The Farmette Report

Late season supper from the garden

Most of our late-season Mantises (or is it "Mantids"?) have gone brown in order to better blend into the landscape, but this one has kept her green coat. Given her surroundings, the green coat was still appropriate, even on what proved to be the tomato patch's last day before it got pulled out and dispatched to the compost bin.

Our green guest was not the only one to enjoy her supper from the garden yesterday. While cleaning out some of the beds, I gleaned the last of the little grape and pear tomatoes. About two cups of these little gems, combined with some hardy African basil (also from my garden), some diced red onion, good olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt were served with some excellent toasted crusty bread and fresh mozzarella for a tasty supper of bruschetta. It seems fitting that we enjoyed our first and last tomato harvest of the season in the same way.

As I look forward to a sunny day in the 70s, it's hard to believe that today is the last day of October. Temps supposedly got down to freezing last night, but we still have not had our first killing frost. From where I sit, I can look out into our courtyard garden and see Impatiens still in bloom. (I can also see out to the barn, where a couple of little donkeys are keeping watch for me to come out and give them some hay.)

Before I go visit the donkeys, here's a quick tip from a lazy gardener. In our remote location, we get no trick-or-treaters, so I don't go in for Halloween decorations the way I did in the 'burbs. But, if you happen to have a planter that became overgrown with weeds, thanks to your going on vacation and general inattention, and then the weeds died thanks to a drought and even more inattention, you can just plunk a big pot o' mums smack on top of the planter (anchored with a plant stake, if you must) and call the dead weeds a "design element."  As Count Floyd would say, "Oooooh, spooky!"

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Halter training... or running amok

We haven't been very diligent about training the donkeys to accept a halter and lead, so when it came time to schedule a visit from the vet for the little beasts' annual vaccinations, we knew it was time to get to work. After some practice, we're getting pretty good at getting the halters on, but - oh!- the transformation. Poor little donkeys, they just go right into a deep, deep sulk once the halters are on.

We can get them to walk along with us on a lead, provided that we have an ample supply of carrot bits stashed in our pockets. The donkeys really are motivated by just the sight of the carrot, but even that has its limits. You have to give them a bite of carrot sometime or they'll up and balk on you. We know the experts counsel against using food rewards, but we do, and we chalk it up to our being a couple of lazy, corner-cutting, indulgent, permissive, anthropomorphizing idiots with no spines. Plus we ain't go no horse sense, no how.

I'm happy to report that both donkeys were on good behavior for the vet, even though Ambrose had a delayed reaction of sorts when he waited until after the vet gave him his second injection and had left the stall before giving the stall walls a good kick. (By the way, we opted against the donkey pregnancy test for Molly because the vet figures it is too soon to tell.)

One happy aspect of that visit is that, since the vet was making a "farm call" anyway, he gave our old white cat his injections while he was here, thus saving us and "Mr. White" the trauma of an automobile ride to the vet's office. At 19 years, ol' Whitey doesn't need any trauma in his life. He's such an inveterate lap-cat, considering he lives outdoors year-round, that he purred the entire time I held him - while the vet gave him two injections. And the vet earned my undying loyalty when he chucked Whitey under the chin and said, "There you go, old man. Now take the rest of the day off; you deserve it." Dr. B. is one of the few large animal vets around here, yet he still knows how to treat a geriatric feline with tender respect.

Oh! But I almost forgot: Keith has been after me for almost a week to post these two little AVI videos of the donkeys. Now that the weather is getting cooler, they are running around all over the place, teasing each other like a couple of little kids. Usually Ambrose is chasing Molly, but I happened to catch Molly turning the tables last weekend. Hilarious!

Down_together.AVI (8 seconds)

And back_again.AVI (7 seconds)

So far, most of our fall color...

...is in the mums. The trees are only showing a little color so far this season, something I chalk up to our very dry introduction to autumn. Recent rains should make a difference, but thank goodness for a local farm stand that doesn't charge an arm and a leg for their incredibly full mums, now placed variously around our yard. Great for filling in the garden beds with a little late season color. In barn red:

And saffron orange:

A rant on National Boss Day

The greeting card industry really should be ashamed of itself for inventing and promoting obvious scam holidays such as "National Boss Day" - which, by the way, is today - as lame excuses for selling more greeting cards and trinkets. What a load of hooey! While everyone likes to be appreciated, it is plain wrong to expect an employee to pony up for a card or gifts to give to the "boss." It's just too easy for this kind of thing to get out of hand, to become a sort of official competitive-level form of brown-nosing.

