Savory Mushroom Rice

    In the summer and fall we are blessed to live in an area abundant with delicious edible fungi! I know many people have mixed (or decidedly unmixed) feelings about eating mushrooms, but I often tell people that's because they have met the right mushroom yet. There are a wide array of mushroom flavors and textures to choose from, but even when presented by wild gourmet mushrooms all cleaned up and market ready many folks just plain don't know what to do with them! So I've put together this dish featuring the hedgehog mushroom. Really you could use any firm species of mushroom but I found this the other day, so here we are.

                       178 gram hedgehog!

Remember most of my measurements (except rice and broth)are approximate and all the produce used in this recipe is from the awesome folks at the Ashland Area Farmer's Market!

Ingredients:

Olive oil
Sesame oil
2T butter
Sea salt
Worcestershire sauce
Soy sauce
2 cups broth
1 1/2 cup uncooked white rice (not minute rice!)
Large onion (I like the Walla Walla for this because it browns nicely)
At least 1lb mushrooms
Two cloves minced garlic (or one if you're using elephant garlic! My favorite!)
Two green peppers
One large kohlrabi
Some kind of green (spinach, collards, beet greens.... I used the stir fry mix from Seasonally Sourced for this one)


Using a generous drizzle of olive oil, brown 1/2 of your mushrooms and the chopped up onion on medium high heat. Seasom with sea salt Carmelization= deliciousness! Set aside
In the same pan drizzle some (I don't know.....2T??) Sesame oil and melt the butter. Stir in garlic and green peppers. Cook 30 seconds. Stir in diced kohlrabi cook 30 seconds. Stir in chopped up greens, cook until wilted. Splash in soy sauce (easy does it... you want flavor but not too salty!) And Worcestershire sauce to taste.
Cook until bottom of the pan is brown again.
Stir in small amount of broth and rice, stir until all the good brown stuff lifts off the bottom of the pan. Stir in remaining broth, bring to simmer, cover and reduce heat to medium low.
Simmer 15 minutes, Stir, if there is liquid left allow to cook off.
Removed from heat and quickly stir in caramelized onion and mushrooms. Cover and let rest for ten minutes.
Fluff and serve!!

This fed my family of four to stuffed with a generous helping left over.

Market Meals!

    A common question I hear both when talking to people about foraging and while browsing at my local farmers market is "How do I use this?" If we're all very honest with ourselves I think we can all remember a time when we let that funny looking squash or those wierd new greens go bad simply because we didn't know what to do with them.

  The theme for Finding Tomatoes this month will be how to utilize your market and wild finds! So let's get started with something simple!

    All of the produce used in this quick prep one dish meal can be found at the Ashland Area Farmer's Market. If you're in the Ashland Wisconsin area on Saturday mornings definitely put a stop at the market on your to do list!

   The first thing you need to know about farm fresh and wild harvest cooking is that if you are used to supermarket produce you are in for a big treat flavor wise! You think you know what a carrot tastes like and then you experience an heirloom dragon carrot and suddenly your whole life has been a lie! Or something less dramatic... I get a little passionate about produce. So that being said I end up using much less salt and flavorings than are necessary for factory farm produced veggies, fruit, and fungi.

  For this recipe (I don't know what to call it, someone come up with a snazzy name and leave it in the comments if you'd like!) the only special equipment you will need is a big crock pot! I don't do a lot of measuring which cuts down on the dishes but sometimes makes translating my cooking into recipes a challenge. So think of this as more of a general guideline that can easily be modified to suit your taste

Ingredients:
(Measurements are approximate)
2lbs fingerling potatoes
2 lbs beets
1 lb carrots
1/2 lb mushrooms (I foraged these chanterelles myself but Seasonally Sourced is the booth at the Ashland market to find safely identified wild mushrooms)
1 lb pearl onions
1 cup broth or stock (I'll show you how to make garbage broth on a later post)
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar (ACV)
Salt, pepper, sage, garlic, and oregano to taste, butter optional

There's a method to my madness on the layering. I put the potatoes down in the broth so they become all creamy and flavorful, the carrots go on top of the mushrooms to enhance their sweet notes, but really you could just huck everything in and turn the pot on low and go about your business. For the more detail oriented home chefs out there though:

Pour ACV and broth into the bottom of the crock pot. Then whole skinned pearl onions (retain skins in big zip lock or container in the freezer for a different recipe!) Add clean potatoes, don't skin or chop them, just dump them in!

