Hip Chick Digs

I am back in the college world and, although this time I am a grad student, the college tradition of every meal being a potluck lives on. The overall quality of potluck dishes seems to have increased from chips and salsa to things like homemade tiramisu.

Since we are all busy these days with piles of reading, model making, sketching, writing, etc. the potlucks have proven to be an interesting challenge in making good food quickly. The homemade tiramisu, for example, turned out to be a fairly easy process - you just needed to allow time for things to set overnight. As someone who loves the process of cooking though, of bringing people into the kitchen together with glasses of wine and conversation, slowly watching a meal emerge, the college potluck thing has been challenging for me.

On a recent potluck evening, I found myself peeking up from a mountain of work to check the time and realized I had only an hour or two to figure out what I was bringing. I racked my brain for something relatively in season that I could make quickly. I raced to my favorite grocer and bought an equal number of beets to local apples. I didn’t yet know what I was making, but surely those things would taste good with each other.

When I got home, there was less than an hour to get out the door. I threw together what turned out to be a really delicious beet and apple salad. The key is using good quality beets - mine were organic and local. It was simple, healthy and delicious.

Beet & Apple Salad

• 8 beets
• 4 apples
• 2 T olive oil
• 2 T apple cider vinegar
• 2 T honey
• 1/2 cup hazelnuts, loosely crushed
• Salt and fresh ground pepper

1. Boil the beets for about 30 minutes, fully submerged in water. Don’t bother washing or trimming them beforehand. When you can pierce them easily with a fork, they are done.
2. Drain the beets. Run the beets under cold water while peeling off the skins with your fingers. Chop the beets into bit-sized pieces, about 1 inch.
3. While you are peeling beets, toast the hazelnuts on a flat baking sheet until lightly browned, either in the oven or a toaster oven.
4. Chop the apples into bit-sized pieces, about one inch, and toss them in with the beets.
5. In a small bowl, mix the cider, oil and honey together whisking briskly until combined. Poor over the apple and beet mixture and toss well.
6. Salt and pepper the salad to taste. Toss the toasted hazelnuts in with the salad. Refrigerate until serving.

I had some fresh chevre cheese in the fridge I decided at the last minute not to use, in case anyone had a dairy issue (which someone did end up having). The cheese would turn pink from the beet juice, but I think it would add a nice creamy texture. It appears my “throw it together quickly” cooking skills are improving and I hope you enjoy the recipe as much as I did!

“An egg! An egg! An egg!” You could hear the excitement in my voice carrying through the neighborhood on a recent, drizzly evening as I did my regular check on the chickens. A little brown egg quietly laid in the nesting box.

I then recalled how my urban hens seemed to be making quite a ruckus on a recent morning - and the dots connected. Someone was laying eggs again and they were all celebrating it each morning with some squawking to announce it to the world. I was just too sleepy with late nights with grad school midterms to piece that together without seeing the actual egg.

Just when it felt like this rainy, cold winter would go forever, I get a hint of Spring. The chickens only made me wait a couple months before they started laying again. How wonderful to have something producing food in our backyard again. The ground is soppy and my seeds are not planted yet, but at least my days of buying eggs are over for the next ten months.

I believe Florence, the Rhode Island Red, is the champion layer yet again. Maude, our Brahma, should start back up soon with slightly larger brown eggs. And old Pearl can lay when she feels like it and surprise us with sporadic blue eggs.

Crocuses are popping their heads up and thick, green reeds of daffodils are reaching for the sky, soon to open their flowers. President’s Day is this weekend, which means our pea seeds need to get in the ground. This much we can do, right?

And maybe while we are out there, we can direct sow some arugula and lettuces. And we could probably take a moment to shove a few more garlic cloves, an onion set or two, and some potatoes into the ground as well. It just takes a little time and a drop of motivation to get outside this weekend and stick our hands in the dirt again. I know I’ll find some peaceful sanity and we’ll also get a good start on the growing season.

Go get dirty!

It is that time of year to start planning the coming season’s garden and get our seeds going indoors. I have to admit that I haven’t started a thing yet and I am already feeling really behind. Hopefully this weekend will allow me a sliver of time to get my seed starting organized.

In the mean time, there are still things to do outside in the winter garden. The garden in the house I am renting is sleeping for winter. The soil was so compacted and sapped of nutrients that I chose to heavily mulch it rather than plant winter crops. (If I were really on the ball, I would have planted some cover crops in the fall) But the Urban Farm I volunteer at still shows signs of life and reminders of what we can grow here in the NW on these gray days.

