Wednesday, June 30, 2010

In Today's Garden

Pumpkins (Dill's Atlantic Giant)
Yellow Summer Squash (Slick Pik)

Here's the view of a new planting area that I activated this year. I call it Cucurbit Corner because it's the site of four giant pumpkin plants and eight summer squash plants. Yeah, it's hard to tell them apart in this photo - the pumpkins are in the background/left, and four of the squash are in the foreground/right.

I started these from seeds that I got from Johnny's Selected Seeds in Maine. That's pretty much the only place where I buy seeds, and I like their stuff.

This is the third year I've grown giant pumpkins. My record so far is one that weighed 116 pounds, which is a far, far cry from the serious contenders that are fast approaching the one ton mark.

But then again, the people who grow them at this level strike me as being just a wee bit nuts. But I guess we need obsessives, because that's how records are broken, eh?

These giant pumpkins are useless for eating - they're all fibrous string and water inside. But they do make for an interesting conversation piece.

My personal goal is to hit 350 pounds with one, but I don't spend too much time or attention making that happen. I try to keep the plants fed every few weeks with a nice dose of my brother-in-law's awesome liquid fish plant food. And this new planting area has a lot of natural moisture, since pumpkins like to be well-watered (but not too much, else they grow too fast and split).

I also started just spraying against those freaking squash vine borers. I've seen the wasp recently, laying its eggs at the base of these plants. I use a botanical spray, not one based on petrochemicals. We'll see if that makes any difference. In the first year, when I grew the 116-pounder, that plant had a couple of infested vines but still managed to hang in. I grew last year's plants from saved seeds, and didn't get a pumpkin bigger than a beach ball.

They're actually pretty tasty when their harvested just as they start developing.

I'm hoping to the train the vines to grow out onto the grass, which is one of the reasons that I chose this area for them. They get very long and can overrun everything they encounter, which sucks when they encounter my tomato plants.

The yellow summer squash have started putting out fruit, and I'll try to keep picking them off while still small. I might even snag a few babies tomorrow, since there will be plenty more to follow.

There are also four plants of another variety of pumpkin, this one more suitable for eating, growing in the spot where I stood to take this picture. It's called Baby Pam, and the flesh is smooth and sweet and perfect for pies.

Monday, June 28, 2010

A Bit o' Wisdom

Senator George McGovern on the late Senator Robert Byrd:
It was Senator Byrd's capacity for growth, wisdom and judgment that won my admiration. There's no sin for anybody in public life to make a mistake. It's how you learn from them that's important.
No controversy in that, is there?

h/t DemFromCT, writing at DailyKos

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Chicken Guts

Yesterday, I spent about 6 hours pulling warm guts from chickens. All I needed was a strong stomach and a sharp knife. I volunteered to help process the late June chicken harvest for Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds, and joined about a dozen other like-minded folks working under the watchful eye of Pete and Jen.

It was kinda fun.

The term 'process' is really a euphemism for several steps. When the free-range/pastured chickens that Pete and Jen raise are ready for harvest, they're rustled into crates for an overnight fast. They're then placed, one at a time, head-down into a large funnel-shaped cone with a small opening at the bottom. Each inverted chicken is then stunned with an electric jolt, followed by a large slit to the throat.

Here's the failed former half-term Governor of Alaska to show you what I'm taking about.

There are six funnels in the setup we used, kind of like a barbershop with six chair (no waiting!).

It takes several minutes for the chicken's blood to be completely drained, at which point up to three chickens are placed in a large rectangular vat of scalding hot water. A rotating paddle alternately submerses the chickens under the scalding water, then lifts them above it.

Another person who operates a large mechanical plucker decides when the chickens have been adequately scalded, removes them from the scalder, and drops them into what looks like the inner workings of a washing machine lined with short, stubby rubber fingers. When this device is activated, it tosses the limp dead chickens all around, which somehow also removes pretty much all of their feathers.

He turns the machine off after a few minutes on the 'heavy dirt' cycle, then uses a pair of large specialty shears to remove the feet and heads. The feet go into one bucket - they're subsequently further cleaned and processed to be sold separately. I've been told that they make excellent stock (lots of collagen yields a rich broth).

I don't know what happens to the heads. I don't want to know. Hot dogs?

The headless, feetless, bloodless, featherless, and lifeless chickens are now plopped into a tub of cool water, which is also where me and my fellow volunteer eviscerators come in.

Eviscerating a chicken is a great way to learn about its anatomy. Jen graciously demonstrated the following evisceration technique, which I followed meticulously:

