Persimmons

Being a couple with roots outside Indiana, neither of us understand the persimmon craze here. Everyone has a persimmon tree, and those who don't buy persimmon pulp from their neighbors. We are lucky enough to have two large persimmon trees in the backyard, so we inquired from friends as to how to tell when they are ripe. Everyone said they would ripen and drop right after the first frost, and to pick them up off the ground.

We've had several big frosts, and the most I get off the ground at a time are 5 or 6.

Yesterday I went out with an 8 foot tall stick and banged on the branches. Remember, we live on a busy road, so there are many people who saw me waving an 8 foot tall stick in a tree. This knocked about 10 off the branches. Here's all I was able to collect:


Here are the chickens eating them: (What the crap was I supposed to do with 10 persimmons?)


And a video...


But the story isn't over! Roger went out and shook the trees for me and we gathered about half a gallon! I decided to try my hand at cooking a staple Indiana persimmon dish... persimmon cookies. (Not pudding, sorry, I've had it and it's not very good.)

Without a cheese cloth or netting, we made pulp by squishing the fruit in a colander with a potato masher. True to the rumors (UNLIKE the rumors that persimmons will just drop off the tree) all that fruit made about 2 cups of pulp. We saved out the stuff in the colander for the chickens.





And here's the cookie batter:



And the recipe:
1 cup sugar
1 stick butter
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups persimmon pulp
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves

Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.

The batter was pretty gross, but happily, the cookies were tasty!

Hawks

It's not a raccoon. We've been setting the traps for about a week now, and besides the chickens and possums, we haven't had any luck. And two days ago I went to check on the chickens and I went into the lean-to (at about 5pm) and there was dead chicken with a HAWK standing over it, ripping it apart. I yelled, and it flew into the back corner of the barn and all I could think was a string of expletives mixed with the desire for a gun. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could but let it fly out of the barn.

Turns out, it is a federal offense to kill any bird of prey. Not that that knowledge would have stopped me if I had had a shotgun with me. I mean, it's killing my livestock!

The good news is, we've probably seen the last of the hawk for awhile... all the teenage birds are dead now, and the big birds are about twice the size of this hawk. The hawk was on the smaller side... perhaps a teenage hawk.

I'd like to get a rooster... a really mean, big, ugly rooster. But as it is, I think the big birds can hold their own... neighbor Bill says he saw a big bird chase off a hawk last week.

Chicken update and persimmons

First, some pictures of the chickens, because we haven't posted pics of them in awhile. They're getting large and heavy.





Also, we have two persimmon trees on the property. Neither of us being from Indiana, Rog and I have been baffled by the persimmon craze here. From what people have been telling us, we're supposed to pick them off the ground when they fall... they fall off the tree when ripe. Well, there's a very fine line between on the ground and ripe and on the ground and rotten. They keep telling us the fruits all fall off after the first frost... well, we've had two good frosts now, and the trees have lost all their leaves, but the persimmons are clinging onto the trees. Whenever I go out there to see if there are enough to bother picking up I usually only get five or six. Then I throw them in to the chickens. The chickens love persimmons, ripe, rotten, stepped on, whatever.

Here's a picture of the bare trees, dotted with fruits that just will not come down.

Raccoons and possums

You know you're living on a homestead when you go home for lunch and have to change before returning to work because a possum bled on you.

A raccoon has killed three of our chickens. Ripped the heads right off and then left the bodies relatively uneaten. Raccoons, we have learned, kill for sport.

I bought a larger trap, this one with two doors. Pictures to come. I set the old trap on one side of the barn and the new one with the chickens and baited them with stale bread and catfood.

The first day we caught a chicken. I went down in the morning and noticed it was sprung and got excited... especially when I saw what we caught was huge and striped.

But it was just a black and white chicken, standing rather dumbly waiting to be freed. It of course had seized the opportunity to eat all the bait while it was waiting for me to find it.

The second day I caught a possum. Neighbor Bill shot the possum for me, and while disposing it of I got blood on my pants... big clots of blood. It was pretty disgusting.

The good news is that the chickens are laying like crazy! We had 5 eggs yesterday!

Walnuts and camping

We have a huge black walnut tree on the back property. We've been trying to figure out how to save the walnuts. From what we could tell from the internet, you pick them up once they fall off the tree, peel off the green hull and meaty stuff, then dry the nut for a few weeks before cracking the nut and removing the 'nut meat' or something. Here are the nuts after being rinsed and laying out to dry in the basement.