Early February means it is time to “feed” the garlic with chicken manure at the farm. On my homestead, I didn’t really fertilize a whole lot because I would dig in a mixture of chicken manure and used straw before planting. It will be interesting to see what a difference fertilizing at this time makes. My garlic was typically an after thought crop - shove some in here and be surprised in the fall when it has multiplied despite the neglect.

The leeks that were planted in the Fall are now big enough to harvest. We have been eating a lot of soup, since I am not savvy enough to do anything else with leeks. Their tall stalks and lush leaves are a welcomed sign of life in the vegetable beds.

Kale seems to be holding on for dear life. It appears to have made it through the winter, although it looks a bit pathetic. But new, dark green leaves are uncurling with the promise of iron and other nutrients that will keep us healthy and energized.

And finally, the brussel sprouts look good enough to cut off and enjoy (well, if you peel a couple outside leaves from them). My favorite method of preparing them involves a quick steaming until barely fork tender, then tossing in a fry pan with butter and pecans. Simple, but delicious.

Now get back to starting those seeds and planning the garden!

Yesterday I had a couple sunny hours ahead of me before dusk, so I decided to tend to a few minor repairs on the chicken coop. The roof had been leaking in a couple spots and a damp coop can increase the likelihood of pests and disease infiltrating the coop. An even bigger issue, I have been noticing that something has been burrowing into the coop at night.

This larger, more serious problem I noticed a few days ago. Mounded soil, like a mole hill, began appearing right inside the coop fence with a small hole. I narrowed the culprit down to either a rat or an opossum. The critter did not seem to be after the hens sleeping upstairs in the hen house, so I assumed it was coming in to steal food under the cover of darkness.

I searched for the entry point to the tunnel on the outside of the coop to no avail. An hour or so later, I had managed to detach the hen house from the run and moved both away from the coop site. Unfortunately, when I moved the hen house, I discovered large droppings under the floor which sits about 4″ above ground resting on cinder blocks. Ew: A rat had taken up residence.

Mice = I can deal with. Rats = yuck.

I still hadn’t found the source of the hole, so I began moving cinder blocks. I traced the hole under several cinder blocks until it eventually went underground deeper. This is all a rather disgusting treasure hunt I had been on. I was now deciding whether to fill the hole, cover it with a heavy object, or flush it out. I figured I would flush it out with water to discourage the rat from returning to live in damp quarters.

Here I am: three inches from the ground, crouched over a gross rat hole, shoving a hose down there and filling it with water. Everything seems to be going fine. Sometimes the water gets plugged up, so I shove the hose further down until the water gets cleared again. A couple minutes into this endeavor, the water begins gurgling. An air pocket perhaps is rising to the surface. But, no…

A GIANT RAT!!! It flies out the hole, inches from my fingers, right in front of my face! It’s little beady eyes… It’s wet, scraggly fuzzy fat body goes scurrying across the yard!

Pearl, my old americuana, decides to make a run for it. Hey, protein is protein I guess. Luckily (I think?), Pearl was not fast enough and the rat got away.

Why do I share this totally jarring, gross story with you? It’s entertaining. It’s disgusting. And it is just one of those ridiculous stories that comes with the territory of keeping urban livestock. I have been so fortunate to avoid run-ins with pests and disease in general, but it is all too common to have an occasional pest problem.

The next step is to trap the rat and I look forward to returning to the days of pest-free chicken keeping.

Planning and planting typically keeps my mind on the garden even in winter. As I have learned, it can take years and years for a garden to really come into it’s own. The process I chose for my home garden was drawing out a planting plan for the trees, large shrubs and structures. As time went on, I have begun to fill in little bare corners and tuck new plants under larger ones to add dimension.

One spot that still sits bare in my garden is on the north side of our house, which is in mostly full shade. I focus largely on edibles and it can be slim pickings finding a shade-loving fruiting plant. Enter this great problem solver: Evergreen huckleberry.

Evergreen huckleberry, botanically known as Vaccinium ovatum, is an evergreen shrub native here in Western Oregon. It is actually native all the way from British Columbia down to the California coasts. The shrub can grow anywhere from 3′-15′ wide and 3′-5′ wide, although most nurseries estimate it will grow to about 8′ in the shade.

It prefers shade, but does well in partial shade too. I have seen people plant it in full sun and it stays quite small and seems to struggle. If you live on the coast, it can do well in the sun because coastal air and soil stays quite moist and cool.

(Photo courtesy of One Green World)

In Spring, the plant will produce delicate little pink-white flowers that will turn into black huckleberries in September. The twigs have a red-tinge to them, contrasting with the dark green leaves. It does well in moist, well-drained and acidic soil.

There you have it - an evergreen, structural shrub that loves shade, produces both flowers and berries, and cane do well in acidic soil. Problem spot solved!