Then come the beets, whole or halved. I don't skin these either and the WHOLE beet can be used. Beet greens are amazingly nutritious and tastey. You can include those in this recipe but I needed a treat for my turkeys that day.

Next the mushrooms go in. To properly clean a mushroom you don't use water. They are like sponges and will get water logged very quickly. Instead use a mushroom brush, soft tooth brush, or paper towel to get the bits of forest off. I chose to leave my mushrooms whole for visual interest but if the mouthfeel of whole mushrooms skeeves you out a bit go ahead and chop them up!

Now the carrots, skin on again and cut into big chunks rather than little rounds. Again you can use the WHOLE carrot, the greens have an herby sweet flavor that works well with this recipe but I saved mine in the freezer with the onion and garlic skins this time.

On top of all that go the remaining spices and flavorings. If you're using butter a little goes a long way in this as there are so many earthy flavors stewing together.

Close the lid and turn on low for sixish hours (until tender) mixing halfway through if you can. Serve as is or put it on rice...bonus points for wild rice!

  This simple meal is GREAT for a cool fall day and even without meat it will fill you up and give you good clean energy for all of the autumn fun to be had in the north woods!

Heeeey there....

Wow... so... sorry about the summer, it got a bit away from me! But I finally have time amidst all the hustle and bustle to drop a quick hello like this:

Helllloooooo!

    When last we left off the Porter's Turkeys poults had just arrived and Blucinda was waiting on a clutch. 9 of our transplant poults (including Carmelo, pictured) are absolutely thriving! They were joined about a week later by Blucinda's four little ones but sadly, Blucinda went a bit nutso and started killing her poults and the others so we ended up having our first butchering experience. It went quite smoothly, but then something went horribly wrong with the storage before cooking and well, know better do better right? 

   We sold the five remaining pheasant chicks a few days ago and mom Artemis and dad Apollo are headed to their new home soon making room for Cinnamon the quail to produce whatever is going to be produced from the clutch of 27 eggs she's currently brooding. Yes you read that right, one of my Coturnix quails has gone broody and is stealing everyone's eggs to sit on. We've decided to let her sit for a bit and see what happens. 

  The ringnecks are in their own little enclosure and continue to want nothing to do with anyone or anything else but otherwise seem quite happy!

   The gardens have been such an amazing learning experience!! I have so so SO many plans for next year! Including a booth at our local farmer's market if I can get myself organized, but that's what winter on the homestead is for!

  We are still pushing forward with the goal of having a working reindeer herd on the homestead, and rapidly nearing the completion of our home loan approval journey. 

Things to look forward to in the coming months:

More recipes! I'm going to have to learn how to cook using measurements aren't I? 

More about the fascinating world of fungi! I'll be attending the Midwest Women's Herbal Conference this year and the focus is on fungi so that will be pretty spectacular. It's peak harvest season for us right now so we're spending quite a few hours in the woods each day. 

Fall garden prep, I'm currently waiting on a shipment of tulip bulbs! Did you know tulip petals are edible? Me neither. 

And more! Lots more... 

Stay tuned!!!!

A quick plug for Drummond Woods Trail! It's....there aren't words. You'll just have to go visit! It's a short little hike outside of Drummond Wisconsin. It's just a stunning kid friendly trail with several eco systems to explore.

Lettuce Love One Another!

  I have come to a conclusion about most self sufficient type folks: we have a massive block about receiving. Whether that means receiving equipment, funds, advice, or help many of us seem to freeze up or retreat or just be painfully awkward when we are faced with a situation in which we are being offered something. I think I will attribute this to our deep deep desire to be strong and independent...or at least to be perceived as such.

  We believe the pinnacle of success is reached when we are dependent on no one but ourselves, or even better: when we can help sustain others! Oh the bliss of sharing your produce or eggs with neighbors! It makes you feel almost giddy to think of someone else enjoying your hard work! We are very comfortable with giving (except for our prized foraging spots...we'll take those to our grave thank you very much), but receiving can make us feel like we have failed in some way.

