International edible gardening

But I do have hours to spare.

I spend a couple hours a day online, read a couple newspapers, and look in here - and read a lot, currently a history of the Middle ages. Now I am not working much I am outside most of the time and come and go in the house; my wife is off driving her 40 foot long truck. I used to discuss politics, history, ethics, and such on other forums but after years of that I now stick to blander topics and this is the only one I visit. Here are the blue crabs, a much smaller one than the brown crabs of UK, but consumed in very large numbers all along the East coast and Gulf of Mexico.

They are good swimmers, very fast and active, and a chore to pick the meat but one does get better at it - I will take about an hour to process these and clean up the mess - and will get about 1/2 a pound of meat. That will most likely go into soups.

 

Interesting vid, thank you. No wonder crab meat ( we have lots here in nearby Hastings) costs so much. Can't beat a good, fresh, sweet crab sarnie on brown bread though,
Jenny

 

But your crabs are so much more meaty - and ours do not have the 'brown meat'. We used to go down to Salcombe in Devon when I was young and you could get the large brown Atlantic crabs off the fishing boats very cheap. Amazing things, more like the Dungeness crab of the USA Pacific coast with meaty legs (our blue crab has no meat in the legs, just in the body joints that power the legs, and in the claws.) I also spent some time on Rousay Orkney where they had a crab processing facility and crabs there were excellent.

I have caught crabs in the Mediterranean, both sides of the Atlantic, the Pacific from California to Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico obviously, and for sheer oddness, as a child, in Afghanistan (fresh water crabs). also scallops, rock scallops, oysters (rock and bottom), quite a few kinds of clams from the giant Geoduck to tiny coquinas, mussels, abalone, shrimp (a varity) squid, periwinkles, conch, welks, - must go, but I am sure more too............

 

I popped in to steam the crabs and make my wife lunch, she stopped by and is off driving again.



steam 10 minutes, photo taken 10 minutes ago - and I up my estimate to 3/4 a pound of meat.

I have the sweet potato slips in water now growing roots. One sprouts a sweet potato un ended in water, cuts off the 6 inch long sprouts (cut longer ones in half, and shorter ones are ok too.), let them grow in water, and plant. The vines grow, are pretty pest free, can be fed to chickens if they need cutting back, and sweet potatoes are under them in fall.

This shot is on the window sill right above where the crab picture was, just befor it. The slips grow fine just on the window sill. One of those potatoes was one I grew last year, the other one I bought.



And here is the weird, giant, tomato flower - like a dandylion flower, on a purple tomato plant - and it is a terrible shot because I was not thinking of the macro and autofocus - but here it is anyway. It is actually an attractive flower and Lomac recons it could produce a giant tomato. I will be fallowing it closely. Look at the normal flowers to the lower left of it!

 

Well OK then. Here is a picture of beets cooking behind me right now - because they are still ready to post from just being posted on another thread



I think I am going to begin pickling eggs - eggs just keep coming. I walked around the farmers market today with 5 dozen eggs - as they were closing and sold 2. I thought the market was closed for a festival but that is next week - so figured that out at 11 when it shuts at 12.

I have lots of eggs to play around with. My wife took a spread that comes down from one of my Grandmothers - (she is off to listen to Zydeco music in the park with a church friend, but I stayed home, may pop down in a bit) - mash hardboiled eggs, add a touch of mayonnaise, some cream cheese - a liberal amount, and a roughly chopped bit of mild green olives. We had no cream cheese so my wife used a creamy goat cheese - it is very good. They took good multi grain crackers.

lots of music here, this is where Jazz, Blues, Elvis, Cajun. Zydeco, came from. Must play it loud - still sung in French, which is still spoken by some Cajuns and Creole and they all know a lot, not long ago it was the native language.

 

Feeding the fish pogy bread in the pond - they love it, all creatures do - I bet horses would too. pogies are pure food - they are the fuel of the north Gulf of Mexico.





See the brim on its side in the center? Look here at the same photo run through auto adjust






It took away the center fish, reduced the picture, and gave it more colour and contrast and fakey shadows

odd, and see the brim between the goldfish and the floating pine needles in pic 2? It found that where it does not show up in pic 1. But is is prettier in #2, the world is changing. Several fish disappeared to make the tree reflections stronger, and one added.


Edited to include jack glaring at a rogue pumpkin

 

Don't you get fed up with eating eggs Colne? Perhaps you would do better breeding more chickens so you can slaughter them and sell them prepared for cooking.

 

Odd that - I don't feel comfy with edited piccies Colne.
I occasionally use "straighten" if the sea is sloping downhill...
Jenny

 

Yes, I get sick of eggs - but I like chickens, and we sell enough eggs to pay for them. it is a hassle selling the eggs, one has to always ask people in yoga and such, or take them to the farmers market. My plan is to get people to call and then come by here. If they see my place, the birds, they would probably get really interested in natural eggs. They could stand on the dock and see the pogies, look at my gardens, see the birds sunbathing or grazing and understand why my eggs are special. The majority of their food comes from the wild, and this is a pure and natural land - not polluted at all.

