Spinach and Spot it!

It's just been a little over a week since I last posted, but feels like much longer ago!  Christmas has come and gone and lots of new memories have been stored up among these walls.  But that is for another post.  This is just a quick one to note two recent highlights!  It is appropriate that while I type Alida and I are engaged in a game of "Spot It."  We now have five different variations of the game - what good stocking stuffers they made!  Now often one of the first things out of Alida's mouth in the morning is, "Would you like to play a round of Spot It?"  Very hard to resist!  The other morning just for fun I asked her if she wanted to play a round of Spot It.  She looked at me and said, "Are you the Spot It asker?"  I guess that is her job. :)

So we fit in rounds of Spot It here and there throughout our day and she is getting quite good at it. Soon I won't be able to do dishes and play with her, or do a blog post for that matter!  She was happy to have lots of additional family members around this past weekend and was usually able to find someone who was up for a round!

The other big non-Christmas event of our week was getting a huge load of spinach to freeze on shares from friends who are organic farmers and have an abundance of greens still remaining after the end of the season.  Jason spent a few hours picking a huge bin of spinach (probably holding 2-3 bushels) and then was my hero washing and sorting spinach for at least 8 hours.  We wrapped up the freezing operation around 11 p.m. and had happily tucked away over 35 containers of spinach and had a lot for
fresh eating remaining. 

It is interesting for me to note how much harder it is for me to gear up for a large food processing project in the winter.  I'm just out of the groove!  I really look forward to the time when we have a small greenhouse or another method for growing fresh greens in the winter. However, I'm not sure I want to be producing large amounts of things such that we need to put up a lot of stuff during this time of year. I'm pretty sure I'd still be washing spinach if Jason had not been available to help.  It was A LOT of spinach.  The ducks were happy to get the large amount we determined not up to snuff for human consumption. I do like having animals who are eager to eat the leftovers! 

As much as I'm not into large food processing projects in December, I'm also enjoying immensely the bounty of food in our root cellar and freezer and thrilled that we could make a large Christmas dinner for 24 without going to the grocery store.  Because I think it will be fun to remember down the road and because I neglected to photograph the colorful meal, I'll note here what Jason and I made for the Benner Christmas feast this past weekend.  And hopefully I'll get around to a Christmas post later on, but if I don't shift my focus to Spot It, Alida is going to "cream" me again (her word after she beat me this last round)!

• Roasted Chickens - from our flock of course
• Mashed Potatoes - from our garden
• Gravy - made with our chicken broth
• Garlic Roasted Sweet Potatoes - garlic and sweet potatoes from our garden
• Cranberry Relish - WV cranberries harvested by my parents!
• Green Rolls - with amaranth and lambs quarter from our property
• French Bread Rolls - made with homemade ricotta whey
• Butter - homemade from our local milk share
• Jam - strawberries and autumn olive berries from our property and cinnamon jelly from a neighbor
• Applesauce - from the huge load we made from apples gleaned from a local abandoned orchard
• Turnip Souffle - with freshly dug turnips and eggs from our chickens
• Spinach Ricotta Quiches - spinach from the aforementioned bounty, homemade ricotta and eggs from our chickens
• Salad Greens with toppings/dressing - greens from the same organic farming friends, hardboiled eggs from our chickens, shredded carrots from another local farmer friend and my favorite salad dressing made with some of our onions (which are starting to sprout so need to be used!)

Very satisfying meal!

First day of winter!

The thermometer read over 70 degrees early this afternoon - feels more like the first day of spring or summer. We just returned from a trash walk to fulfill our Adopt-A-Highway commitment and to help beautify our road and were sweating in December (in t-shirts!).  There is clearly someone who has a habit of picking up coffee at Waffle House and flinging their cup out the window and another (or the same) person who drinks very large bottles of beer and deposits the bottles all along our road.  The heaviest find was a large bag of waterlogged trash that someone had decided to throw into the stream at the end of our driveway.  We did not attempt to pull the deer carcass out which was there as well (our suspicion is that some of the hunters on Massanutten Mountain are sport hunters and for some reason that particular stream has become a dumping ground for the parts of the deer they don't want (sometimes the choicest cuts of meat are taken but in some cases the only thing retrieved are the antlers).  Not only is this polluting but it seems so wasteful and disrespectful.  So I can't say that my positive feelings towards humanity are bolstered by our trash walks, but it does feel good to make a contribution to cleaning up the place where we live.  And we got to greet some neighbors along with way and came home with one Christmas gift of cinnamon jelly and roasted pecans.