Achievement unlocked: I shared lettuce and other greens!

  I don't know about you but I have things I'm extremely good at (in homesteading and life in general) and things that...well...perhaps are best left to the professionals. If I tried to sustain myself on my halfway there homestead right now we'd be eating a lot of salad greens and not much else. BUT! I have salad, my neighbor has eggs, hey presto! a complete giving/receiving circuit because we are both abundant in something the other needs. Similarly, when you purchase something from your local farmer or forager you are acknowledging your need for the cabbage or mushrooms or whatever while simultaneously filling their need for the cash you brought with you. All needs are met, everyone wins. This is how successful communities are nourished.

  The sticky part for me though is when the item I have to offer is not a physical item at all, but time, experience, research, network, or some other less tangible resource. I have a heck of a time putting monetary value on those things. Which would tend to make me easy prey for someone seeking to take advantage of that but I have a secret weapon! I have surrounded myself with the shield of a loving community. I have really incredibly real, honest, and caring people in my life which is an enormous blessing for uncountable reasons but the one that pertains to today's topic is this lesson that I am learning: If I could not fathom and am made uncomfortable by taking tangible and intangible resources from my community without reimbursement of some kind, aren't I making my community uncomfortable when I don't allow others to reciprocate toward me? Yeah, let that one sink in all you givers!

   We give plants water, care, and protection to enable them to reciprocate that with tomatoes, cukes, and greens. We give our horses and dogs food, water, shelter, and love to enable them to reciprocate with services of protection or transportation. We give our farmer's market vendors money to enable them to reciprocate with tasty produce. We give our communities love, support, and inspiration to enable them to reciprocate the same when we need it.

Lettuce love one another, so we can be loved in return.

They're Heeeeeeere!

     About a month and a half ago we ordered 15 rare heritage cross breed poults from a farm in Illinois that has exciting mixes like chocolate palm and sweetgrass turkeys. What did we get? I have no idea. We ordered the cross breed mix that were supposed to have a paper with them to give us an idea of what they might be but there was no paper. Oh well, small potatoes! Because the most important thing is that even though they threw and extra poult in in case of death by shipping all of them arrived at our local post office this morning peppy and peeping!
   That was the easy part. At the beginning of July we cleaned out and chicken wired off a juvenile pen for them so the big turkeys don't squish them or spread diseases too easily. Well.... that didn't work. They squeezed through chicken wire, fell out of unknown holes in the hutch, and were just generally running around in peeping chaos.
  Ok, thought I, maybe Blucy would be cool with them. After all we had given her those three commercial poults to mother when she was still trying in vain to hatch out the rest of her now defunct eggs. So I brought a cute speckled fellow over to her nest.

BIG MISTAKE.

    Letting out a hiss that could rival the orneriest Canadian goose Blucinda savagely pecked at the hapless little thing. As is hightailed it out of the nest out came Blucinda with wings unfurled and beak agape like some sort of guardian to the gates of hell itself. Even Arpee ran out of the pen in the face of her fury. Scooping up the poult, I ran like the coward I am back into the juvenile pen and enlisted the only help I had (a toddler and a bouncy six year old) to keep the poults out of the adult pen while I figured out what to do.

   We had wrapped an old metal picnic table frame with a double layer of chicken wire months ago thinking to use it for incubated chicks' outside playtime. Our incubator really soiled the sheets this year so it stood abandoned by the garden. Perfect! I rolled it into the baby pen and my kids practiced counting as they scooped the floofs into their crib. I added the bottom half of a broken pet crate turned upside down for a rain and sun shelter with a paving stone on top to keep the wind from taking it, a little waterer, and a dog dish of poult starter feed. Patting myself on the back for my quick thinking, I borrowed the other old plastic picnic table from the pheasants and used that as a lid. But I hit another snag.
  The poults huddled in a corner looking dejected and miserable. Even though I'd dipped beaks in water like I was told no one seemed to have the slightest interest in food or water.
   Hmmmm.....
  Aha!! We've been having issues with one of the quails, Honey. She has taken to eating six eggs a day. Well I had the perfect job for her royal chubness! Sixteen new babies to look after. I put her in with the poults and they immediately decided she was just the ticket and mobbed her for snuggles. This did not thrill her, but never one to pass up a free meal she set to on the dish of poult starter. Six of poults followed suit. Then, apparently thirsty from the excitement she quail scuttled over to the waterer and helped herself followed by seven of the little peepers. After that she decided she had enough fun and started cricket chirping the quail distress call. I scooped her out and put her back in the quail pen and then returned to the happy sight of poults pecking the food, scratching at the grass, and sipping the water.
  So that's our excitement for the day! Now excuse me while I scurry out to the bird yard every ten minutes to check on the new arrivals like the crazy poultry lady I've become.

