2008 January Archive at Beside the Stream

Archive for January, 2008

A Fowl Dilemma

Published on January 11, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey. 3 Comments

Turkeys are such big birds that many men think they look like dinner.

I know it’s more trouble than dinner is worth because fifteen years ago an old bachelor farmer gave me a tom of his that had been hit by a car. It took an unreasonable number of repulsive steps to get that turkey into a pan for seasoning, and then you’re left with a big pair of feet that you’re supposed to boil up for soup and just can’t. It’s horrible, and the local slaughterhouse doesn’t take poultry. That’s one problem. The other problem is that these turkeys have been running around scavenging since the day they hatched. No doubt they’d make a tasty stew boiled down for 48 hours, but they really aren’t a roast meat you’d want to face without special knives. They’d be tough as boots, but even so people often talk about killing them.

The real problem, though, is that turkeys are a new addition to the neighborhood. Miss Roberta says they’re the first local flock since she moved here in the 1940s. And they’re bold, with regular rounds that include gardens up and down the road. This fall, four of them began roosting in the trees by our upper irrigation ditch. And then on Christmas Day there were eight turkeys marching around, and there has been a flock of six or eight ever since.

With such deep snow, the turkeys are looking thin. So I just happened to stop by the Feed Coop, kind of pretending I wasn’t,

and I just happened to get 100 lbs of cracked corn. It just happened. Let’s just say that it happened because every woman loves to see a man in Carhartt’s canvas workclothes moving heavy sacks.

And I put a few cups of cracked corn out for the turkeys (who really did look thin, and who people keep mentioning in the same sentence as dinner).

After the deed was done, I looked up the Department of Wildlife’s opinion on feeding turkeys. I learned that these Merriam’s wild turkeys live in the high Ponderosa forests of the Southwest, total population 334,460 to 344,460. And here’s the twist–Merriam’s wild turkey is the exact same turkey as the domesticated turkeys that lived with the Pueblo Indians. It is believed the ancestral Puebloans brought these turkeys from Mexico, and when the ancestral Pueblo culture died out around 1400 AD their turkeys ran off to the forests and are still there today as Merriam’s wild turkey.

So this is my story and I’m sticking to it: I’m not feeding wild turkeys at all; I’m raising a flock of ancestral Puebloan turkeys. These gals lay 10 to 12 eggs in a clutch, so a sidebar of corn through a tough winter might make all the difference. The turkeys live here year-round, so everyone knows where to find them. It’s so easy to see a turkey, and there are so many hunters. Dilemma.

Roadkill and a murder of crows

Published on January 10, 2008 in birds and deer herd. 1 Comment

In the winter, the animals killed by traffic are covered with snow. You’d never see them at all except for the crows, which are a telltale flag. Whenever you see a group of crows jumping up and down by the side of the road, they’re sure to be tearing apart a big hunk of meat. I stopped for this group of crows, but as soon as I got out of the car

they got nervous and started to leave.

They all marched up to the railroad tracks

and took off.

This is what they left behind.

I’d heard of a storytelling of crows, and a murder of crows, but it turns out the list of collective nouns for crows goes on and on: a cauldron of crows, a caucus of crows, a congress, cowardice, hover, muster and parcel of crows.

After seeing them seething over the deer by the side of the road, I’m partial to a murder of crows for now.

Honey mustard chicken

Published on January 9, 2008 in Snow storm and recipe. 0 Comments

Still snowing, and I’m not the only one ready for a change in the weather. Bob pointed out this doe sleeping under a big ponderosa pine in the early dawn.

One of the best things to do when it won’t stop snowing is to cook. I like to cook a lot. When I was making honey mustard chicken last night, Bob said that in his opinion, that recipe was a whole lot more interesting than a steady diet of animal photos in the snow. So I pulled out my trusty camera and did a photo essay of dinner. Here goes:

Honey mustard works with pork or chicken, but my current favorite is chicken thighs so that’s what I’m using. In addition, a few staples.