Now I'm sitting in our bedroom while Alida finishes up her nap with the window open and the sound of the wind in the pine trees.  The background noise for awhile around here will be construction noise, as this week's project on the home front is for Jason to finally finish up the trim on the window's we replaced last year.  It's fun to have these days at home to look forward to - while we have some goals for the time it feels we can move at a more relaxed pace enjoying meals together and evenings of games and being together as a family.  We'll be spending Christmas week together at home for the first time since Nora was with us and will welcome the Benner clan here to celebrate with us the weekend after Christmas.

The girls and I made our menus for the week yesterday with them each picking things they would like to eat. With the exception of Kali's first request, we have everything we need to make their favorite dishes (I love not needing to go grocery shopping!).  Her first request was toasted cheese sandwiches, which she was easily diverted from when she learned we didn't have cheddar cheese - and it worked out perfectly that our friends had made toasted cheese last night for supper club so she got her wish afterall!

Tonight's meal will be my favorite - haystacks!  The impetus for making a huge pot of chili was that we had noticed the very start of a little soft spot on the end of our rather long trombone squash.  Thanks to Anna we got started growing these and had allowed one to remain on the vine as long as possible for seed. It just kept growing and growing and growing!  And it has held up remarkably well. It was so fun to peel and chop up and the chili is about half squash!

 

 

 

 

It's hard to believe that it was just last weekend that we hiked to the lake with snow still on the ground!  And we even got to enjoy watching a great blue heron enjoy the lake - an uncommon occurrence as we hardly ever see any birds on the lake. The other treat was eating persimmons off the tree by the lake (and picking a bunch to bring back home).  Alida sacked out on the way there and then woke up as we got home.  She asked if we were going to the lake!  I feel kind of bad when we talk about what we are going to do before she falls asleep and then she misses it, but she didn't seem too bothered, especially when I talked about taking a picnic there once the weather warms.

Now it is time to do our monthly deworming of the goats so I better wrap this up. They will be thrilled since it means human contact and attention - and some oats and molasses.  We got goats to experiment with raising goats to see how they fit us and our homestead and I'd say the experiment has been a success on my end of things - I don't want to raise goats!  I think if I had nothing else to do, no other living things that depended on me for their physical and emotional well-being and I wanted to have goats by my side 24/7 they would be perfect!  As it is, I have lots of other things I'd like to fill my days with, I have three people who I love dearly who I want to invest my time and energy into and I would rather not have the goats tagging along everywhere (though they were kind of cute hanging out with us this morning while we hung laundry).  The reality is that these particular little guys seem very emotionally needy - they want to be with us!  Recently when we've taken them for walks we try to go where they want to go - which means running as fast as we can to keep up with them. Where do they take us?  Not to a honeysuckle patch or some luscious grass in the yard - to our porch and they just stare inside. The other day they took Jason to our side porch, then to the door on the deck and then around the back of the house to the garage door.  Silly kids!  Yesterday I tethered Oreo on something that wasn't strong enough and he got loose - no problem, because he just showed up on the side porch!  In my good moments, I can enjoy having them around and watching Kali and Alida enjoy them.  But I often feel a little overwhelmed by the thought of providing them a good home for the duration of their lives. I think they would be happier either with a lot more goats around or if they had people close by them all the time.  As it is, every time we walk out the door they pipe up and that gets pretty old for me.  They took a little trip to Waynesboro this past week when friends borrowed them to be part of a Nativity scene. :)  Their stay away was extended due to bad weather and I realized how much more relaxed I felt walking outside and not hearing their bleating.  I find it interesting how the noises from our chickens and ducks don't bother me in the least but the goats cry definitely gets me at a different spot.  But for now it will be me that will have to adjust as there would be louder cries from a different kind of kid if we got rid of them at this point!  And that other kid is chomping at the bit to get back outside so I better get on with the day and off this computer (as the littlest munchkin is also awake and clambering for attention)!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

It was a bit of a stretch finding a tree this year on our property, but we at least found a part of a tree!  Jason, Kali and Alida scouted it out yesterday and we were able to get it cut and inside before the most recent snow.  Last evening we decorated it and I'm not sure Alida stopped chattering once.  This was a very exciting activity.  The ornaments are going to play musical branches I believe this year due to her intense fascination with the tree and all the fun things hanging from it (that seem to wish to be moved around from time to time)! 



