after wild boards made off with about half the potato crop.  They made off with ALL of our sweet corn, so the potatoes should count themselves lucky.

Phewff -- its almost more work to talk about all the stuff we've harvested and put away than it was to do it in the first place...I'm getting kind of tired of this post, and I still haven't mentioned the figs (40 jars jam), the pumpkins (puree in freezer, pieces in freezer, and 13 pumpkins in dry storage), the apples (20 jars apple sauce, 4 crates in dry storage, 3 cakes in freezer, and chutney still to come), the pears (10 jars pear sauce, just like apple sauce), peaches (12 jars jam, 8kg pieces in freezer, 2 cobblers in freezer), blackberries...so much work to pick, so little yield...all in freezer...

And now the chestnuts begin...made chestnut jam last week and just the thought of it makes my knees weak...mmmm...but they are so HARD to peel and prep.  Hours and hours and hours of work for a kilo or two of pulp.  UGH.

OK, enough enough already...I'm tired, its lunchtime, and today there are another 5kg of chestnuts to go through and the apple chutney to get underway....

Inspired by Ken & Nicole Barker's blog (http://barkersfarm.wordpress.com) on their newly started organic farm experience, i am from here on going to be more regular and less exhaustive with the posts -- they are blogging every sunday, and I think that's a great idea!  So from now on, every sunday I'll try and post, whatever has happened that week!

Summer, Harvest, and Chicken lessons

Wow, OK, its been 4 months...sorry!  well, for a farmer and his wife things get kind of busy from June till about...well...I reckon it will slow down by the time the baby's born...

We have had a really fun summer, full of successes and failures -- lots of lessons learned, that's for sure!  We moved up to the little farm, and lived there for a bit more than a month.  In the meantime, we rented out the villa in Salo to holidaymakers, and thus recouped about 2/3rds of the cost of the well fiasco.  So we got to try out the life on the farm, and pull ourselves out of a hole at the same time!  Lots of board games in the evenings!  We also got 4 new kittens, which kept the kids more than entertained on long summer days...on the top right picture, clockwise starting with the black cat...cleopatra, stracciatella, cora, and bella (the calico).  Bella, Straccia and Cora are sisters, and Cleo is about a month older, an egyptian short haired cat with a rather queenly attitude.

It will be impossible to describe in detail all we've
done and all we've learned in a single post, but I'll try to do it theme by theme over the next few days.  Today, its all about the chickens.  And maybe tomorrow I'll be able to go over the harvest and all the food production done in the last few months...

The Chicken Story
Big time trials and tribulations here...to round it up in a nutshell...the ones that are left are really really strong...that's darwinism for you!  Of our first batch of 22 hatched Valdarno chickens, only 2 survived.  When they were about 1 month old, we released them from their protective cage to run free -- when you are a small chick in the springtime, freedom can be over-rated. They were relentlessly hunted by a local eagle.  The eagle got 9 of them in two days.   Then, a couple weeks later, the local fox and her cubs were coming out hungry...they got 11 chicks and 3 of our leghorns before we figured out that they only attacked when we weren't around. So, for the rest of baby fox season, we played "chicken Shepherd" keeping them near us at all times, and that kept the fox at bay, though was a major pain in the butt.

The turkeys and other adult chickens were fine, strong enough to defend themselves. (although 3 of our first 4 turkeys died due to a respiratory disease that they had when we bought them -- we were ripped off by a dodgy breeder).  To the left, two turkeys we bought to replace the sick ones, a boy and a girl we call "christmas and easter"...unless they figure out how to get jiggy before the frost sets in.  A breeding pair is worth feeding through the winter...

The last of our leghorns actually fought off the fox -- he got all her tailfeathers, but she survived!  Now the geese are strong and aggressive enough to defend the whole flock, so we are a lot less predator prone now than a few months ago.

But that's all OK, 'cause we had another full incubator of eggs on the go.  Only, out of 50 eggs only 10 hatched.  We still don't know what went wrong, but reckon it was the weather -- too humid perhaps.  So another big disappointment.  Of course, the answer is to fill the incubator again.  This time, the incubator was already up at the little farm, humming away on the kitchen counter.  About a week before the eggs were due to hatch, we moved up there to live for the month of August.  We bought a gas stove to cook on.  It was placed beside the kitchen counter.  The first plums came ripe.  I made Jam.  Has anybody figured out where this is going yet?