 A very displeased nanny quail.

Big sibling Thanksgiving and daddy Arpee come take a peek before being shooed into their own area.

Set it and Forget it!

   I have never really had a successful garden. I lack patience and focus which tend to be pretty crucial to the whole process. I am an eternal toddler with too much to explore to be bothered with stationary chores. Luckily there's a garden method for me!!! I present to you one of my favorite garden beds I have going right now: The in ground keyhole!

First I removed the sod from the future key hole. This was in...April? May? Something like that. I have sand instead of soil so I can pretty much dig as soon as the snow melts.

 I framed out the cut out part first and then dug down about....12-18"

 Waste not: some poles from an old exercise machine made the structure for the compost basket.

 I retrieved very rotten, myceliated, grubby, wormy, spongey sticks and small logs from the woods. These are far enough into the decomposition process that they will begin releasing nitrogen into the soil and they help retain moisture AND they keep weeds from spreading runners AND they attract beneficial biodiversity. Yeah. All that. It's pretty exciting. 

 Chicken wire for the compost basket. The purpose of the basket is rather like compost tea: as the compost decomposes the rain will wash the nutritious particles into the garden giving your plants a boost every time it rains! Not to mention the whole circle of tiny lives that plays out with the worms and bugs attracted to the compost. 

 A layer of bird yard waste. Mostly poo and straw. The extra heat will speed up decomposition and extend the growing period by keeping it warmer just a little farther into the fall. 

 The completed frame. Adorably heart shaped.

 I shoveled most of the excavated dirt back in and then just let it hang out until planting time! We use the basket for household compost and all I did for planting was scatter some lettuce, nasturtium, spinach, and tatsoi seeds and then covered them with a little black dirt to get things started. That. Was. It.  No weeding except around the blocks, no extra fertilizer...nothing. 

Tah dah!!!! Here it is on the first day of July. I harvested lettuce for the seventh time last night so that is acutally not as full as it was previously but still rather impressive. (The bare spot is courtesy of a turkey)

There you have it! And the best part? The price tag!!! Because I had the cinderblocks and a piece of chicken wire on hand this cost me $0 to build!

Bacon Grows on Trees

      Bacon grows on trees. This is a fact I have newly come to accept as truth. Impossible you say? Well....

- Obtain properly identified, harvested, and cleaned oyster mushrooms. 

-Preheat oven to 350*F

-Rip the mushrooms into thin strips along the gills, compost the thicker base part or use it in a soup or something later. Put strips into medium/large bowl.

-Line baking sheet(s) with parchment paper

-Drizzle mushroom strips generously with olive oil and salt, pepper, garlic powder, and Parmesan cheese to taste. Really you could use all kinds of spices on them..go nuts! Toss to evenly coat all mushrooms. (It's ok if some break...bacon bits!)

- Arrange strips in single layer on baking sheet(s). Bake for about one hour...or until brown and crispy!

That's it! Yes...it's that easy! I'd tell you the shelf life and storage but none of ours have lasted more than two hours uneaten to test that. Enjoy!!

Pleurotus ostreatus

(Disclaimer: Please do not ever use a single blog post to identify your fungi finds. A well researched forager is a safe forager! There are potentially toxic look alikes of oyster mushrooms)

    Don't get me wrong, I do love morels...but there is something particularly satisfying about the first oyster mushroom find of the year. One good log can overflow your forage basket with delicious, meaty goodness, and once you find one flush it seems you just can't stop finding them in the early summer. Oysters are also really fun to grow (visit www.mushroommountain.com if you'd like more information on that!) and are incredibly versatile mycoremediators. 

