I am in my fourth year of poultry keeping. I started with four hens, lost three within the first two weeks. I replaced these with three more and had a sturdy flock that laid well and behaved decently. At year two I introduced two new birds to the flock, expanding it to six. One bird was accepted into the existing flock the other was abandoned and left to fend on her own. I could not find her, that ended two days later when a raccoon did.
Last summer at age three I made dramatic changes. I decided to cull the flock back to four by eating a few of the older less productive hens and introducing two new chicks to the flock. Many days later of waking at dawn to ensure the birds safety, they are now successfully integrated. Winter laying was very slow but now with spring here they are all laying very well.
With the addition of the laying ducks, we are laden with eggs. This year, Dipak and I decided to track the quantity and quality of food we get from the garden farm. We started recording the eggs production on March 30th. As of April 28th, we have been gifted a total of 72 chicken eggs and 25 duck eggs. That’s a lot of eggs. The price of one dozen Free-Range, Heritage Breed eggs is $7. For Free-Range, Heritage Breeds duck eggs its closer to $10. So in one month we’ve gotten $42 in chicken eggs and $20.83 in duck eggs, to be exact. Ringing in at a total of $62.80. That’s pretty good!
Now the question is what to do with all the eggs?! I’d love suggestions on other scrumptious ways to enjoy them.
Thus far, I have made a soufflé, lemon curd, lemon bars, a German pancake, and tea eggs. Next on the list is egg curry, chile rellenos, salade Nicoise, and the lovely dessert of macarons (photo is not mine. It is my inspiration).
I may one day work up the nerve to make Thousand Year Old duck eggs (And eat them. And live to see the next day).
I’ve also learned I can do just about anything with the duck eggs that I would with the chicken, except whip the white. I also learned that they are hard to peel when boiled.
I paint murals and of course I grow food. Mixing the two to create artful vertical gardens naturally captures my fancy. Checking out some other cool blogs out there led me to find L.A. Farm Girl and a post on the L.A. Food Bank Vertical Garden. I’m getting an idea for a mural in my front yard that I’ve left undone for two years.
Every now and again the question comes up as to why I want to live in the city instead of the country. It’s a good question. In the country I could keep as many animals as I like. I could have fields of crop instead of a few tiny rows. In truth, I do feel great in the countryside and the city can be congested and overwhelming…but my friends are here. In the city (at least this one) there is also an amazing convergence of thinking and creating that excites me. Still sometimes I romanticize about the “country life.” However, I’m convinced I can create the romantic naturalness of country living right here in Oakland. A place where community is strong, neighbors trust one another, and we live in connection with our fellow creatures.
After this morning, I feel even stronger about this. Out filling up a bucket for the duck tub, an Anna’s Hummingbird perched herself right on the nozzle of my sprayer. She teetered back and forth on her tiny feet catching her balance by placing her delicate wings on my hand. She flew off and returned. She then zoomed right up toward my eye, close enough that I well understood why the Aztec war god, Huitzilopochtli, is a hummingbird. It’s beak is very sword like. She sped up and landed directly on my head. I felt the slight but definite weight of her just sitting there. Thoroughly immersed in the moment, I remained perfectly still and loved every magical moment. True to the life of a hummingbird she was gone just as quickly as she had arrived.
Today, I am content to be living in Oakland, tending a backyard farm, and having hummingbirds land on me. Where else could I possibly need to be?
With spring time and a streak of hot weather our coop is overflowing with eggs. Now with the ducks in the mix we have even more. I had eggs on the mind when I was perusing other iterations of one of my favorite community publications- the Edible community (ours is Edible East Bay). I was checking out an Edible Portland when, lo and behold, I came across an article by a woman with a surplus of eggs. She decided on cheese soufflé and convinced me that even I could bake one (well, that and the Julie/Julia Project). So I dusted off my 20 year old soufflé dish, a gift from my mother when I had announced I wanted to be a chef. And I baked a soufflé.