All but one of the chicks were cooked in their eggs, GAAAACK!   the heat from the stove raised the ambient temperature and humidity too much for their continued development.  Out of the whole incubator full of eggs, we only got one chick...we call her "Nemo" (pic right), and she's a tough little thing (we hope its a she anyway, seems to be but too early to be sure).

So, a fourth and final incubator full of eggs, in the bedroom in the most controlled climate we can give, with constant care given to the humidity channels -- this time only 3 hatched out of 50, so something is wrong with the incubator or its just not a good idea to incubate eggs in a non-professional incubator in August (professional incubators have humidity controllers as well, but cost in the thousands instead of a hundred bucks or so). But luckily our broody hen was broody and sitting on another little clutch, and 4 of her 5 eggs hatched, so we got 7 new chicks from the batch.  The broody hen then happily adopted the 3 from the incubator, and Nemo as well, though she's a month older than the others.  Now they are strong and free and out scratching.

So, from 200 eggs, we have a total count of 2 + 10 + 1 + 7 valdarno...20 chickens, less than hatched with the first batch!  And of those, we have one super prize cock, a few great hens ready to start laying any day now, and a good 5 or 6 yummy boys for the freezer.  The wee ones from the last batch are still to small to tell whether they will be freezer bound or layers...not enough to be self sufficient on the poultry front, but enough to establish our own flock with second generation hatchings next spring. So we didn't achieve the goal this year, but its well in sight!  That's just the Valdos, though -- we also have 2 geese, 4 turkeys, AlPacino and four dwarf hens that go broody, and Isa and Liv, the two consistent layers (Liv is the lastest bravest leghorn, Isa is the greatest layer, even though 'just' a commercial that we  bought to protect the dwarves from the cats a year ago).

Next installment, or about the harvest, or recipes for what to do with it all...haven't decided yet!

How deep it goes

Ahhh that sweet sweet voice of Anne Wilson, Nancy's tender picking -- there is a reason why this song has been stuck in my head for a few days...

The well guys came with a really really, no really, BIG truck with a super giant drill, and the guy dangled his keys around a bit and said "h-yup, right here".  He estimated we would find water at about 20 meters (60 feet or so). At 100 euros per meter, the quote was for 2grand, and that was OK...


And along comes Drilling Day...20 meters, still pulling up gravel, not even reached bedrock yet...30 meters...the guys have to go back to get more pipes...40 meters...the guys have to get bigger pipes because the gravel keeps caving...50 meters...and finally bedrock.  How much bedrock before we hit the water table?

Not much farther now, says the well guy, for sure for sure.  60 meters...70 meters...80 meters...No water and we quit for the day.

So here we are, 4 times over budget and seriously worried -- what do you do?  Keep going, keep spending for each meter?  How do you stop when so much has already been invested?  But what if there is no water?  What if we don't reach it until 200 or 250 or even 300 meters?  We started talking to folks with wells, and everyone had a horror story -- "oh, my sisters well was 330 meters deep (that's 1000feet -- just the energy to pump the water up from that depth is heart stopping!)".  "My uncle had one that went to 220".  "oh, at my cottage it went to 250"...EEEPS!!

Well, not much to do at this point, so the next day we just kept drilling and drilling.  And HURRAY! We finally hit deep water reservoir at 120 meters -- about 360 feet.  It has a good strong flow too, more than 1400 litres an hour, which is OK, and provides some pressure to get the water up with less energy than I feared.

Still, though -- 6 times what we expected to pay.  If we had any idea it would be that expensive NO WAY would we have dug a well at the little farm -- the running spring is enough, and we could just use that to fill a tank for the few times we will spend the night there.  But hey, now its done, so if ever we do want to live there, or have someone else live there, it will be ready!

So, I've done the calculations -- we use water at the little farm mostly to irrigate the vegetable garden, since we aren't living there, and that takes about 600-1000 litres every other day when its not raining.  At 1 euro per bottle, we could water the garden with Evian for a couple of months for the same price!

Swarm, Swarm, Super Swarm

Having bees is an extraordinary thing.  Novels, poetry, music has been written about it, and with good reason -- it is a beauty, alien and strange, dangerous and scary, essential and productive, intelligent and powerful. Pure nature, and so beyond our power and control that it is impossible to contemplate them without enormous respect, a respect that spills over into a respect for all living things.  