   But this post is in celebration of the wild oyster mushroom: Pleurotus ostreatus 

Oyster mushrooms begin their fruiting stage as these adorable little buttons exploding out of dead wood. Look for these after the first good summer rains. 

Oysters are a go big or go home sort of mushroom and tend to fruit in gloriously thick meaty clusters. They have a pale flesh (not all white! All white and very very delicate may be the Angel Wing mushroom) that feels damp but firm to the touch. Really the closest texture I have ever felt to oysters is the belly of a dolphin but...that may or may not be helpful to you. My favorite feature is the sweet, spicy, earthy scent these treasures give off. Very much like licorice. If anyone were to capture that scent in a perfume they'd have a customer for life in me!  Once you smell it you will definitely remember it!

Here is what you want to see on the underside: pretty, thin, smooth, white gills that run the whole length of the mushroom. Oysters do not really have a stalk or a stem.

It is important to note that when it comes to fungi what you see on the outside is not the whole picture. Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi. They exist solely to release the spores of the fungi, they do not assist in the intake of any sort of nutrition. Think of them like apples on an apple tree. Much like picking an apple doesn't hurt the tree, picking the mushroom doesn't hurt the organism doing the actual growing. However if you were to pick all the apples off of a tree and hoard away the seeds that might be a problem for the growth of future generations. With mushrooms we can avoid this problem by carrying them in open weave baskets or mesh bags. This will allow them to disperse their spores to an even wider area than usual as you wander their forest habitat. Baskets are preferable to bags because they will act as armor for your delicate harvest, but I keep a mesh bag in my forage bag for portability when I'm not sure I'll be harvesting mushrooms. 

When you get home IMMEDIATELY inspect for these little beetle guys, slugs, and other tiny creatures. Oysters are a source of abundance to many in the forest and their sweet smell attracts all sorts of visitors. You can rinse your oysters but be aware that they become water logged and crumbly very quickly. By water logged I mean you can literally wring them out. Soggy, crumbly mess! I just pick out the creepy crawlies with my fingers. Make sure to check between the gills as well. oysters can be kept for several days in the fridge in a paper bag. I haven't had any sort of luck preserving them so I enjoy them when they are available. 

 Oysters are an excellent addition to soups and sauces but they really shine in stir fries! They have a mild, sweet flavor but the firm, slightly slimy texture might be off putting to some. It is always very important to cook wild mushroom thoroughly and oysters are no exception to that rule. 

  There you have it! A crash course on one of the most abundant food sources in the Northwoods. We should be seeing large flushes of these guys throughout the summer but be sure to get there before the hungry bugs do! Or don't and use a nice oyster cluster for photography bait! The fox eats the bird who eats the spider who eats the bug that eats the oyster etc etc. Cue the Circle of Life music...

Capturing Gratitude

   It's a wonderfully wild and stormy moment right now on my homestead. I find forest rains to be the very best conduits for deep thoughts and musings, so that's what's happening here today.

  I really enjoy connecting with other earthy folks on social media. It's quite fun to see all the new lambs and chicks in spring, and the bountiful harvests in autumn. It makes finding answers and ideas so simple and so quick! It allows us easy access to support when things look rough. My very favorite part though is when someone plants a seed or finds a mushroom for the very first time. I feel genuine joy when someone is inspired to try by supportive individuals and communities that they may never have met otherwise. What a blessing of this time in history!

  I do occasionally find myself becoming jealous of my online friends though. Super lush gardens and weighty morel harvests flashing by your eyes as you scroll your social media feed on a good day is full of cheering others on and connecting through shared excitement. On a day where your onion patch is looking weird, your pheasant got his tail pulled out, and you can barely remember the taste of a wild oyster mushroom it's been so long those same images can suddenly become well...less than helpful.

     But bitterness is only attractive to me in medicinal mushrooms so I take a break from comparing myself to others and look around. Really look around. Not in a "let's add this and that and the other to the to do list" sort of way, but really taking the time to stop and take it all in. The whole picture: what was, what is, what could be. You see, no one's victory looks the same as anyone else's and the trickiest thing about your own triumphs can often be recognizing them.