And here are Roger's fingers after peeling a hundred or so walnuts, even though he was wearing two pairs of gloves. Our fingers still have black streaks on them.


We went camping over the weekend. It was a bit chilly. We stuffed the trunk and backseat full of stuff, and there was about one square foot left in the backseat to stuff Dia. It was a 30 minute drive to the campsite, and Dia was pretty resigned.



Here she is with her backpack on and her crate covered with a blanket. She had to sleep in the crate the first night, although Roger compromised and let her sleep in the tent the second night... the low was 35 degrees. She slept really good in the tent... she curled up next to us and became deadweight for the next 8 hours.

Lover scorned

Dia has fallen out of infatuation with Mini Mac. He comes out and they run around for about one minute and then she's over it and walks away. This has been happening for about a week now. It's like they broke up and she's doing the 'oh, hi, how are you, good to see you' while giving the passive aggressive 'I'm totally over you' body language.

Last night we went to the IU homecoming game. We won! First football game we've been to where we won. We also meandered into the student tailgating field.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Well, we've been thinking about it for quite some time, and finally did it. We made laundry detergent.

Here's what you do:
Grate a bar of Fels Naptha and dissolve it in water.




We used a kitty litter container.


Add washing soda and borax. Shake well.

Store with laundry stuff.


Here's the recipe:
1 gallon of water
1/6 bar of Fels Naptha grated
1/4 cup washing soda
1/4 cup borax

We made about 3 gallons. It probably cost $2 to make.

Eggs and pumpkins

The eggs have been coming slowly but surely. We've been having usually one a day. We're not sure how many are laying. We do believe that some of them are being stolen, because we put an egg in a nest and watched it, and after three days it disappeared. No yolk, no shell pieces, just completely gone. We're suspecting a snake. The internet suggests putting golf balls in the nests for the snake to swallow and eventually die. However, the internet also warns that killing the snake will allow the rats and mine population to grow.


The eggs are pretty fantastic. The shells are really tough and the yolk is really thick. It's like pudding.

We carved pumpkins last night. We used a tracing kit for the first time. Roger's came out looking just like the pattern. Mine was... a bit improvised.

The end of Agility Class

Dia's agility class ended yesterday with her class competition. This was the first time I had been to her agility class because it coincides with a pilates class I'm taking at the YMCA. I skilled my class to go watch Rog and Dia. Their best time was 31 seconds. Time on the course ranged from 25 seconds to 45 seconds. I took some video. First, the worst, yet cutest dog:


Next, a very cute and distinguished little guy:


And lastly, Dia monster, who had two very good runs and one run where she did pretty poorly because she wanted to stop competing and run over and sit with her mom.


And just to show you what a real agility competition looks like, this was a video taken from nationals:

Luffas, crushed pepper, seeds

We went to the Walk for the Animals this afternoon and Dia did really well. People and children came up and petted her and she sniffed lots of dogs and she was very well behaved throughout.

*Sidebar: Roger just came in from mowing to report that he saw a chicken catch a mouse and now the flock is out fighting over it. Good chickens!


We're in the process of drying lots and lots of red chili peppers to make crushed pepper. We have about 3 pints of crushed pepper right now. These plants don't stop!



We now have three dried Luffas. We have probably 10 more on the plant still growing. We are also saving the seeds from the Luffas.



We're saving seeds from just about everything. We're packaging them in packs of 20-40 seeds. We'll be selling them hopefully at the Winter Market this winter. We'll also be selling the crushed pepper, the luffas, and dried basil and catnip.



And lastly, we caught an Opossum in the live trap yesterday. Woodchucks aren't terrible because while they dig huge tunnels and endanger the barn's foundation, they don't eat chickens. Opossums eat chickens. We also have noted mice, moles (which Jeza actually caught one and brought it up to the house), rats, and the neighbor says he has spotted a raccoon by the barn. Raccoons are particularly bad news.

We've talked about getting a barn cat. Of course, the first problem with that is that the cat has to somehow know that rats and possums are good to eat and chickens are not. Also, we wouldn't want to get a barn cat unless it was a feral cat. We'd feel guilty leaving a domestic cat outside at night. So where does one get a wild cat? It's something we'll have to look into further. Of course we'll wait until spring.