But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself!  It seems that three weeks between blog posts means much has transpired.  In this case it included a fun trip to Pa. for Thanksgiving with the Benners, a rescheduled fall party which included eating donuts off strings and bobbing for apples, and a wonderful visit from cousins.  Here you can see Jason beating me in our apple bobbing competition.  Not only did he succeed in getting his apple before me, he was substantially dryer!

The girls had so much fun having cousins around this past weekend.  We were grateful the bad weather held off long enough that most of Saturday was spent outside playing in leaves, at the swingset, on the tire swing, etc...  The goats thoroughly enjoyed the visit too as they got taken on multiple walks.

The other thing that happened with November coming to a close was that Kali successfully completed her story that she set out to write for National Novel Writing Month. She participated in the youth Nanowrimo program, after being encouraged and inspired by her uncle Jonas.  It felt like a complete transformation to see her go from hardly ever writing more than a word or two to soaring above her 3000 word goal with her story, "The Land of the Rainbow."  We are eager for the sequel to come out.  Here she is submitting her story - she was not about to forget the deadline and spent hours working on editing it while we were in PA for Thanksgiving.  Yes, we are proud of her and were quite impressed with her stick-to-it-ness on this one!

She has pretty much been taking a break from writing in December, and it's a good thing she is done her story because snow has arrived!  She was out in it for over 3 hours straight today, about 2 of those alone.   By the time Alida woke from her afternoon nap and we got outside her snowman was already constructed and she had taken many runs down the hill on her sled, making a great path for us to follow.  The brush piles at the bottom of the hill were perfect for catching us and most of the time Kali would fly down the hill, sail up into the air and land right on the brush pile.  Of course that never happened when I was at the bottom ready to document it, but here she is on one of her runs.



Here's  a few more pictures of the girls enjoying the outdoors, both pre and post-snow. 

I think my time at the computer is about up. Jason is finishing up rehabbing our back door, the girls were coloring but Alida is ready for my full attention (and I think some more food in her belly), and it is about time to get a fire going in the wood stove.  I imagine we'll be taste testing some more popcorn tonight (we are needing to eat a lot of popcorn to decide what to favor for seed for next year) and it is just the right weather for a hot drink and a game!

We are having a lot of fun eating delicious home grown popcorn and new this year grinding our own cornmeal!  Here the girls and I are making tortillas with homegrown and ground red cornmeal.  Tomorrow I'm going to try cornbread made with 100% cornmeal from our harvest this year.  Fun!  I've also put it in rolls and used it making pizza so far.  If we get into it in a much bigger way our little hand grinder won't cut it.  But it works for now!

Until next time...

A very leafy "staycation"

So we've been to West Virginia with wonderful friends and back since the last post (which included enough fun to be an entry all on its own), but that's not going to be the focus of my musings today.  I'm copying off of a wonderful, rejuvenating, fun week off work where I didn't go anywhere.  Well, that's not quite true - we went out one evening for a monthly supper club with friends and another evening for a small group monthly dinner we are part of.  So in 8 days I got in the car 2 times, both times with my family and for something purely pleasurable!  Just the way I like it!

Several months back a friend of ours asked Jason about doing a side job for him.  It was the kind of carpentry work Jason enjoys and is really good at and so he decided to go for it.  We knew there was no way it could be done in a timely fashion if it was to just fit in the cracks, so I looked for the first week in my work schedule that didn't already have meetings in it and blocked it out as a vacation week - or in this case a staycation since Jason was the one going off to work and I was staying put.  Since we weren't preparing to go for a trip, the week kind of snuck up on me.  In reflecting back on the week, I think this actually had a profound impact on my enjoyment of the week off.  I had little time to build up expectations and went into the week open to whatever it might hold - which ended up being a lot of leaf and pine needle raking!

