Bumbling toward self-sufficiency in the wilds of Cape Cod
When we lived in New York, drought was an abstract concept. I understood that, for people across large swaths of the world, it meant a serious threat to lives and livelihoods, but for us it meant that the weather was nice and that we didn’t flush the toilet. Now, though, I’m getting just the faintest [...]
A week and a half ago, when I wrote about our efforts to keep our turkeys confined to their pen during the day and their treehouse at night, I was leaning toward just letting them run free, trusting that a regular food supply would keep them coming back, and their two months with us would [...]
It was about a week ago that Kevin finished building the turkey pen, and it’s beautiful.
The fence is made from cattle panels, fortified by chicken wire on the bottom half, so the turkeys can’t squeeze through the holes. The gate is made with 1×3 lumber, with a portion of a cattle panel, and attached to [...]
This morning, right after we found the tomato that was finally ripe but now had a huge bite taken out of it, we saw the tell-tale signs of hornworm damage – the denuded stems, the gnawed-on leaves.
Hornworms have evolved to look very much like the plants they eat, so they’re hard to spot. Kevin and [...]
We have an egg problem.
Production has dropped to just one or two eggs a day. At first, we thought it was just that the chickens are molting. Then we realized we had an egg-eater.
We occasionally found a broken egg in the nest box, but we put it down to accident. These things happen. Eventually, it [...]
Turkeys are reputed to be so stupid that they’ll drown by looking up in a rainstorm. This seems to be a wive’s tale, but don’t go feeling any vindication on turkeys’ behalf. They apparently are so stupid that will drown in their water dish simply because they can’t figure out to lift their head out [...]
This morning, Kevin opened the nest boxes and found a very mysterious object. It was about the size of a small egg, pink and meaty, mottled with what looks like fat.
All the chickens seem normal and healthy. They’re eating, and pecking, and dust bathing. Nobody’s obviously at death’s door.
But this clearly came out of a [...]
It was back in 1965 when Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson did their now-famous experiment about the effect that teacher expectations have on student performance. They gave an intelligence test to a whole schoolful of elementary school students, and then told their teachers that 20% of them were marked for extraordinary intellectual growth and achievement [...]
I have exactly one memory of day camp: canned spaghetti.
I couldn’t tell you a single activity, my age at the time, or even where the camp was. All I remember was that I was excited when I learned there was spaghetti for lunch – until I tasted it. It was vile. Mushy, bland, and disgusting. [...]
Tamar Haspel has been writing about food and health for over a decade. She recently moved from Manhattan to Cape Cod. She’s adjusting well. [Read More…]
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