I have been thinking about keeping ducks for a few years now. Believe it or not, I am fairly cautious in my urban livestock endeavors and I wanted to make sure I can take care of my existing animals and garden before piling on another responsibility. This spring however I had started carving out a niche for the ducks. I had a little house for them ready and was just thinking about where a gray water pond could realistically go when I got a phone call from dear friends. They have an offsite work project for a year maybe and need a temporary home for the ducks. Perfect.
So the ducks arrived the Saturday before Easter. Dipak, my friends and I built a run and water area and I attached it to the newly roofed little house. The next morning I got to retrieve my first duck eggs which made me feel like a little kid on Easter morning. I will admit I was a bit hesitant to try my first duck egg. I wasn’t sure what to expect and I know the yolk is richer. I kept having a memory of my mother frying a goose egg and attempting to eat it. I still feel waves of revulsion over the soup bowl of yolk.
We also seem to have a duck that lays a double yolk egg every few days. I have to look more into what the cause of this could be. Very interesting. But I spoke with others that ate duck eggs and they liked them just fine. So I fried up the double yolker and had it with some fresh collard greens.
It was great. I am going to do a separate post on duck eggs and what to do with them but for now most ways of cooking them are fine (I did learn from reading that their white don’t whip well). By the way, I have also been wanting to get a couple of Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats, so if anyone has some that need a home…
Yesterday could not have been a more beautiful evening for the Goldman Prize ceremony in San Francisco. Though the additional warmth of more than 3,000 environmentalists filling the Opera House to capacity did make a tropical heat. The Goldman Prize acknowledges grassroots environmentalism at its best. It was a deeply inspiring event. A memorable moment was the opening speech by Al Gore where he asked that as we acknowledge the work of these individuals, we think about what it is inside of each them that has motivated their work in the face of significant opposition.
His request made me look deeper into the story of each of these individuals. More than one spoke of their need to preserve their traditional medicine, food ways, and the environment from which these items are obtained. They spoke of the interconnection between humans and the environment. There is no separating our actions from the outcomes. Environmental outcomes that show up in our own bodies and the bodies of our children. Yet, what I truly recognized as a shared quality is a love and respect for life. That was it; pure, simple and deeply motivating.
I’m featuring a special guest blogger today, Madison! She planted the really nice garden on the sidewalk strip in front of our house. She is full of excitement about the plants growing. Here is her post:
I think that the garden will bloom and grow big! The garden is blooming out of the dirt now and I can’t wait for the garden to be a vegetable plant. I wonder how will the sweet peas look like when they are grown. I don’t know how they will look like when they are grown. So that’s what I wonder. The garden is now growing. I hope that it will be big and strong when it grows. I wonder how the beets will look too. How will it look how will it taste like I don’t know yet. I think the carrots are going to be are orange because orange is my favorite color. The Collards are going to be green but how will it look like? I don’t know yet because I have never seen a Collard before. So I wonder how it would look. How would the Sweet Peas feel like? The Collard greens are almost full grown they are bigger than Sweet Peas, Carrots, Beets too!
The Obamas are not only using organic gardening methods to the dismay of the chemical industry but they are using honey bees to pollinate the garden. I don’t know enough about honeybee species to make comment on the “USDA-developed” bees but their use of honeybees is commendable (beekeepers, I’d love your comments).
We fret here about the scarcity of honey bees. We’ve had hives disappear by the thousands around here. Last summer we had pollinators — bumble bees, wasps, hummingbirds, and some kind of bee new to me — but I’m particularly fond of honey bees because when the weather is fair I can work in the garden while they’re working, too, and they won’t bother me. They’re too busy going about their business. (Don’t try this when the weather is cloudy or rainy; that’s another story.)
This portion of a news release from USDA gives me new hope. I don’t know if these varieties are as focused and industrious as the honey bees I know and love, but I hope I’ll have a chance to find out.