Tuesday evening on our way to and from small group I was reflecting some on the week.  I put it right up there as one of the best vacations I've had in a long time. Here's a list of the things that made it so wonderful: being at home, not waking to an alarm, staying in "comfy clothes" all day every day, playing games with the girls, puttering in the kitchen, making and eating yummy foods together as a family, reading stories, going for walks and jogs with Alida and a bike ride/jog with Kali, having friends over, being outside a lot, getting lots of exercise raking and making a noticeable difference around our property, being more involved in the daily rhythms with the ducks, chickens and goats, getting a few naps and reading a book for pleasure.  It really was lovely!  It was hard to see it come to an end and the catching up phase at work is far from complete...

The week also held more big transitions here at Tangly Woods.  After enjoying Emily and Jonas' presence on our homestead for a number of months, they moved to their home in Ktown over the weekend.  We all knew it was an inevitable change and something to be celebrated (a milestone in their home renovation project), but it was hard to be 100% happy about it.  There is no way to replicate the experience of bumping into each other often because you live under the same roof.  I know all of us will remember those months together fondly.  I was amazed at how the girls took the transition in stride and were right in there helping to load the truck - they seemed to do better with it than me.  Maybe they are used to the comings and goings around here by now.  We are all glad that they are just a super quick drive or a pleasant walk down the road!

Jason did finish up his carpentry job in time to have Tuesday free for a duck and chicken butchering day.  He didn't manage to do that, however, without pulling an almost-all-nighter one night.  I woke with a start at 4:30 a.m. to see the porch lights still on and, upon searching around the house, didn't find him sleeping anywhere.  When I called he was on his way home so I got his supper warming which he ate around 5 a.m. before crashing.  It reminded me of the push before we moved into this place where Jason worked 36 hours straight on rewiring the rooms that we were planning to move into first.  Not the kind of thing you want to do often and I was very glad to have him home safely.  The next evening we sent him off to bed around 7:45 p.m. and the girls and I hung out for the evening.  Alida is on the cusp of really being able to play games with us, but still needs lots of coaching most of the time.  And if she is at all tired and starting to get rammy she is more likely to mess the game up by throwing cards or removing pegs...  The game we are having fun with right now is Mastermind, which Kali is now ready to play the hard way (according to the scoring rules).  So we fit games in here and there between tasks.

I wouldn't have gotten nearly as much raking time in if the girls weren't enjoying being together so much.  They played at the swing set, took the goats for walks, played games inside, came along and jumped in my leaf piles, etc...  And then, of course, there were times that Alida wanted her mommy and so I could be found with a sheet full of leaves on my back and hauling Alida on my front - no wonder by the end of the week I thought I saw the faint definition of arm muscles. :)

I was glad to get to ease back into work. I had two full days of work this week and now am home enjoying a three day weekend.  The first morning back to work, I had to tear myself away with Alida just barely holding it together - the little quivery lips do me in every time.  Thankfully yesterday she was still sleeping when I left and this morning we happily woke up side by side.  She'll turn to me and say, "I'm all done sleeping" which is very appropriate at 7:30 in the morning and less so at 11 p.m. when she hasn't fallen asleep nursing but seems to think the night is already over.

In general Alida seems to be more of a sleeper than Kali. She is still consistently taking an afternoon nap, which Kali gave up way earlier than this.  And most days she falls asleep in the jogger while I'm getting a walk or a jog in.  She will sometimes insist that she doesn't need a nap or wants to keep playing but she never resists for very long and normally sleep overtakes her by the time we reach the end of our road, sometimes the end of our lane!  But from when she wakes up until she crashes for a nap, she's a busy little gal.  This is her right before the nappy walk trying to put multiple hats on her head...She's got lots of ideas for her day - coloring is currently right at the top of the list, but she is also my little side kick in the kitchen.

I'm glad my girls seem to enjoy being in the kitchen, since it is my favorite room of the house. And I'm glad that they are both currently semi-adventurous when it comes to trying new foods. I don't feel like I've done a lot of blog posts about all the yummy things we are eating lately, but maybe that is because it is starting to be the norm - that our meals are colorful, delicious and the ingredients largely sourced from right around us. That is so very exciting to me!