Two wonderful employees report to me, and I asked them both to please forgo any sort of boss day recognition.  It just feels unethical to encourage employees to give to their bosses. This is exactly the opposite of how things should be! Rather, I should be on my knees thanking them for being so hard-working and reliable, and hoping they will permit me to take them to lunch!

Despite my protests, a very thoughtful card and some chocolates were waiting on my desk this morning. Sigh. They truly are very kind, those two.

Nonetheless. I don't like to think of myself as a complainer, but am I the only "boss" to have a problem with National Boss Day? After all, as I explained to my own boss, bless him, every day is Boss' Day!

Cherry-almond rice pudding

Rice. It's the food version of the little black dress. You can dress it up, dress it down, serve it plain, savory, or sweet. And it comes in so many varieties. I could eat rice at every meal and never get tired of it. But, when it comes to cooking rice, my tendency to forget the pot on the stove has ruined many a pot of rice, and even resulted in a few scorched pots to boot. Automatic rice cookers have it all over cooking rice on the stove-top, and when I got my first electric rice steamer some 10 years ago, I never looked back. About two years ago, I upgraded to a combination rice cooker/steamer/slow cooker with a timer. It lets me dump the ingredients in the bowl and tell it when, within the next 13 hours, I want the rice to be cooked. It cooks the rice on time, and if I'm not around when the rice is done, it goes into a "keep warm" setting for a few more hours. Brilliant!

I could go on and on about the joy of rice cookers, so when Jen over at Life Begins at Thirty recently blogged about her Zojirushi, it was time to share this recipe for cherry-almond rice pudding, an excellent cool-weather dish. This recipe is for a slow-cooker:

Cherry-Almond Rice Pudding

• 1 1/2 C. Arborio rice (short-grain rice for risotto)
• 3/4 C. sugar
• 1/2 C. dried cherries
• 2 t. grated lemon zest
• 2 T. ground almonds
• pinch salt
• 8 C. milk (yes! 8 cups of milk! You can use 2% or skim.)
• 2 eggs (or egg replacer)
• 2 t. almond extract
• 1/4 C. toasted slivered almonds

In the bowl of your slow cooker, mix together all ingredients except for slivered almonds. You could skip the eggs as I sometimes do, or use ground flax seed or other egg replacer or just egg whites. Cook on slow cooker's high setting for 4 hours or until done to your liking. Sprinkle with toasted almonds. Serves 12.

I adapted this recipe from Judith Finlayson's 125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes, using more rice and half the sugar than she calls for. I will sometimes add a little grated nutmeg or cinnamon. This is wonderful warm with half a baked pear or apple. It is yummy for breakfast, too, if a bit indulgent for early morning.

Glorious fall weekend

After a solid week of overcast skies, rain and drizzle, we are all enjoying a lovely weekend. Today is not as sunny as yesterday, but we are enjoying the cool fall breezes as we stack and split wood for the winter - thank goodness we won't have to buy oil to heat our home! The donkeys are enjoying the cooler weather, too, and are perking up after those long, hot, summer days. More later, but for now it's back to our chores.

A deluge

Since this morning, more than 20 comments were left on the Farmette Report - each told me what a swell site this is, which is always nice to hear, but each comment also included odd random word combinations such as you sometime see in email spam - and, indeed, spam is what was hitting my site. Each comment included links to various other sites that didn't seem to have any direct relationship to the poster; these sites are generally game sites or other commercial ventures. I won't mention them by name because getting their name "out there" is part of their goal, not mine.

What is comment spam? I'll let TypePad describe it:

A spam comment is an unwanted message placed on your site as a comment or TrackBack on a post. ("Spam" is a common Internet term for junk messages, much like junk email is called spam mail.)

The comment that is posted can be an innocent message like "nice site!" or it can be an advertising message, and it usually includes a link to another site. The linked site could be a business site, an offensive or pornographic site, or it could also be a normal looking weblog.

