A fateful string of events

About 10 years ago my father brought home a few white geese. A short while after that he drove hours to southern Virginia to pick up a pair of Chinese geese.These geese live a peaceful, good life with a safe shelter to rest in at night, and eight acres to roam during the day. A little while later my father began raising ducks and after that came the chickens. My father is not a dog or cat guy but apparently he does keep pets. As a pet caretaker this means spending a small fortune on food and many hours weekly improving their habitat (like collecting pine needles for their shelter, building and cleaning a large chicken coop, and feeding the ducks special leafy green treats from the garden). Many evening hours were also spent taking care of predators in a way people in the country need to take care of predators.

After about a decade of keeping these animals, and with it, the intense care and work it requires, he's decided to give it up. Perhaps it was this past harsh winter of endless below 0° days and having to trudge through snow and ice to feed the animals daily that helped him reach this decision. Perhaps it was turning 70 and realizing there are still more than enough chores on his property to keep him busy enough, without the animal care. Either way, he decided that by the end of this year he would give up all the ducks, geese and chickens. 

The next question was, where would they go? He had just started talking to some friends and acquaintances and found some places to bring them, but he suspected that his beloved pets would not be taken to new homes to live the kind of life they had at my father's house. They would be "taken care of" in a different kind of way. My father has had the older generation of geese for a decade. As you can imagine, the thought of this made his heart ache. 

One of the white geese and one of the Chinese geese in the foreground

The other day, a neighbor my parents had never met before came to their house. She told my father she had a four acre farm just a few blocks away with horses, chickens, and a small pond, and that she had a pair of geese for 11 years. The goose pictured below, one of her favorite animals, had recently lost his mate. She'd noticed a change in his behavior and she was concerned that he was lonely. With a heavy heart herself, she explained that she'd remembered driving by in the past and seeing my father's geese happily roaming the yard. She'd come to ask if her goose could live at my father's place and hopefully find some company. He told her of course he would take the goose.

The neighbor's 11 year old goose who recently lost his mate

Neighbor's goose in the water, ducks along the edge

After a day or two my dad saw that the new goose was not eating so he called the neighbor who came over to visit again. He told her he was concerned the goose was not going to do well if he was refusing to eat. They decided that it was a possibility the goose was not transitioning well and might need to be back at his own home. My dad then told her he actually had a plan to get rid of all of his animals by the end of the year. He asked her if she wanted any of them. She was thrilled about the opportunity to adopt ALL of them! This way she would keep her goose and my father's entire flock would move to their new home with him. In about two weeks, they will make the exchange of animals. Before this time, she'll be cutting out a bigger pond and getting ready to increase her animals by about 10 geese, 15 chickens, and about 20 ducks. 

As the neighbor left that day, she said goodbye to my parents, quacked at the ducks and honked at the geese. With that, my dad knew there would be a happy ending to the story!

Introducing...the hens and rooster

I've shared photos of my father's adored ducks and geese.  This year, he's added chickens to his brood.  He never needs to add more tasks to his long (retired) "work day", but he's pretty tickled about all the fresh eggs - many of them double-yolked.  Plus, these ladies are so friendly - more so than the adorable but usually frightened-by-me ducks, and MUCH more so than the  beautiful and stately but ultimately nasty-to-me geese.

Why food preservation is "fun" for me

Dried Thai chili peppers.  Throw them in stir fries.  

When I told a good friend I would be giving a talk about food preservation - freezing, drying, pickling, canning, etc. I think she responded in a way that I could only describe as...scoffing.  If I didn't adore this woman, I'd be really offended.  Here's where I think she's coming from:  being a former farmer, canning and other forms of food preservation were a part of her household duties.  Sow the seed, weed, harvest, figure out how to save the abundance to feed your family the rest of the year.  As a relatively new canner, I've mentioned how "cool" it is to be able to cook and process food so that it's shelf stable.  It's kind of miraculous, no?  I mentioned how "fun" it is.  "Fun", she did not like.  That's the difference between us, she said.  I do it for fun, she did it because she had to.

Holy basil.  Dried leaves are great made into tea.