   One of my favorite tools for getting past moments like these is photography. I love to capture images of the little beautiful things on my homestead: the way a dew drop sits on a flower petal, the cascades of flowers from my ever present foe (blackberries, I have blackberry issues), a brief moment between my mother pheasant and her chicks. By slowing down and taking notice of the beautiful and interesting details around me I always very quickly come to the conclusion that hey, I could be doing a heck of a lot worse!

   And here's another little secret I can let you in on: my garden is a complete and utter amateur hour mess but you'd never know it based on the pictures I take! For every succulent spinach photo there are tatsoi seedlings falling over limply just out of frame. Always remember: what you see in a beautiful photograph is only the briefest glimmering moment captured to move and inspire the viewer and it is never the whole picture. But it doesn't need to be because that one tiny glimpse added to another and another eventually makes for a pretty glorious bigger picture.

  So if you are feeling defeated today I invite you to start photographing your homestead. More than photographing though. Use the light and contrast and color to make each snapshot as brilliant and glamorous as you can. Use these details of success to build a bigger picture. A picture of beauty, awe, and gratitude.

(Seriously, I wasn't kidding about the pheasant tail! He's fine, it'll grow back)

An Ode to Sun Tea

   Of all of the foods and medicines that one can make my favorite of both is sun tea! Glorious, refreshing, ever changing, sun tea! And you can make as much or as little as you'd like thanks to the diversity of Mason jars on the planet. But you don't have to get fancy, that empty family sized pickle jar will work just fine! I like to think of this method as a beverage slow cooker.

So you have your clean GLASS jar with a lid. I like to use cheesecloth and the faux sinew I use for tie dying (new stuff...not...dyed stuff... you know what I mean) to make bundles of happiness to put in. Here are some of my favorite mixtures, but it should be noted I always throw a chunk of chaga in too:

Yaupon and mint
Apple, cinnamon stick, black tea
Green tea and pineapple weed
Raspberry, mint, yaupon
Sumac berry and lavender

I could go on, the possibilities are endless. All you need to do is take your tea base (tea bags, loose leaf tea, etc), add whatever fresh or dried herbs you'd like or maybe some fruit (make sure to drink anything you make with fresh fruit within a couple of days or it gets weird), some honey or flower syrup if you like things sweet (we usually skip this and add it to each individual drink if needed), and bundle that all in the cheesecloth. Fill up the jar with hot water. Then you set it in the sunniest spot you can find. Wait at least four hours but you can leave it longer if you'd like a stronger brew. Lift out your bundle and refrigerate your tea. Pour over ice or into glass bottles for travel convenience.

That's it!! Healthy, delicious sun tea for your summer needs!

Do you have a favorite sun tea recipe? Let us know in the comments :)

 Searching for tea ingredients

 Like this mint!

Ahhhhh! Refreshing! 

My Secret Recipe

  With summer humming along here in the Northland you will find my posts easing up in frequency a bit but don't fret! I'll do my very best to do at least a weekly one.

   I've realized recently that my life revolves around food: raising it, growing it, finding it, and cooking it! Often on social media I'm asked for recipes. I'm very sorry to disappoint but I can't really give you anything you can't find in the top five hits on a Google search. Mostly because I don't really do recipes. Or I halfway do them?

  Here's the secret to my toddler/child approved culinary success: science!! Once you understand the chemistry in your food you can fiddle with the details. For instance I have a go to super simple bread recipe yet I continue to wow people with my breads. The base recipe is a basic yeast, water, salt, oil, sweetener (sugar, juice in place of water, honey, etc etc) and flour situation. Once I have all that going on I can get creative with mix ins. Like chocolate chips and a few drops of vanilla, or craisins and sunflower seeds!

   Another favorite in this house is stuff stuffed inside pastry crust. With one simple dough recipe I can create pasties, bolis, small fruit pies, and even some sort of wierd samosa mutant thing I accidentally made once. Get comfy with a few basic ingredients and have fun with fillings.