You can use up your oldest back-of-the-shelf crystallized honey for this dish, since it cooks a long time. I use either Dijon or stone ground mustard, depending. Some people may not think heavy cream is a staple, but I’m from Vermont.

Start with a cast iron pan and a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. While you’re waiting for the oil to get hot, run the chicken under water and strip off the fat.

The chicken thighs go skin down, and should nestle together so each one is cozy but not crowded.

Then wash your hands, and use your fingers to smear a thick layer of mustard on the flesh. Wash again.

Over medium heat, cook these thighs until the skin is brown, flip ‘em, and wait until they’re fully browned on the other side too. You can’t rush this step because the recipe doesn’t work unless you have a crusty pan, and it’s not very good when it’s scorched.

Once both sides are browned and the pan has a brown crust on it, take out the meat, turn down the heat to low, and pour in 1/2 an inch of heavy cream.

Use your spatula to scrape down that pan until it’s clean. When all of the crusty brown bits are mixed in with the heavy cream, and the fat from the chicken has mixed smoothly with the cream, and it’s thick and reduced, dump the whole bowl of chicken and juices back into the pan.

Add chicken broth until it almost covers the thighs, maybe an inch or so in the pan.

Turn up the heat to medium, and stir it all up. Add a big spoonful of honey.

No, not that much honey! Less than this… I got carried away posing the spoon. You shouldn’t have that problem.

Mix it all up, add salt, and let it cook down over medium low until the thighs are falling apart in a thick mahogany glaze.

You’ll say, Dadgumit, that is a mighty fine way to cook chicken.

Served over rice, with salad, this makes a serious winter meal.

And this is, after all, a serious winter.

Walking the Dogs

Published on January 8, 2008 in dogs. 1 Comment

My old dog and I often hike with a friend and her strapping young Newfoundland.

He’s a beast,

and she’s a faded beauty.

Deer Sex

Published on January 7, 2008 in deer herd. 1 Comment

On any given day, a herd of ten does and fawns moves through the back yard. It’s hard to tell them apart. I can recognize a big lady with twins and a scar on her leg, but the rest are just brown, fleet and mostly female. I don’t see a set of antlers in the yard from one month to the next.

The biggest doe was a shy Miss Manners until one day in late November, when she started swishing her rump provocatively. That day she didn’t look shy at all. She stood under a ponderosa pine and looked at me, and I looked at her, and her needs were unmistakeable. She was feeling it.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed this doe had one thing on her mind. A big old male stepped out of the woods and started investigating her hind end. It must have smelled just right to him, because he kept after her.

But she kept moving along, grazing and shifting her rear, looking over her shoulder and wondering why he didn’t look more like the buck she had in mind.

He was no beauty queen. He would’ve been a twelve point buck except that one of his antlers was broken off. His face was scarred up, he had tattered ears, and if he was a man he’d have faded tattoos along with big ropy muscles. This male had the heft of age, but he was not her shining prince.

And he wasn’t her only choice, either. Out of the woods steps buck number two,

eager and young with five points total. He was a sweet young thing for certain, but in truth he’d barely be doing his own laundry if he were human. He grazed next to her and asked sort of conversationally if she was interested in his help,

but she said no.

And that was lucky because yet another buck stepped onto the grass, and he was most definitely what she had in mind. My Doris Day had morphed into Mae West, and when she told that buck to come up see her sometime, she was thinking “and now is a VERY good time” so loudly that even I could hear it.

Um hmmm, she said.

Did I count ten points, she said. It surely is extremely delightful to meet you.

Uh, huh, he said.

And my shy Doris Day of a doe had sex on one side of the wagon, and she had sex on the other side of the wagon. And then she switched her tail, and he trotted off to help out other women in need: the year is long, and the mating season is oh so short.