  • Grab a wet chicken from the cooling tub, and lay it breast side down on the impeccably clean stainless steel work surface, with the long neck pointing towards you and slightly to the right (for right-handed eviscerators). Using the tip of an unforgivingly sharp knife, cut through the skin of the chicken's surprisingly long neck. Try to do this in a single smooth cut, and don't cut any deeper than the skin. Hold the chicken's body steady with your left hand.
  • Put the knife down in a safe place for a moment, sit the chicken upright, then use your right hand to grip the end of the cut neck skin flap and pull it down, as through removing a glove or stripping the skin off a chicken neck. It should come easily with a single steady pull, so that you now looking at a bony naked neck sticking up from what you'd recognize as a whole chicken at the market.
  • Lay the chicken down again, grab that knife, and cut through the skinless neck. Don't whack at it wildly - that's how to get hurt. Instead, make a deep cut while applying firm and steady pressure to get through the small bones. It may help to bend the neck a bit. Toss the chicken neck into the iced bucket marked 'Necks.'
  • Now look for two flesh-colored tubes attached to the loose flap of neck skin, and tug them away from the skin. One of the tubes broadens out and forms the crop at the bottom of the chicken's right side of the neck skin (the left side as it faces you), also firmly attached to the skin. It should be empty, because the chicken hasn't eaten in a while. Work this away from the skin entirely, too. This is an important step, because you'll soon be pulling out the entire alimentary canal from the other end. If you don't separate things up here, you'll have a hell of a time later.
  • Now line up the chicken on its back, with the feet toward you and slightly to the right. Get a good pinch of stomach skin in the unprotected area below the breast. Cut into the skin below where you are pinching, and across the chicken's belly. Don't cut too deeply, to avoid nicking any of the internal organs.
  • With the chicken still on its back, legs towards you, look for the butt hole, also called the vent. It looks sorta like this: *
  • Work a few fingers of your left hand through the cut you just made, down into the chicken's insides. The the goal now is to find and pinch off the section of large intestine where it ends at the vent, using the ends of you index and middle (or middle and ring) fingers. It's important to find and hold this section of the intestines to avoid cutting into it.
  • Once you've found it, use your knife to cut from the earlier crosswise incision downwards, staying to the right of the vent. When you've reached that point, curve the cut around the vent (kind of like completing the letter 'J'). You're almost home.
  • Now take the knife, keeping hold of the large intestine/vent with the fingers of your left hand, and turn the 'J' into a 'U.' I always worked down from the other side of the cross cut.
  • If everything worked out as it was supposed to, your left hand is now holding the last section of the large intestine with an attached butt hole surrounded by some skin. You can let go of it.
  • Now reach into the chicken's abdomen as far as you can, and grab the whole works. Pull it out onto the table to admire God's handiwork, which you have knowingly undone.
  • The gizzard is a big, tough, ugly baseball-sized thing. Cut it away from the intestines, and toss it in the iced bucket labeled, 'Gizzards.' Someone else will deal with this in greater detail, along with all of those little feet from before.
  • Look around in the pile of guts to find the heart. If you don't see it, reach into the chicken and feel around again. When you find it, toss it into the bucket marked, 'Hearts.'
  • Now look for the liver - again, an obvious organ for anyone who's ever cooked a turkey or chicken, or who's explored the little wax paper bag found in most whole chickens at the market. The difference here is that the small gall bladder/bile sac is still attached to this one, and you've got to ease it off gently. Be careful not to puncture or spill the bile - it's fluorescent green and stains everything it comes into contact with. I didn't nick or spill a single one, but the guy next to me did couple of times. You could easily make a bunch of Grateful Dead t-shirts with the stuff.
  • The rest of the guts go into the gut bucket, which McDonald's uses for its tasty Chicken McNuggets (kidding!).
  • We're almost done. The only step left is to reach into the chicken one last time to scrape out the lungs, which adhere to shallow depressions on either side of the backbone. They're very spongy, so forget about getting them out intact. Just scrape with your finger tips. Yes, just like that.
  • Now do it one more time.
  • Finally, grab a hose and rinse the chicken well, inside and out. Bring it over to another big covered tub filled with ice and water, where it will cool off some more.
  • Repeat.
There were 320 chickens, and ten of us eviscerating. I probably managed to average about four chickens per hour, but nobody kept track of anything except the total number of chickens that still needed to be gutted.

We kept up a friendly banter for the first couple of hours, mixing philosophical comments about what we were doing with sick jokes and encouragement. But at some point, the talk quieted and we just kept at it until the last chicken was put into the final ice bath.

Then it was time for lunch. I ate heartily (turkey club roll-up with avacado slices), then made my way home for a long, hot shower and a nap. I was exhausted. Pete and Jen had enough work left to keep them busy for the rest of the day, and probably into the evening.

I didn't take any pictures, and I'm sure you can figure out why. Here's a nice short video of a pretty horse I saw there instead:

Friday, June 25, 2010

In Today's Garden

Clematis - 'Bonanza'
Bee Balm - 'Cambridge Scarlet'

This clematis is flowering very actively right now, while the other's blossoms (I lost the tag, and don't know the variety) have already gone by. Both were from White Flower Farm in Connecticut. I don't get our plants there - too pricey - but someone once gave the Little Woman and me a couple of gift certificates, and these were among the items we picked up.

Now, Crockett said the clematis varieties that bloom on second year vines can't be grown here in New England, because the winters are too cold. These have been in the ground for 5 years, IIRC, and the flowers grow on new and prior-year vines.

I picked up a couple of 4-inch pots of bee balm last year at Verrill Farm, where I also get my tomato seedlings. The bee balm did well, and attracted butterflies and hummingbirds. I haven't seen the hummingbirds yet this year, but the bee balm has come back to at least 3-times its original density. I think I'll divide it up next year, and move it to a new location where the soil is more consistently moist.

Anyway, this photo was taken at high noon. The initial color was kind of washed out, so I doodled it a bit.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Meet #1 Son

photo by Old Man

I was hanging out on the evolving patio yesterday with Little Woman and Old Man when #1 Son pulled into the driveway. He often stops by in the time between work and band practice, and this time he brought along six cold bottles of an Americanized version of Mexican Budweiser.

That brand would never be my own first choice, but since he was buying...

In return for the effort, we sent a frozen pizza (cooked) his way.