Beekeeping teaches a fundamental truth: nature ought not be forced.  The role of the beekeeper is to provide an environment for the bees where they want to stay and do their business. There is a partnership between bee and beekeeper, the beekeeper coaxes and manipulates and teases the circumstances so that bees do what comes naturally in the context of what the beekeeper wants -- its like farming Aikido -- the Zen of Bees.  Provide the ideal circumstances for nature to take place, and it will.  And that goes for all types of farming, with bees its just more immediate and more obvious.

So anyway, our bees are cool.  Did I say that already?

On Saturday Gab and Davide were taking care of Davide's bees down in Sabbio, when they found a swarm -- When a bee colony gets too numerous, they allow another queen to mature, and then half the colony flies away with the new queen to create a new nest, thus a swarm.  They caught the swarm and stored it in a box waiting for a new hive, then came up to our farm to do some checks on our bees. they found ANOTHER swarm!

When bees swarm, they are actually incredibly docile. Without a nest, the bees protect their queen with their bodies, so the mass of bees you see hanging from the trees is just that -- a mass of bees, one on top of the other -- there are no structural elements in that lump, no wax or other branches, just bees.  And they let you touch them.  It is the most incredible feeling -- they vibrate like crazy, its like putting your hand just over a live electrical wire, it almost itches.  To catch the swarm, you actually reach out and pull the mass of bees into a special box.  Many of them will, of course, fly away.  But if you get the queen into the box, then eventually all the other bees will find her and settle into the box themselves.  Takes a few hours of confused bees flying all over, but eventually they settle into their new home.
Video of Gab catching the swarm

So Gab caught the new swarm, and then checked out the original hives.  Sure enough, one was quite weak because it had been divided for the swarm.  That means no honey from that hive or the new one for this year. Rather than lose the honey production, he made Super Swarm.  Not a scary attack of the killer bees sky dark with insects super swarm...in this case a super swarm is a means of re-uniting the separated colony, and making one strong colony from two weak ones.

video of the swarm flying around looking for the queen in the box:

The new swarm is put in the "super", which is the top section of the hive where they make the honey.  The Queen is kept out of the super (the doors that connect them are too small for the queen to pass), so the honey there is free of larvae and other debris of bee life, and is just pure honey.  So, the new swarm is put in the super with 4 sheets of newspaper covering the doors between the super and the hive.  This way, for the first few days, no bee passes from one to the other.  During those days, they get used to each other's smell and proximity, and they chew through the paper.  By the time they are through the paper, they are thinking of each other as family again, and will mingle happily...all except for the queen in the super.  And only one of the two queens can survive.   We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, whether we separate her from the bees and take her off, or whether we let the bees take care of it and choose which one survives, we'll have to see.  Gab has been asking beekeepers on the forums what is the best approach.

And so by the end of the week, we should have a single strong honey producing family rather than two weak ones.

In the process of maintaining the hives, we also scraped down our first little bits of honey. O.M.G.  I have never tasted honey so delicious.  No, really.  I was totally surprised because we always buy local honey from the die hard beekeepers, so I didn't really expect a quality difference. But holy smokes, was there ever.  Maybe its because they are feeding all on wildflowers and we have ALOT of acacia in flower at the moment, or maybe its just because its MINE and the difference is all my head.  But no matter the reason, our honey super duper ROCKS.

HATCHED!!

A couple of weeks ago, the chickens were all moved up to the new chicken house in Provaglio, except for...two hens went broody and stayed behind in Salo sitting on their eggs.  They were sitting together in the same nest on 3 giant goose eggs (from a neighbour) and one teensy tiny egg from the dwarf chicken "Chinesina".  Then we bought 4 new leghorn hens and 4 turkeys (mmmm...thanksgiving!) that went straight up to the little farm and started making themselves comfortable.  Lots of new poultry to keep us entertained!  Then Gab went to the champion breeder of Valdarno chickens and bought 40 eggs, and all they went into the incubator.  And just 3 weeks later...

WE HAVE CHICKS!!! AND THEY ARE SOOOOOO CUTE!!!

On friday, all the eggs in the incubator started hatching! On saturday, the geese and one dwarf chicken egg under the broody hen hatched!  How exciting!!! In spite of a power outage on the incubator for a few hours, we still got about 50% hatch rate, which is great for the first time!  22 little chicks and They are Soooooo Cute!  Here is a video of the valdarno chicks just hours old (under their heat lamp now)... 

And here is a video of the two geese that hatched (the third didn't make it) and Chinesina's little survivor egg...he is just absolutely adorable. Nina's called him "nemo" 'cause he's the lone survivor of a predator attack that took his mom...he's got special dispensation, and won't be destined for the pot any time soon!