Jason was in charge of supper last evening.  Our neighbor G had some extra deer bones that he passed to us which Jason cooked down for soup stock.  He then picked the meat off the bones and set it aside.  He added some of our home grown potatoes to the stock and then sauteed some of our purple onions and garlic in venison fat and added that.  Finally, we put in a whole bunch of chopped carrot TOPS and the chopped venison.   The bowl of steaming soup seasoned with salt and fresh ground pepper was delightful.  Why have we been composting all our carrot tops?  I find it so odd that I've never looked into whether we could eat them. They are super tasty (a little like parsley), as are the carrots we are digging right now (the first delicious carrots we've grown here).  And since I'm still a little obsessed with all the things you can make pesto with I decided to google "carrot top pesto."   Of course it exists, and I made it and we enjoyed it, alongside the soup, on rolls made with pureed stinging nettles and ricotta whey. Yum!

I got to play in the kitchen this morning, in between getting more loads of leaves from our neighbors.  Here's what we enjoyed for lunch (I was going to take pictures but forgot, so use your imagination!):

• Roasted Rosemary Sweet Potatoes - our home grown sweet potatoes tossed in olive oil, chopped garlic and rosemary picked right outside our back door!
• Roasted Sunchokes (otherwise known as Jerusalem Artichokes) - given to us by our neighbor and which we enjoyed much more than ones I had made a few years back.  I just tossed them in a little olive oil, salt and pepper.  Alida gobbled them down!
• Savory Spinach and Broccoli Quiche - made with spinach from our friends down the road, broccoli from next door, our onions and garlic and chicken eggs, and milk from our milk share. 
• Cranberry Pecan Orange Muffins - the only "semi-local" thing in these was the wild West Virginia cranberries hand delivered to me by my mom!  This was an attempt to use up some cranberry pulp she had given to me and to make maximum use of my oven while I had it on this morning.  

I've gotten a better sense of how Jason can be so hungry by lunch time too.  After a morning of raking and  hauling leaves up and down hills food looks and tastes mighty good!   I find it so satisfying to be getting more involved on the outside of our home with projects, not just getting things at the doorstep and turning them into meals.  It's nice to be getting a more complete picture of the process, though I still rely quite heavily on Jason's expertise pretty much anytime I'm working on something outside.   You may be wondering what we are doing with all these leaves - I think our neighbors (while seemingly happy to see them raked for them and removed from their lawn) may be wondering the same thing.  We are stockpiling as many as possible to use over the winter and for our humanure composting system.  And then we are putting a thick layer down in various areas that we no longer want to have to mow and are transitioning to planting areas or walking paths.  After this past year, we are quite set on reducing the areas that we mow around our place.  This is a step in that process.

Jason hasn't gotten in on much leaf raking at all this year since other projects have kept him sufficiently occupied.  We have our sights set on wrapping up some construction projects this winter and today is the start of one of those.  Finishing up the eaves is the kind of thing we might never get to if it was up to me, since I tend to not notice this kind of thing.  But now that he is working on it, I'm excited to have the outside of our house look like we didn't stop before we were done!  Getting near the top of the priority list on the inside of the house is getting around to putting trim on the windows we replaced last year!

Well, I now have a not-so-little sleeping bundle in my arms.  I think the construction noise outside may have roused her prematurely and she isn't quite ready to wake up.  When she does, if it hasn't started raining, we'll see what headway we can make on some more pine needle hauling. :)  I'm kind of getting a kick out of myself this fall as it feels familiar to my weeding binge this past spring.  I started noticing weeds along the roads and would dream about weeding.  Well, I'm noticing leaves everywhere!  I think it probably has something to do with how I enjoy visible results.  Weeding and raking both give one the gratification of making a very noticeable difference immediately.  I think Jason is enjoying the fact that I'm determined to get as many as possible on the days I'm at home!  So maybe a staycation in the spring for weeding and a staycation in the fall for raking should be coming seasonal traditions! I could get into that.  For not, it's time to play a round of Mastermind with Kali!

Blood drive; who would have known it could be so fun!