And I am starting meat birds - they are a lot bigger than this shot from a couple weeks ago



And today I start a new batch in the incubator.

now selling meat in the Farmers market means having to get it butchered at a licensed abattoir, which is not too expensive but a 35 mile drive each way - and all would mean way too expensive. If I could just kill and butcher I maybe would do it for a hobby.

But raising proper meat birds is not natural! They have to be confined so they eat super high protein feeds to get weight very quick - or they are tough and skinny, also no free ranging for them because too much exercise means tough. Keeping them in 'chicken tractors' and calling them free range is how the micro producers would do it - no chicks running around the farm loose anymore. We are spoiled by the industrial meat being falling off the bone tender. The chicken you buy is 6 - 7 weeks old!!!!!!!!!!!! 90% of all eating birds are 1 kind. They are a Cornish cross that cannot survive to anything like sexual maturity and are produced by crossing two kinds to produce this freakish hybrid.. At 10 weeks it would lay down and die because it could not walk carrying its huge breast. A regular chicken would take 16 weeks to get eating size, and not be nearly as meaty and tender.

My chickens eat all kinds of stuff - mostly low protein grazing plants, so will be skinny and tough and little - but natural, the real thing. I hope to video the butchering process incase someone needs to see how to do in the rooster they end up with by letting a hen sit some eggs.

 

Thank you for putting "chicken rearing for the table" into realistic perspective Colne. I admit to liking my chook meat succulent and tender and, as you say, "falling off the bone" and I accept this is the way it is to produce the meat that I want.
However, like so many aspects of rearing meat or game, it don't sit comfy with me all that much. I don't need a lot of meat, but I still like it enough to overcome my niggley conscience,
Jenny

 

Here I am last year, walking back to my house with a big rooster, I do almost all my butchering, fish cleaning, and veg processing on the tailgate of my truck under my house in the shade - an orphington, and they are a very big breed. I let them get large and they were too tough, a lesson in free range. But I dutifully ate them - usually pressure cooked for a long time. Even a small rooster is tough, stringy, and strong tasting if let get to anything near full sized, you have to kill them as soon as they are barely big enough for eating - and then are still not like a meat hen butchered young.

I want to produce my own meat though, and it will not be as good as the astoundingly cheap chicken you can buy. You cannot buy the feed for what it costs to buy chicken on store specials.



Dogs are around the chickens and get along with them - But how they love a killing and butchering! They just love it from the moment you grab the bird till the cut pieces go into the refrigerator - they would do it every day if they could.

 

Jenny, I know what you mean about electronically perfected pictures being unaesthetic - but they are prettier. I guess for this 'snap shot' use the altered are better.

 

Ethical alarms go off all over reading your words above. Vegetarian/non vegetarian........we accept the vegetarian do really not eat red meat, - but a bit of poultry possible, some fish? Dairy and eggs are not benevolent in our industrial agriculture. Life is guaranteed death.

Ethically there is a case for saying if you eat ANY bought meat you are compromised as being a supporter of the industrial meat industry; with all the weight that brings. Of course that is probably nonsense; PETA level nonsense. The Dali Lama eats meat, and that is not a light decision at all.

I support your position as being the most ethical in a world of bad choices: limiting consumption and then thinking momentarily of the animal with brief compassion, and then enjoying the meal. Absolutes are not viable in the real world in too many situations. The Muslim may eat pork, the Jew too, the Buddhist meat; if survival is dependent on it. This is allowed in their religion and shows that at even the highest levels there is some leeway.

Nature has a bad death marked for every wild thing. Industrial meat is cruel, but not too much, acceptably bad, not intolerably bad.

 

I was out yesterday running to the library and took my rod to try and catch a small bass for the pond but instead went by the school that has the small, bass free, pond where I caught my warmouth brim last year - so caught another 5 and released them in my pond. Smallish although I would eat this size if fishing for a meal. They are excellent to eat, head and scales off, sauté in butter slowly till both sides are nicely brown - one of my very favorite fish, and the only one I do not fillet.

They had red breasts that the picture fails to show but have schooled up with mine right away. Mine have no red, and bars running vertically on their sides, you can tell them apart - also mine are fatter and a bit bigger. I am catching some more because I decided this will be my stab at aquaculture - feeding up 20 or so brim every year. 3 would be right for my wife and I, 6 meals a year, be nice - feed them to be bigger, twice as big. This one might be 1/3 of a pound and they will get close to a pound if fed and not crowded - so need the bass to eat their offspring as their are lots of 1 inch ones, and more to come.



And I have started another batch of eggs in the incubator (because I discovered the bad hens were laying in the mother hen's nest box where she sits on her chicks at night - so the eggs, about 12, had been sat on and were dubious for selling.

Gladiolus blooming, fantastic flower.

 

what do you feed them with Colne?
Jenny