The bees arrived too!  5 hives and millions of bees -- Gab kitted up in the beekeepers suit and took 5 colonies of bees and transplanted them from styrofoam boxes into their actual hives, and MAN were they pissed!  But the beekeepers suit worked, and he didn't get a single sting!

But there's bad news too -- within a couple of days, the new turkeys all showed signs of illness.  (I have never seen an uglier creature than a turkey...even the babies are hideous...still, endearing in their grotesquerie)  The stinking nasty brutish industrial battery raising stinking (did i say that already?) farmer sold us sick turkeys.  By the rules of the farmer's market where we bought them, they all should be vaccinated.  Humph, yeah right.  Same stinker sold a "couple", meaning cock and hen, of purebred dwarf chickens to Sabrina...she got them home, and they were a very modern "couple"...two cocks.  Double Humph!  Within two weeks, two of the turkeys were dead, but the other two miraculously survived.  The vet was tres impressed, and now we have 2 quite rugged immune turkeys!

About the same time as the turkeys were dying, we forgot to close the broody house here in salo one night and a weasel got in and killed one of the broody hens.  Nina woke to the ruckus and came to wake us up, and we ran outside and scared him away before he could get them both and the eggs too. We lost the Chinesina, but saved her wee little eggie.

And then, while all this is happening, where is the damn cat?  She up and disappeared. After a week we started to worry it was more than spring wanderings.  Signs up all over the village, but our Calli has disappeared...maybe she's found a nice quiet family that feeds her tuna once a day and is living it large...i hope so!

But back on a good note, we had our first party!  Gramma and Grampa are here from Canada, and we had a picnic on easter monday up at the farm, and it was the best party ever!  Gab built a barbecue out of old pallets and some roofing tiles...who needs to spend hundreds of bucks on a barbecue, humph, not us!  Loads of people came, and we all had a beautiful day, loads of food and a great easter egg hunt.

Winter Work, Spring Work

Its been FOREVER since my last post, so sorry...but I have my excuses...fourth baby is on his way, due 11/11/11 (no, really!), and I've been laid out with first trimester nausea, tiredness, and general blah-ness.  In the 10th week now, and starting to move into the "superwoman" second trimester phase, when i will clean every corner, wash all the windows, iron everybody's underpants, and generally be full of energy and vim and vigour.

So what has been going on in the last two months?

Well, February and early March were full of winter work -- Gab has been up to the little farm every day, working at it full time and the late winter weeks he :

• pruned the fruit trees, 
• planted new ones (add to our inventory another 16 grape vines, 15 hazelnut trees, 2 walnut trees, a pomegranite tree, 6 blueberry bushes, and 6 current bushes, plus sage, rosemary, and rhubarb in the perennial beds), 
• built a super duper mega chicken coop, and a separate little one for chicks, 
• hauled about 6 tonnes of gravel to resurface the driveway and build the foundations for the coop
• fixed and refinished some of the fencing
• Built a support for housing the bee hives whenever they finally get here
• Got the house hooked up to electricity and wired
• did some terraforming around the spring, so we now have a pond for the ducks to play in
• Cleared the wood of brambles and undergrowth and started building terraces along the steep hillside
• chipped all the brambles and prunings to make mulch
• hauled over 11 tons of prime seasoned organic manure (he's special friends with the organic cow farmer who shares his special personal reserve stock with Gab...he gives him the good shit) and spread it around the trees and over the terraces where the veggies will go.

And then the winter broke, and we went straight from winter into summer, with 3 weeks of 30 degree plus sunny weather (the recorded high on the little farm thermometer was 37 degrees -- what is this, Africa? geeze!) we had to get our butts in gear to get the ground plowed and the manure spread in and the rows prepared for the veggie garden.

I did a whole bunch of research and studying and planning and designing for the veggies, so that we would have manageable sections of veggies that were manageable for rotations and also companion planted (planted together with other plants that assist each other -- onions keep away bugs, and are good with almost every other plant.  Nasturtiums act as an Aphid trap, and are great with everything but especially tomatoes.  Beans work well with cabbages, fixing the nitrates that the cabbages eat up.  NOTHING with potatoes...they need to stay all by their lonesome. And turnips love to live under fruit trees, who'd a thunk it!).  So it was beautiful designed and quite complex...and we followed it for the first ten minutes before we got carried away and just started planting everything everywhere! 