What special memories are created through an evening like last night!  I arrived at Virginia Blood Services, with one of my colleagues who was donating with us, about 40 minutes into the blood drive due to every road (it seemed) in Harrisonburg being tied up with traffic.  We learned upon arrival that it was due to a major accident on 81.  The accident ended up delaying others and kept at least one donor away.  That, some last minute forgetfulness, and of course the germs floating around kept a handful more away.  But there were a dozen of us who donated and a great cheerleading squad (a few quiet adults and a bunch of rowdy kids that were thrilled with the array of snacks provided).  Whenever I give blood I think about the seeds my dad planted taking me along with him when he donated when I was little. I don't remember much other than being treated special and getting snacks.  At the time, I was quite certain it was never something I would do!  So I was thrilled to have a bunch of kids there having a grand time.  Hopefully, at least a number of them, will be inspired to donate once they are old enough to do so.

It's always particularly exciting to have new donors join us - we had at least 2 last evening, along with some who had not given for a long time.  One of the highlights for me was finally meeting someone who had only been a "virtual friend" for years due to our shared history of both having had to say goodbye to a baby daughter.  While there is nothing wrong with connecting by email and facebook, there is nothing like a real human hug and an in person connection!  And how special to do that at the blood drive...

The highlight of the evening for me was the deciding moment where my hemoglobin was checked.  It had been months since I had been able to give due to low iron. I had been religiously doing everything I could think of to get it up and was hopeful that I had succeeded.  When the machine beeped the nurse said, "you won't believe this."  Not only had I gotten it above the 12.5 threshhold, I was all the way up to 14.2 - plenty to spare!  I told her that I wanted to open the door and shout that I was eligible to give!  She said, "go for it" so I did!

I had felt more nervous about it during the day that I had previously because I was out of practice and I was apprehensive that I would be turned away again (yes, I guess that means that I nervous about doing it and nervous that I wouldn't be able to).  Things that involve needles become much bigger in my head than they need to be.  And over time they only get bigger.  So I'm glad to be back on track and in tune with the reality that it is such a very minor discomfort for something that can hopefully be very helpful to someone else.  And to once again feel the little flood of satisfaction with it going well and with this very small ritual that connects me to Nora and our journey with her in a special way.

Last evening was unique in that only a small percentage of those that joined us ever knew Nora.  Most have become friends of ours since that time or we have reconnected since that time and our lives have intersected in meaningful ways.  It feels like the circle has widened of those who have been impacted by the short time that Nora spent with our family and that means a great deal to me.  I enjoy the opportunities events like last night give me to talk about her.  I don't want the memories to fade, but it seems inevitable that many do over time.  Sharing the stories is one way to keep those memories alive!

Donuts, soccer and more!

Our last few posts have been very word heavy, so here's a little visual entertainment!

We've had a few very full days of family fun, even if some of the fun had to be modified due to lingering colds. Here's Alida trying out eating a donut off a string for the first time. 



Saturday was Kali's final soccer game - maybe she should eat many donuts the eve of all her soccer games.  It was fun to note her improvement over the course of the season.  We even caught a little piece of the action.



We, along with some Benner family members, headed to Vintage Virginia Apples and Albemarle Ciderworks for their Apple Harvest Festival.  We came home with 20+ pounds of delicious apples and have been enjoying them ever since.  We also went on the most thrilling hay ride ever - through beautiful woodland and up and down hills and around some curves that caused the wagon to creak enough that I leaned as far away from the sides as possible.  When we were getting off, the driver was counting us. I asked if we set a record and he said he thought maybe.  We were all so tired of waiting in line that we were piling on the wagon as fast as we could.


From there, we headed to to the Blue Ridge Tunnel in Crozet and enjoyed a candlelit dinner with most of the Benner family.  Quite memorable! It was an odd sensory experience to be hiking through the forest with Papa John's pizza wafting into my nose! 

Wealth Grows on Trees

I, Jason, know money doesn't grow on trees, but all the same I felt rich today while raking leaves.

Certainly many folks regard tree leaves as a nuisance, but we treasure them as a resource.  Forest ecologists could probably talk for a year straight about the cascade of life that tumbles around in the leaf litter layer on the forest floor, nearly completely fueled by the breaking of chemical bonds in, primarily, the cellulose and lignin components of spent leaves.  If your eyes can be little enough, you can pull aside the leaves and see the duffy soil teeming with invertebrates, and netted with fungal hyphae and plant roots.