I haven’t seen any of these bucks since that day in late November. I think perhaps neither has she. According to Wikipedia, the gestation period is 190 to 200 days, so the fawn should be here in mid to late May. So far she has been looking sleek, Mazel Tov, but the snow is deep and the winter is long. I hope she makes it through.

Out of Power

Published on January 7, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey and Snow storm. 0 Comments

The snow hasn’t stopped yet. Avalanches have closed the pass to the north and the pass to the east. Our power was out for 28 hours, along with the heat and hot water.

The mountain had 26 inches of snow in 24 hours, so after our first night with no power we all went up to the ski area for first tracks in the morning. As they say around here, we got freshies. Bob has powder skis, long wide straight Big Kahunas. But Sam and I don’t, and the deep powder was heavy enough that it’d redirect our skis on sections that weren’t steep enough. We both fell more times than you’d choose to count. It was epic, but not completely in a good way.

We got home to no heat, no light, no hot bath, no computer and a refrigerator/freezer that needed to be emptied. The coffin freezer in the cellar had gone from 3F to 27F. And it wasn’t just our road, of course, but whole swathes of the landscape. Communities to the east are still without power. People are starting to use the cots set up at the county center, and this part of Colorado had sold out of generators.

I was tired, so I went to town with Sam for food and a movie while Bob, my hero, dealt with the refrigerator. We doubled up on covers and the power came back last night.

The weight of the snow bent down the light on the barn, but that’s our only storm damage

and the turkeys didn’t seem to mind at all.

Six magpies in the Snow

Published on January 5, 2008 in Snow storm and birds. 0 Comments

It has been snowing all day, and these magpies perched on the top of the tallest tree beside the stream.

Count ‘em–six!–and one flew away.

I’ve noticed that when men look at a landscape, they want to climb to the highest point. They don’t want to walk along a stream; they want to be at the top of the mountain. Women are content to hike through a valley, but men want a different vantage point. Them and the magpies in the storm.

I was trying to get a decent shot of the stream when I realized I was on top of new ice.

It’s my dog’s job to rescue me if I get in trouble in the wilderness. But she’s an old dog now, and is lying around in the snow.

People with old dogs shouldn’t walk on thin ice.

Miss Roberta’s sour cherries

Published on January 4, 2008 in Colorado women and Small town life. 0 Comments

Miss Roberta, 94, lives alone in a house down the road. She brought dessert when she came to dinner on Christmas Eve, thanks to a barter gone wrong.

Roberta and I often discuss how different things were back when she was growing up on a ranch. These days, people prefer to buy their fruit in the supermarket. There are apple trees all through town, but those apples are piled in the alleyways for the bears to eat while people buy apples in the grocery store shipped all the way from Washington State. She just can’t understand it.

As it happens, the local bakery Bread can use any amount of local fruit with no notice, but they don’t pay: they let you have lots of bread and pastries for free. They’ll barter but they won’t buy.

When Roberta was 92, she got fixated on the dual ideas that her sour cherries were worth $40, and that the bakery would buy them. There was nothing to say about it. She paid her 65 year old handyman to strip the tree-he didn’t say a word–and I took them to the bakery. I couldn’t give her cash because then she’d be wanting me to sell her cherries next summer too, so I gave the cherries to the bakery and bought Roberta a $40 gift certificate.

Roberta is about 4′8″ and 95 pounds. She’s not a big eater and doesn’t go to the bakery. The gift certificate sat in her drawer for two years, and I remembered it after I invited her over for Christmas Eve dinner.

I offered to pick up a fancy bakery dessert if she wanted to use the gift certificate, and she was tickled by the thought. She ruffled through her desk looking for that two-year-old certificate, but it wasn’t there. And then she opened the top drawer of her dresser, and pulled it right out. At 94, she knew this day would come, and she was right.

I picked her up a Linzertorte for 12 ($18), and the gift certificate went back in her dresser drawer for another year. Miss Roberta is prepared for nearly all occasions.