White House Garden to Receive USDA-Developed Honey Bees
This July, USDA will be providing two types of parasite-resistant honey bees developed by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists to pollinate the plants in the new White House garden this summer. Both of these bees are rapidly gaining in popularity with bee keepers.
Honey bees enhance any garden, because they increase the yields of plants that require pollination, they produce honey, and they are one of Nature’s most fascinating creatures to observe. Unfortunately, parasitic mites cause serious health problems for most varieties of honey bees, and many beekeepers must use pesticides to combat the mites in the hives. But these USDA-developed bees are mite-resistant, offering a more natural, organic alternative for the White House garden.
Honey bees are crucial to American agriculture, adding some $15 billion in value in the nation’s crops, particularly specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. In California, the almond crop alone uses 1.3 million colonies of bees, approximately one half of all honey bees in the United States, and this need is projected to grow to 1.5 million colonies by 2010.
Scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), USDA’s principal intramural scientific research agency, developed the two types of mite-resistant honey bees. One type is highly resistant to the parasitic mite Varroa destructor, commonly known as the varroa mite. The bees have a trait called “varroa-sensitive hygiene” which prompts the worker bees to detect and remove infested bees from the nest, eliminating the need for chemical help to control the mites.
The second type of mite-resistant honey bees is based on a strain of honey bees from Russia which are naturally resistant not only to varroa mites, but also to tracheal mites, which infest the breathing tubes of the bees. These bees are also highly tolerant of cold weather and require less artificial feeding than typical honey bees.
The Russian bees were brought to the United States by Thomas Rinderer, research leader at ARS’ Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Research Unit at Baton Rouge, La., where studies have been under way on the bees since the mid-1990s. Rinderer and other ARS scientists will collaborate with White House staff on installation of the USDA bees in the White House garden.
For the past eight years, breeder queens of the Russian-derived and varroa-sensitive hygienic bees have been released to the beekeeping industry, and both types of bees are gaining rapidly in popularity. In 2008, a breeders’ group called the Russian Honeybee Breeders Association, Inc., was formed to supply the Russian-based queens throughout the U.S. beekeeping industry, and demand is outstripping supply.
Both types of mite-resistant USDA bees are good pollinators and easy to keep alive because of their hardiness, thus helping ensure the success of the new White House garden.
I received the above touching thank you card from my neighbors. The card came with a plate full of freshly made banana bread (delicious). Their 2.5 year old helped make both the card and bread. I just about broke into tears when I got this. These are the sweet neighbors whose roof I had just augmented to get the bees out. Not only did they remain very calm and receptive to my explanations of bee behavior and proposed plans, they are actually now thinking about starting their own hive. Dipak says we create our own luck. I don’t see it. I’m seeing luck as an extremely fortunate circumstance that just randomly occurs. Like having super cool neighbors. We did not interview anyone before hand. We just moved in.
The honeybees brought much to light for me. Many friends stepped in to give great advice, possible solutions and contact information for other helpful beekeepers. I plugged into a broad community of bee people that were willing to talk me through my inexperience. Afterwards, I received many calls to follow up. Even at the greatest moment of chaos when the bees where agitated and swirling around the roof and me, there were positive comments and support coming from people walking by. The bees gave me an opportunity to feel the character of my neighborhood. Honeybees and their social structure provide a beautiful metaphor for community. In this case they actually brought people together and revealed a way of relating that was peaceful and generous.
I know some people that go off the beaten track to develop the good story. One gentleman, Brian Chen, decided to complete his PhD in Epidemiology while living out of his car. A writer, Novella Carpenter, embarked on a journey to convert an asphalt lot into an urban farm, complete with sows and goats in the depths of West Oakland. My friend Stefani spun wool in a parking lot as a getaway.
When it does happen it can be hard to pinpoint exactly when it gets good. Sometimes it seems to get better and better until it is almost no longer believable, and yet remains true. It also appears there is an inverse relationship between the worsening of a situation and story getting better.
When my bees swarmed on Saturday, was the good story when thousands of them took refuge in my neighbors roof? No.