Chickens' eyes are apparently little enough.  While J (who lives in the in-law quarters and works with me usually two days per week) and I raked leaves, it became time to let the chickens from the composting coop out for their daily frolic.  Janelle came and joined us in the raking for a while and we agreed together:  It is such a pleasure to watch chickens in the woods.  This is their most natural environment and they glory in it (assuming chickens can glory at all, which I assume they sort of can).  Anyone who has ever ranged chickens in a manicured yard can attest to the fact that chickens love nothing more than to pull back the mulch from anywhere it has been tidily applied and discover the treats lurking therebeneath.  A forest floor covered in leaves can be thought of as a vast, uninterrupted mulched bed, and sifting through it hour after hour is their favorite pastime, but it is far from idle for them.  Judging from the number of times they stop their scratching and peck fervently at a spot a few times--sometimes with several chickens crowding around the same spot--they are finding serious goodies.

I can attest to that also since I am the feed dispenser around here most days.  If I haven't been home in the evening to let them out for two days running, I find there is a minor but noticeable uptick in feed consumption (Even on those days, however, their feed consumption is less than my other chickens because of what they gather nicking through the composting litter).  I can also attest to the quality of those goodies, since I eat the eggs.  On the pan, the yolks are orange and perky, standing tall and round while frying.  Scrambled, they glow yellow and have a warm, rich flavor.  I can't eat oak or cherry leaves myself, but I can eat the eggs that come from the chickens that eat the bugs that eat the microbes that eat the leaves.  Cha-ching!

We were raking leaves mainly from an area we've never really done anything with before, but which we are wanting to clear of saplings, young trees, and autumn olive shrubs to make way for an access path for bikes, cars, animal range pens, and people on foot to be able to make easier use of the land in the middle of our property.  Ideally, this ground will grow grass on it so that it can withstand repeated compaction without serious soil damage, excessive muddiness, or erosion from wind or water.  As such, leaves in that area are a liability, just like they are for the lawn grass minded homeowners all over the country who are spending precious hours these weeks firing up their leaf blowers and herding all the pesky leaves from their lots onto the curb to await being forcibly ingested en masse by a large vacuum truck driven by municipal employees, then regurgitated onto giant piles, where eventually people like us drive up and fork great mounds of them onto our pickups or utility trailers, take them home and spread them around in our yards.  So.  Where was I?

Oh, yes, so the leaves were a problem where they were, but we had another problem elsewhere.  In places we have mounded soil in long rows on contour with the slope of the land with the idea of retaining water long enough for it to penetrate the soil surface so we can grow more plants and trees, which will make more leaves...I'm getting ahead of myself.  The problem we had was that the soil on these berms, as we call them, was bare, unless you count the hordes and multitudes of baby wild grass and weed plants that have germinated enthusiastically there.  Nature abhors a vacuum, you understand, and I don't mean the kind driven by municipal employees!  If those little weedlets are allowed to grow up, we will either have a tremendous and frustrating weeding job on our hands next spring or we will have lots of unwanted plants in our productive ground once they complete their life cycle and go to seed themselves.  What to do?

Fortunately, fortunately, my friends, we have leaves!  As J and Janelle and I cleared the leaves from where they laid, allowing the life-giving light in to any grass wishing to grow in that space, we loaded them into wheelbarrows and wheeled them merrily up the slope to the berms and distributed them in a six-inch layer over those hordes of weedlets, effectively cutting off their light.  Cha-ching!

Leaves can also provide the carbonaceous foundation for the sanitizing and nutritious litter layer in a composting poultry coop, make an excellent weed-controlling mulch layer (that breaks down into the loveliest and most nourishing organic matter) for tomatoes and other garden plants, and when chopped or partly mouldered make the finest cover material we have yet found for our "humanure" toilets.  Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching!

I said to J as we were raking in the new area that as we begin to open up more of our land to our use, I am going to begin to feel very rich.  The truth is that we are currently using a very small percentage of the eventual available total, and of that part we're using now, only a fraction (if any) is producing at its maximum potential.  If we return to the soil and the forest at least a portion of what we take, I believe we'll see a crescendo of productivity that we can ride like dolphins in the surf.

As I emerged from the woods with the last barrow of leaves to spread on one of the new berms, something caught my eye in my peripheral vision.  I turned my head and nearly caught my breath: The west flank of Massanutten mountain was glowing; billions of oak, maple, poplar, hickory leaves dangling delicately from their twigs shone like gold coins in the evening sun.