   Stir fries and soups are also pretty high up on my list of favorite dishes. Why? Because we seem to be chronically broke at the moment and making those is an excellent way to use up those odds and ends hanging out in the fridge and pantry. Stir fries in particular are also fun to forage for since you are putting it over rice or couscous and therefor need less of any given ingredient than what you would use for a soup.

   Cooking has a few very basic principles that need to be recognized especially in regard to chemical reactions and flavor pairings. Once you have those down a whole wide world of fascinating tastes and smells opens up to you. So in the words of the immortal Ms. Frizzle, "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!!"

 Birthday peach rhubarb pie for my husband's birthday because I had rhubarb and he likes peaches. Yep, my reasoning in cooking is always that simple. 

Foraged and farmer's marketed stir fry! Mmmmhmmmm healthy goodness!

Ornamental Pheasants 101

   Yay!!! Artemis the mama red golden pheasant successfully brooded and hatched her clutch and let me tell you, the cuteness level of this homestead just went up about a hundred points! All eight babies are doing just fine, already running around the pen after their mother. Artemis doesn't care for it but the chicks don't mind being held at all and will actually look you in the eyes with a beautifully innocent curiosity. I thought this might be a good time to share my knowledge on these beautiful birds.

   Golden pheasants hail from the mountains of central China. Red goldens are a color mutation of the golden pheasant that also comes in peach, cinnamon, splash, and Amherst varieties. All varieties can interbreed and will produce surprise colorations.

    They are extremely cold hardy and need nothing more than some straw and a windbreak during our harsh northern Wisconsin winters. They eat very little and prefer a high protein diet. Ours are on game bird feed but are excellent bug foragers. They have also developed a deep abiding love for watermelon. Their water needs are exceeded by just a dog dish of water that needs to be refilled more from evaporation than from them actually drinking.

   The females are a lovely leafy brown pattern very much like the local partridge while the males have earned the title of "tie dyed chickens" from my family. They require lots of shade in the summer as high heat is not their favorite and too much exposure to direct sunlight will dull the colors of the males. Runs must be covered! These are not free range birds, they have no problem taking off into the wild blue yonder.

    . They are wary birds and don't make friends with humans easily. The brightly colored males are HIGHLY territorial and will not tolerate multiple males. We tried. Didn't go well. We had three males. Now we have Apollo. Males will fight to the death or exile of their opponents. They seem to be able to cohabitate with other non-pheasant species. Ours have lived with turkeys and ducks and currently enjoy a peaceful cooperative existence with coturnix quail. However, we recently acquired some ring neck pheasant chicks and that seemed to ignite some kind of ancestral blood feud! Apollo immediately tried to ninja kick the baby ring necks to death so I isolated him and now the four feisty little chicks are constantly challenging him through the fence.

    As we are looking to get more involved with ring necks and melanistic ring necks, we will be saying farewell to our red golden pheasants but Apollo and Artemis are not going far so we will be able to get chicks again if we desire.

Cuteness beyond measure! 

We were told repeatedly that there was no way red goldens would hatch out and care for chicks. I have a peck mark on my hand that proves this mama is no ordinary pheasant mother! She is 100% ready to fight for her babies! 

 The incubation period for red golden pheasant eggs is 21 days. All except one of our eggs hatched. 

 A caution if you are buying in chicks: they easily fit through chicken wire and peep rather softly so are difficult to find if they get out. 

 This was not a good idea. They had a huge run and multiple females but it was fight night every night at dusk. BAD IDEA.

The quails and pheasants mostly ignore each other except this guy. This is Penguin, one of my quail roos. He torments Apollo and despite the size difference (about 1/6th the size of a pheasant) Apollo always backs down from this tiny tyrant. All fear the mighty Penguin!

Ego-away

     I was remembering a moment somewhere around this time last year. I was overcome with the hippiest of urges to remove my shoes and ground myself in the earth as I foraged a rare blackberry free patch of forest. My thought stream was filled with wild woman imagery and inspiring quotes about being one with the trees. It was all very Lorax with a side of dryad. And then.....I stepped square and barefoot into a pile of fresh deer scat.

    Nature has a way of doing that. It inspires us. It fills us with awe and wonder! It makes us feel special and important to witness to the mysteries and secrets of the quiet places. Then it does a 180 and says "Settle down there, Euell Gibbons!" Nature reminds you who is really in charge despite all your best laid plans and intentions.