Yes, I live in the burbs.  I have a small garden plot - far from being able to sustain my family.  I'm not sure I'd even be able to feed my pets on what I'm able to grow.  Gardening for me is for fun.  It's actually soooo freaking fun.  So is being able to put together a gift basket with some good olive oil, a crusty loaf of bread, and a jar of bruschetta made from my own heirloom tomatoes.  I love to pull my bright red lingonberries out of the freezer to top my Irish oatmeal in the middle of winter.  It's totally fun to dry my own peppers and announce over a nice spaghetti dinner - red pepper flakes anyone?  However, in my defense, it does go a bit beyond fun.

Dried Chinese dates.  Throw in soups, cut and use to decorate breads,  or rehydrate in water.

My father is from a rural, but educated, well-off family.  No one would know this though because with the onset of Communism, all material wealth was stripped, and villagers in Shantung, China starved for decades.  My father tended a farm and a smaller garden plot solely for survival.  Napa cabbages, radishes, turnips and a few other crops did well in their climate, but there were certainly no pantry items, no means for jarring tomato sauce, no freezer to store berries.  Before the ground froze, my father and other villagers would dig giant pits in their nearby family garden plots.  In the pit would go all the cold weather harvests for winter storage.  Each week, he would remove the snow and dirt cover and dig out a few cabbages to feed his brother and mother.

Gigantic winter melon.  Stores up to 6 months in a cool dry area.  

A few summers ago, I was given the task of running out to the pier over my parents' pond to bring in the fish before it started raining.  These fish, wrapped loosely in paper towels, had been sun drying for days now.  After drying fully, they would be preserved in salted oil.  I had never had this salted fish before, but they said it was a thing.  A simple, homely dish - a little bit of salted fish with each bite of a plain, white, steamed bun.  We all looked forward to it.  It was delicious.

What my parents don't know is that despite the salted fish with steamed bun being flavorful, simple, and satisfying, each bite also brought me closer to the life and part of China that I would never know.  A life that is told to me in fits and starts, but never really as a joyful reminiscence.  Eating the foods they ate, saving foods in the way they did (despite the fact that my survival does not hinge on it) brings me closer to them and their world in a way that words cannot bridge.

My father's ducks and geese...and a leafy green treat

Above is one of my father's Chinese geese. Unfortunately, his mate was eaten by some animal despite a loving home and secure habitat.  Below, these happy and pretty little ducks have had their dinner and have gone out to their enclosed portion of the pond for the evening.  In the water, they're safer from night predators who can't swim, but who can certainly dig a hole under the fencing.  The ducks know the drill - eat and then waddle with a quack quack quack out to the water.

Above, the dark green is tatsoi or rosette bok choy.  The light green is a choy - a Taiwanese lettuce that is somewhat similar to romaine - perhaps not as crisp - the texture is a little more like spinach actually.  A choy is often eaten cooked.  Below, the a choy is growing neatly in well-spaced rows.  I asked my father what the packed bed is for then if you're supposed to give them room to grow...

For the ducks of course!!!

He said the ducks love these greens and would come running if I threw some in their enclosure.  I didn't believe it, especially since they'd just eaten and gone straight out to the water.  Well, as he predicted, I threw some of the leafy greens in and they all came running back in from the water!

This is my favorite duck.  He's so goofy with his fluffy mohawk, savoring his a choy.  

How to dry bottle gourds

Though my father typically plants a couple of bottle gourd vines every season, this year, he went a little crazy.  Click here to see the gorgeous vines in his garden and learn about why his friends will be happy to receive these auspicious little gourds.

To dry the gourds for ornamental purposes, he harvested them at maturity.  These are miniature gourds, so they are tiny, but mature.  In the photos above, you see them as they look freshly cut from the vine.  He is stringing them to dry for seeds.  These are just the seedstock, not the ones he will dry for gifting.  

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In the photo below, he has taken mature gourds and scraped off the outer peel with a sharp knife.  This is not a necessary step, but makes for a cleaner appearance.  Some of the gourds on the vine looked pretty jacked up with spots and other imperfections, but scraping the peel leaves them all pretty as can be as you can see in the photo below.  After scraping off the peel, he will sun dry them outdoors (bringing them in if it rains!!!).  It takes about a month to fully dry out.  My father actually used a food dehydrator during rainy days and at night to speed the process.  The few gourds in the batch that were not at full maturity when harvested shriveled a bit, and were left a little wrinkly.  Try to wait until the gourds are at full maturity before harvesting.  

