The Food Chain

After admitting my mashed potato sandwich shame, I hope to redeem myself with this, my first completely home grown meal out of the vegetable patch -

It's only a small harvest, but I hope it will be the first of many.

Vegetables are forever miraculous to me. Plant a seed and pay it even a small amount of attention and hey presto - food! It's extra miraculous this year considering I did all the wrong things: planted late into not-very-well prepared soil, planted too close together, watered sporadically, and weeded only occasionally. I'm paying the price now. The cucurbits have powdery mildew, the lettuce bolted, pigeons got my early peas, tomatoes have split, and the potatoes have scab.

And yet there's still stuff to eat. The vegetable patch produces despite my haphazard and random interventions.

And, not only is there enough for our dinner, but there's enough to share with the animals. The dogs like the carrot and bean ends, the horses like the carrot tops and some of the beet leaves in their evening meal. The chickens share the beet leaves with the horses and enjoy any tomatoes that are too squishy for us. Peelings go out in the compost for a final once-over by the chickens, and the worms eat the rest.

Add to the harvest some home raised leftover chicken and it's a wholesome meal. More provencale than cordon bleu but respectable. And we won't starve. Nor will the animals. At least until the first frost.

Speaking of mouths that need feeding, we have a new chicken. Our friends Tim and Megan had adopted some ex-laying hens from a battery unit. Over time each died of old age and only Flossie was left. She was a lonely chicken. When they came for lunch last Sunday, they brought her along to join our flock.

Flossie had other ideas -

She flatly refused to go to bed with the other brown hens. I came in from my evening chores to find her "roosting" next to Mike's chair. As I've never known a chicken that would use a litter tray, Flossie had to be carried out to the hen house where she could sleep, and poop with reckless abandon. She's not quite accepted her new outdoor living arrangements, but she has got smarter at roosting where she wouldn't be noticed -

Behind the porch door. For the moment we're compromising. Flossie goes to bed behind the door and when it gets dark and all the other chickens are in the hen house, I carry her out and place her on a perch where she stays with the others until morning.

It's getting dark so I'd better move her now, on my way out to walk the dogs. Then I want to make dessert - zucchini bread with the zucchini from today's harvest. The dogs can have the crusts and there will be enough left over for the gamekeepers' coffee break tomorrow. Everyone's happy.