And over the course of the next couple of weeks, we kept remembering other things we should have planted, and tilling more new beds...and now we have planted nigh on 500sqm of veggie garden...HOLY SMOKES.  I'm a bit scared of what's going to happen when all those plants start producing...but we'll take it one step at a time and see how it goes.  And excess can go to the local CSAs who have said they want to buy our produce, and if its still too much, well...it will be time to get pigs!  They'll take care of any leftovers, and make really yummy salame out of it too!

So now all the seeds are in, the seedling plants we started indoors are also down, and we are waiting patiently for it to rain.  We've watered a few times from the spring, with a diesel pump that takes the water from the spring and pumps it up to the terraces so we have a hose with running water, but it would be really nice if mother nature would do her part and let it rain already.  Its been about 4-5 weeks without rain, argh!

And on that note, I leave you with "RAIN IS A GOOD THING" -- was one of our favourites in Vancouver (I guess we figured if we kept repeating it, it might feel true...now and with a lovely irony, we really really mean it!!) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VKy69sE4VY

Fruit tree inventory...a moment of boasting,sorry!

we've done the full count of the fruit at the little farm and catalogued it for registering with the farmer's association, and I just can't resist a moment to be proud of our new place...

here's the inventory -- total number of trees is about 92, give or take because the chestnuts are just so many we didn't count them precisely.  The bold italic number is how many total trees per type, and the column of numbers to the right of that is the approximate age of each individual tree

Tree	Total no per	estimated age of each tree
Apple, various types	11	20	15	5	15	20	50	20	10	30	30	15
pear, Various types	5	20	5	5	5	10
Figs, various types	8	20	20	20	20	10	1	1	1
Walnut	8	15	15	20	30	20	30	15	30
Plum, various types	10	15	15	10	50	15	30	15	10	10	10
peach	2	10	5
Cherry, various types	7	50	15	15	50	50	30	30
Susine (plum cousin)	5	50	20	30	20	30
Nespolo (local fruit)	1	15
Heritage Apples	2	50	50
Almond	1	50
Marron Chestnut	1	100
Chestnut	25	(approximate number, there is a wood full of them, all varying ages)
Grapes	6	15

Yummmmmm!!  Gab has been approached already by the heads of two different CSAs who want to buy our excess fruit...with all those trees, I'm thinking there will be quite a bit of excess!

We picked up the Ape today, and now have farmer wheels, woohoo!

A day in the life of a raw milk lover

Raw milk RULES.  If harvested and stored hygienically, from healthy, well fed and well kept cows,  it is perfectly safe.  And when it comes raw, it comes with all the components for making every type of dairy product.  When its sterilized, the good bacteria go with the bad, and it is no longer usable for anything but drinking (unless you add bacteria from another source).  

Italy has among the most intense food hygiene regulations in the world -- the UK reacted to BSE after 20,000 or so infected beasts were confirmed.  Germany and france reacted at around 4,000 or more.  Italy was freaking out with a country wide beef on the bone ban instantly without debate over just 2 infected cows.   Angelo had to pay a fine of 2,000 euros because the sanitary ceramic tile in his kitchen was only 2m high up the wall instead of 2.12m.  Food delivery is not the norm because the regulations for carrying food are so strict -- pizza guy on a motor scooter is not so easy here, so mostly people make do with take away.  And yet raw milk is available in every community, large or small, from automatic dispensers that fulfill the sanitary requirments for safety.  Raw milk is NOT illegal in Canada because it is hazardous -- in the 30s, without consistent refrigeration and with little public information on germs and hygiene, maybe.  But not anymore.

So here is what I do once a week.  I go to the raw milk dispenser just down the hill in Salo.  Every morning at about 6am, after the morning milking, the farmer brings the milk -- he removes the leftover old milk, (which is then pasteurized, bottled and sold to the supermarkets -- yes, you pay more for the seconds) sanitizes the tank, and places the new milk.  The new milk stays at perfect temperature, perfectly safe and sanitary.

I buy 20litres of milk from the distributor, and at 1 euro per litre instead of 1.60 from the supermarket, and the farmer gets all of that money.  If I went all the way to Gavardo, closer to the farmer (5km away), the dispenser costs only 60c per litre.