Was is when I quickly explained to my neighbor, who was peacefully in his backyard, that the bees are mine and he looked up to find that if he raised his arms up we would have rubbed the honey engorged bellies of these bees? He is not accustomed to bees and he ever so calmly said “I am alarmed.” I did my best to talk him through it- “the bees are at their least defensive state”; “they are full of honey and docile when they swarm.” “They just want to find their queen.” He said “there are hundreds and hundreds of them.” I did not bother to correct him to say “no, Byrne, there are actually thousands.”
Was it the moment my uncle began pulling apart my neighbors roof? Not really. Though it did seem to be pretty good when he pulled off a layer of roofing tiles to find another layer, which he pulled off and found then another layer…
Perhaps it was when, after even the extreme measure of destroying the roof and carrying shovels full of bees down to a waiting hive, only to have the queen retreat into an inaccessible area and my uncle, pressed for time, left. Before he dispatched he gave me with a hook razor, some roofing tiles and rapid instructions on how to re-roof the area for the rain. About 40 minutes after he left, all the bees we had shoveled out were right back in the roof. The story seemed good enough by then. Oh but wait- there is more.
After calling beekeeper friends to find a contact for a person with a bee vacuum. The only person I could locate wanted to charge $300. I had to give up and figure out my next step. It would be less money (always think of the farm equation) to buy my own shop vac and convert it. But I didn’t have time to convert it and a storm was approaching. It would be less money to buy the shop vac, vacuum the bees, deal with the aftermath and then convert the vacuum to a bee vac for later use. Yes, there it was- a solution.
6AM the day started. Shop vac in hand, ladder up and gear on by 8AM, vacuuming commenced. Now the thing of it is that my neighbors allowed their roofing to be torn off in order to preserve the colony. So vacuuming now with a 5 horse power shop vac was a bit contradictory to the initial process. In addition to this fact, I had not considered that the air vent was facing their front door and as a result was now splattered with an obvious massacre of bees. Even there, I had not reached my peak of goodness in the story. Nor when my gentle neighbor Byrne stepped out to check on the progress and said, again so calmly, “are those bee guts on my door?”
I decided then to seek out counsel on whether I had gotten the queen or not. If not, I would stop, and try measures to lure her out while calling again for a bee vac. Stefani joined me for the queen confirming and luring. She left me fortified with contacts, tea and good conversation.
More calling connected me with Tim King of “King Bee Removal.” Here is where the story began to reach its peak for me. Tim showed up with his “bee vacuum” which is a clever homemade contraption involving a few 5 gallon buckets, a shop vac hose, a vac motor and a hose accessory. Ok, sounded good. As long as it works I didn’t care if was made out of human remains.
We headed to the roof. We set up, He climbed the ladder. I held the vacuum and hit power, it ran for a moment and then the motor fell off the bucket. Watching it roll around on the ground was like watching your knight in shining armor fall off his horse by the weight of his own armor, very anticlimactic.
That was that. No more vacuuming. We would have to wait to determine if we had gotten the queen. Tim, who has far more experience with bees than me, felt 99% certain we had gotten her. After waiting 3 long hours to dusk for foraging bees to come back and settle in the bucket or the roof I capped the bucket, got my shop vac, suctioned the last remaining bees from the roof. Byrne cleared the abandoned wasp nest and Dipak nailed the roofing into place for the coming rain. After this 48 hour ordeal the colony was removed.
My confidence in beekeeping was faltering but then by chance I caught this episode on The World (thanks Suzie & Cat!) on Young Urban Beekeepers in Germany. While they capture the spirit of beekeeping, the education, excitement and reward, they don’t mention how the new wave of apiculturists handle the unpredictable settling of a swarm in eaves, walls, a roof…
Thus far, I have made a soufflé, lemon curd, lemon bars, a German pancake, and tea eggs. Next on the list is egg curry, chile rellenos, salade Nicoise, and the lovely dessert of macarons (photo is not mine. It is my inspiration).