The little gourds were dried on a woven tray as you see below.  The lighter ones were scraped first before drying.  The darker ones were not scraped and left to dry as is.   As you can see, they are just as lovely.  For a smoother appearance, the unscraped gourds can be lightly sanded for a smoother and more finished appearance, but as far as protecting the gourd, this is also an unnecessary step.  The ones my father really liked, he also painted with a light lacquer for a little shine.  If you try growing these little gourds, I'd love to know how it goes!

Ornamental Bottle Gourds

Regular readers of this blog know that my father is pretty obsessive.  For several years, he lovingly (and compulsively) raised chrysanthemums.  Towards the end of that phase, he went as far as wheeling some 40 pots of mums back and forth to sun on the driveway, then back to the garage for shelter from wind, rain, and frost.  He did this every day.  See here for the results of that care.  

This year, he is going nuts with bottle gourds.  He has again - maybe some...40 plants he is lovingly tending.  They are growing up bamboo supports, along a fence, up a trellis, over evergreens, in pots, wherever there was space to be found early this spring.  Some are large bottle gourds, but the fun this year is in growing miniature gourds.  The ones in the photos above have probably reached their full height at about 4 inches. I love how they look like little dangling lanterns.  

As with basically everything the superstitious Chinese people like, gourds are favored because they are auspicious.  The shape of the gourd resembles the calligraphic Chinese symbols meaning luck.  The word for bottle gourd "woo lo", is also similar in sound to the words that mean happiness and prosperity.

These "good luck gourds" are also one of the oldest crops in China where they're useful as containers or scoops in the house and garden.  A mature and dried bottle gourd is actually water-tight and so sturdy it can be used for generations.  And with the fact that they are delicious when young and can be made into any number of crafts when mature and dried, why not grow them?

Nasty mushrooms and other random (lovelier) photos

Above: just a pretty scene from the circle in front of my parents' house. Below: my husband was giddy with excitement to squeeze these mushrooms expecting to show our kids a little puff of mushroom powder. Instead, he got squirted with mushroom goo.




Above: the little 4x4 garden I built this summer (whose purpose I will share at a later date). Below: anti-grass lawn enthusiasts would be pleased with my lawn of creeping Charlie. Seriously, my "lawn" really bugs me (a lot), but on this day, it took on a sort of magical look. And speaking of magical looks, the scene from the pond in front of my parents' house looks quite pretty, don't you think?

Ducks and the geese that watch over them

Kids above catching dragonflies...below, the mogwai (Gremlins) of the flock of ducklings.

Above, an idyllic little path to see the water lotuses. Below, the view from near my father's vegetable garden.

Above, the white geese that roam the property. Every evening, my father claps and yells, "Hey!" and they all start filing in to their enclosure for the night. In this old post, you can see images of the geese walking in single file. It's hilarious (please come back after seeing the first few photos because I have a funny story to tell). The two Chinese geese in the photo below used to be part of that gaggle of geese that would roam during the day and come in at night. However, ever since my father collected eggs, hatched some of ducks and geese and then brought them out into the smaller enclosure, the two Chinese geese have not left the enclosure to join the other white adult geese at all. Instead, they stand guard just outside the smaller enclosure ALL DAY LONG. When anyone comes near, they start spitting and hissing. As it turns out, 3 of the baby geese belong to the Chinese parents.

On this day, my father needed to change the bedding in the little house. When he got near the enclosure, the Chinese geese started flipping out, honking and crying, and causing all kinds of hysteria. Then all the baby ducks and geese start honking and quacking and running around. In the photos below, you see that the Chinese geese first tried to corral the babies into the corner, and when my father walked in, they started to corral them into the house. Finally, must have honked, "GET OUT! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!!!"

Once the smaller guys are able to mix with the older folks, it will be really interesting to see what happens. I wonder if the non-Chinese geese will be adopted by the Chinese parents? I wonder if the Chinese parents know which are their offspring? Will the ducks try to follow the Chinese geese? When the geese are able to roam the property, will the ducks cry out? Will the regular white geese adopt their offspring at that point? Will the geese then roam as one group or split off into two now? Gawd, the whole thing is so fascinating to me!