Spammers post these messages to boost their rankings in search engines. By leaving the link on your site they have more incoming links to their site and this will make their site show higher in search results. To do this, they write scripts that submit comments to hundreds or even thousands of sites in an automated manner. This tactic works even if neither you nor your site's readers click on the links on the comments.

Right now, it's pretty easy to leave a comment on this site. I don't individually moderate comments, other than by checking the site or my email regularly, and I don't require registration or user authentication before someone can post a comment. But if this spam keeps up, I may have to make some changes, and a required TypeKey registration may be one of them. 

The good news is that we are experiencing another kind of deluge on the Ol' Farmette today - our first real, honest-to-god rainy day in over a month. Man, do we ever need this rain! We have been just loving it all day long and had the perfect rainy-Friday comfort-food lunch to go along with it: hot tomato soup and grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. Yum. Beats spam any day.

Jimmy's world

I love the punk-rock angle of this photo, but it doesn't convey the full dignity of Jimmy, the herd sire of Ambrose and Molly's home herd. Jimmy, also referred to by those of us on the Farmette as "Abu Ambrose," is the sire of this little fella. And the sire of Ambrose (hence "Abu Ambrose," silly) and also, well, Molly. Our gal Molly.

When we went to pick up Molly and Ambrose over a year ago to bring them home, I remember how Mrs. K told Molly, as we were coaxing her into the trailer: "Go ahead now, go and be with your brother." Later, Mr. K made a similar admonition as one of the pair had made a break for it and was being reloaded into the trailer: "Be good and stay with your little cousin now."

"Oh!" I asked, "Are they cousins or brother and sister?"

Mrs. K paused and I briefly had a mental image of Jack Nicholson slapping the hapless Faye Dunaway in China Town. "Siblings. No, cousins. Well, no, they're siblings...."

We were soon clued in that the herd of ten miniature donkeys consisted of nine jennets and one, and only one, jack. This makes Ambrose and Molly half-siblings. We hadn't really given our new pets' lineage much thought because we were interested in having pets, not becoming breeders.

We soon learned a lot about Jimmy. About how he is registered - the only one in the herd with that designation. How nine jennets is just about the right number to keep him busy and happy without tuckering him out - or, one would assume, without tuckering the gals out since they carry a pregnancy for 11 to 13 months. About how he once "threw twins," which is a rarity among minis (never mind, the plucky mini-mom who carried a pair of foals and delivered them safely). About how he always makes an annual appearance in a local church's live creche and is a hit with the local children in the Christmas pageant.

We have since made numerous impromptu visits to the herd, usually stopping on our return from the grocery store when we just happen to have a large bag of carrots with us. The donkeys are quick to notice us as we pull up alongside their pasture, and the smarter gals will hasten to the fenceline for carrots. After gorging themselves for a time, Jimmy will saunter up as though he has all the time - and all the confidence - in the world. He has clearly earned his place in the hierarchy because, with barely a glance and a flick of an ear from Jimmy, the females quickly back off, leaving a large circle around him. The gals get this look on their faces that we interpret as the jennet version of "Oh, Jimmy, glad you came for the carrots. We were just saying how much we wanted you to come and finish up the carrots for us." Unlike the jennets, Jimmy always takes our carrots with the gentlest of touches.

One thing that surprised us is that Jimmy is by far the smallest adult in the herd. He is tiny compared to his mates. He is also, as you can see from the pic below, all muscle.

In our readings about donkeys, we have seen many dire warnings about jacks - how they are ill-tempered and unpredictable, prone to great violence against humans and herd-mates. These books, which are generally written by and for breeders, then go on to mention how the poor jack is routinely kept apart from his herd until such time as he is pressed into "service." It's a way of life that would make anyone go nutso, and I wonder if Jimmy's mild disposition is the result of his living with and amongst his herd.

PS - The title of this post is a fun nod to the series of articles authored by Janet Cooke back in the early 1980s about a little boy heroin addict (the eponymous "Jimmy" in "Jimmy's World") in Washington, DC. After Ms. Cook won a Pulitzer for her work, it was discovered that she had invented Jimmy (she later claimed he was a "composite" character) as well as many of her own credentials. Ms. Cook lost her job, the Pulitzer was withdrawn, and The Washington Post was more careful about vetting its professional staff thence forward.