5 litres of my milk goes into the fridge for fresh consumption.  5 litres goes into the pot for processing into yogurt and soft cheese, and 10 litres goes into the pot for processing "aging" cheese.  I get 5l of milk to drink, 3l of yogurt to eat, 1 pot of cottage cheese and 1 pot of soft spreadable cheese, and 2 harder cheeses for slicing, grating, and eating just like that.  Oh, and with no packaging to throw away.

Making yogurt and cheese with nothing but milk:
(ever wonder how they made cheese before all this wonderful and poisonous factory farming? )
With raw milk, you can use the bacteria in the milk itself for all of these processes, eliminating the need for adding yogurt bacterias or rennet or other assistants to the coagulation -- the bacteria does the work itself.  To do this, you first need to make "latte inesto", or inocculated milk.  Bring the milk to 61 degrees.  This kills off the bacteria that you don't want, and leaves the bacteria that you do want -- the thermophyllics (or resistant to heat) stay, and these are the base of all italian cheeses.  If you heat any more, you will start to pasteurize and lose the good bacteria as well.

Allow the milk to cool just to 40 degrees, then isolate it (wrap in a towel or blanket) to keep the warmth in and store in a warm place overnight -- I use the oven with the light on.  10 hours later you will have yogurt, with no other ingredients at all.  The consistency is kind of custard-like. (and I prefer pudding like, so I usually make it with added bacterial culture after pasteurizing, as below).  You can eat this like yogurt, put it in the fridge and it will solidify more, but the consistency is not what we are used too.  If you take this yogurt and simply heat it until it separates, you get cheese.  The hotter you heat it, the bigger and firmer the kibblets of cheese, so the more like cottage cheese.  If you heat it just hot enough that it separates, you get a softer spreadable cheese.  Once separated, spoon into a cheesecloth lined collander to drain, and hang for a few hours.  The longer it hangs, the drier and harder the cheese product.  lasts for about 2 weeks in the fridge.

Making yogurt and cheese with pasteurized milk and added bacteria 
For the sad Canadian readers under the regime of the evil milk marketing board (doesn't it just make you think of big steely cavernous government buildings a la orwell or clockwork orange? but maybe with cows behind the clerks wickets...), alas the above is not possible.

But also, for yogurt in the pudding consistency that i like, the yogurt has to be pasteurized first, so you have a clean slate, and then you add only the bacteria you want to grow in the milk.  I use greek yogurt with live bacteria. It makes nice thick and creamy yogurt.  Then, of course, once you have the mother batch, you can use your own yogurt to make the next batch.  It will eventually weaken (yogurt inbreeding...) and you will need to add fresh, but it will go for a few rounds.

To pasteurize raw milk, I bring it to 71 degrees C and there it stays for 30 seconds before removing from the fire.  For yogurt, do the same as described above, let cool to 40 degrees, then add your live yogurt bacteria (for 5 litres, I add about 1l of greek yogurt), then isolate with a towel and keep warm overnight in the lighted closed oven.

With the resultant yogurt the next morning, again you can make cottage cheese and soft cheese just by heating it, as described for the raw milk process above.

Making hard(er) cheese with either raw or pasteurised milk
To make a cheese you can slice rather than spread, you really do need rennet.  Without rennet, you can just up the heat for your overnight bucket of yogurt -- put the oven on at 55 degrees -- then next morning drain in a cheese mould basket for a day, and you will have a decent sliceable cheese without rennet, but its not ideal.

For traditional farmhouse italian cheese, heat the milk to 38 degrees, add the right portion of rennet (depends on the type of rennet and how much milk.  leave 40 minutes.  Cut the curd.  heat to 45 degrees.  let sit for 5 minutes. Spoon curd into cheese mould baskets and leave drain for about 5 hours.  Turn out onto a cheese board, and leave to air dry, turning every day, for about a week to 10 days.  you can rub salt into the outside of the cheese on the second day.  Then just keep in a cool dry place, turning every few days, until you want to eat it.  If mould forms outside, just brush/scrub it off.

The canadian controversy over raw milk
Thanks to my mom for the link to this article that got me out and defending raw milk.  The comments after the article are all very interesting.
 http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/01/24/MilkWarriors/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=240111,

Signing off because we are taking a roasted chicken up to the little farm for a picnic and some leaf raking and jumping.  Gab's been up all week pruning and cutting paths in the woods and generally winter maintenance.  next week we should get our load of shit to spread in the orchard, yahoo!  Also next week the pick-up comes (its a three wheeled piaggio Ape Max...too cool!  Ours is white) and the specialist will come up to see about hooking up the electricity and setting up a well and the water tanks.