   Sometimes this ego check comes with the bitterly amusing squish of fecal matter, but other times it can be a harsher lesson. We lost all but three turkeys last year from several of these nature slaps. It's easy during those times to get angry at that damn fisher or your mom's overly excitable dog. But the harsh truth is that it's ultimately your fault. You didn't check the gate that last time despite your intuition tickling at you before bed. You didn't tighten that collar down just a notch even though you knew the dog wasn't used to farm creatures.

   Listen. Mistakes will be made. You're going to sunburn some seedlings. You're going to trust a little too much in apparently less than adequate predator defenses. Your incubator settings will not quite be up to muster. It is going to happen. The sooner you square yourself with that the more productive you will be able to be.
 
    This is not to say that you're not allowed to feel badly. or feel guilty. Actually I would encourage that reaction, but only for use as fuel. Understand first that you made a mistake, and secondly what that mistake was. Finally, understand that all mistakes have a correction. Sure, nothing will bring back the specific lives lost but the understanding of what occurred will protect you from the same mistakes in the future. A successful homesteader isn't one who doesn't make any mistakes. A successful homesteader is one who can step outside of the ego of their mistakes to learn from them.

    The cycles of nature march inexorably onward. The seasons wait for no man or woman. The best medicine a nature saturated lifestyle has for our species is the lesson of being. To learn to let go when things have not gone our way. To adapt our strategies and mindset to the current reality of what is and not to what we think it should be. Let go of that ego now and again. It won't run away, I promise! It will be right there where you left it, but letting it go will allow your soul and mind to breathe. Allow yourself to take that break. Just a little rest will have you feeling right as rain in no time.

This is not how I pictured my flock looking as we head into this summer, but my heart is grateful!

Cast of Characters

  As everything is still in the just now emerging stage as far as foraging and gardens go I thought I'd take a moment to introduce you to the current (but ever changing) flock!

Of course I've already introduced Arpee, Blucinda, and the three bronze babies. We have a good lead on some RARE heritage breed poults and will be ordering more soon!

I prefer turkeys to chickens as their health problems seem fewer and I really fell in love with their personalities. They are all very unique and individual with a really fascinating social structure.

These cuties are coturnix quail. They have been bred for centuries to be egg producing machines and some of my hens pop out multiple eggs per day. We kept four outside and four inside this winter and while we got eggs from our indoor ones our outdoor ones are larger and healthier. Coturnix quails are most often kept in very very close quarters but I have found mine prefer a bit more space and LOTS of hiding places. A few of them are very friendly and will visit with you when you are out there, but others prefer you just drop the food and leave. They are cute and make nice pets but their life expectancy is only around two years. I have not successfully incubated eggs yet despite them producing fertile eggs. I also have not yet had one try to go broody, but some of them seem to be trying to form clutches so I'm moderately hopeful? 

 Apollo and Artemis are my current breeding pair of red golden pheasants. I originally purchased these gorgeous creatures to use their molted feathers, but Artemis is currently brooding a clutch of eggs! This is something most ornamental pheasant keepers will tell you is not a possibility but I really believe it depends on the bird and conditions. These pheasants eat next to nothing and are super cold hardy. They will NOT free range though and need to be kept in covered runs. If you make sure they have lots of shade the males' colors will be brighter. These two are actually going to go live with a friend once Artemis raises her babies for a little while as we have upgraded out pheasantry!

These beaky babies are ring neck pheasants. We are also waiting on an order of melanistic pheasants which are a ring neck genetic mutation. The melanistics will make up for my loss of color variety in feathers (although the person taking my red goldens has promised me feathers so that's very nice!), but ring necks are also able to be utilized as meat birds. We plan to keep a breeding quartet though as these are also very very cold hardy, something which is vital to survival in our area. 

 An example of my feather art (find it at facebook.com/thehappyhippiehusky ). All of my birds are kept as safe and happy as I possibly can. We have grown quite a bit and learned so much since obtaining our first birds last year, but I look forward to a long and exciting journey with my birds. Our true goal for livestock on our homestead is quite a bit larger than fowl, but that is another post, and there will always be room for my feathery friends here!