Cécile Stelzer Johnson

Flora Eerschay wrote:Cécile, these are quail eggs.
We're eating the oldest hatching eggs, because the hens continue laying, and I don't need more. I just need to store them for as long as possible at the moment. Some people say that their quails have already stopped laying, but I'm still getting an egg per day from each hen.

They look big! you are obviously doing something right.

Christopher Weeks wrote:I’ve been thinking about this issue of running short on time. I normally wait for the stalks to start drying down before I do any harvesting. But that doesn’t leave very much time before the ground freezes. So I just went out and scooped up six or 8 inches of sand underneath four stalks that were only 2 to 3 feet tall just right on the edge of my patch. I still got a reasonable handful of tubers for almost no work.

Not bad. I notice you have a couple of red ones. I didn't understand "fartichokes" until I tasted those. Not that far in flavor to the white ones, but Yikes! the belly cramps!
You can probably keep working on the edge to get more, a little each day? Courage: We still have one week of temperatures  well above normal 10 F + above normal, and sunshine. You are West and North of me, but still. The weather should shine upon us for a bit longer.
Wishing the best for you!

Flora Eerschay wrote:Three hatching eggs which have spent a week in the portable cooler were cooked with two eggs that went straight to a normal fridge (these were 2 days old), and they all looked and tasted the same.
At the moment there are approximately 20-24 hatching eggs in the cooler, and if hens continue laying, I can keep replacing the oldest eggs and they will be not older than a week. So if the hens stop laying, the hatching eggs can be stored for 10 days and the oldest will be 17 days old. Or they will ruin my math by being inconsistent ;)
Anyway, we had guests so I made a fancy dish with sheep ricotta, garden herbs and flowers!

Are they quail eggs, or pigeons eggs or chicken eggs? The size says chicken eggs, (but I'm not sure  because we were talking quails and pigeons). My other question is: why are you eating your "hatching eggs"? (Aren't hatching eggs the ones that were carefully selected for hatching?) after one week, all cooled eggs will have no living embryo but should still be delicious.
This looks like a really delicious dish. Pretty fancy too. It's a good choice to do them hard boiled after about 10 days because the shell will separate more easily than with fresher eggs.

Timothy Norton wrote:We are starting to approach the end of my gardening season and it is about time that I hand my enclosed garden space over to the hens.
I'm starting to get some weeds popping up in my woodchip pathways, this indicates to me that we may have some rich compost built up that will need harvesting. I will start digging up the pathways to sift and spread the material into the beds after they have been picked over. however need to get ahold of some new carbon rich material to put into the pathways.

My ladies who are just about to lay have been merged with the old flock with minimal pecking and quarrelling about the best roosting spot, so I'm happy about that. The 11 roosters remaining have been placed on garden tearing duty. They found the comfrey bed, unfortunately, and there are not enough of them for the surface to be cleaned, but they are at work every day.
What I did wrong is that I didn't put them on scratching garden early enough: There are some mighty tall weeds and they have trouble even trampling them. I wish there was a chicken/ turkey, duck renting outfit in the area to help with this cleaning chore in the garden!
I placed some carpeting materials in some paths, some chips in others. It takes about 3 years for the chips to get integrated, then I can flip them into the neighboring beds.
We are lucky here: The town demand that everyone who has leaves rake them and place them in paper sacks along the streets. So right around now, when the maples are just starting to turn color, I'm making a mental note of where there are maples etc.. Later, I'll swoop by with my Murano and pick up the sacs [with the owner's permission, of course -some of the smarter folks put their leaves in a pile in the back for their [tiny] garden]. Drats!
Last year, I got 92 bags [the big kind, like 55 gallon bags]. With one of these Ryobi vacuuming tools, I suck and shred the leaves to add to the garden as mulch for some bushes.
I started from essentially zero good soil (just sand). Now, I'm happy to report that I have almost a foot of pretty darn good soil... on top of 35 ft of sand.

Julie Baghaoui wrote:Can someone speak to the save vitamins part of this? I’ve always heard the opposite, and frankly it’s the reason I’ve avoided PCs for so long, is that they destroy more vitamins in the food given the higher heating point. Does it depend on the vitamin?

Nutritionfacts.org says that generally, pressure cooking is better from a nutritional standpoint, although it depends on the food being processed.
Because it uses less water than boiling and the cooking time is less, pressure cooking seems to preserve more of the vitamins, with Vitamin C being the most easily destroyed, so thanks for the question: I didn't know that and I had to look it up.
https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/are-nutrients-preserved-by-pressure-cooking/

If you are as lazy as I am, cost conscious and also concerned with the environment, it will only be a question of time before you fall in love with cooking all sorts of things with the pressure cooker for safe keeping.
Every 2-3 years, I change my older laying hens for baby chicks that will grow strong during the winter, sheltered from predators and start laying in the spring.
A 2 year old hen is a stewing hen, so she is the perfect candidate for chicken soup.
I do it in batches. I have a big pressure cooker, so I can pack 7-9 hens whole. [Gizzards, heart and feet are set aside during the butchering. I place the flat thing with holes first in the pressure cooker. I have never had one hen stuck to the bottom, but I'm not taking chances.
Then I add the whole chickens, a bit of water [no salt at this time: it will be added later] and pressure cook on high for 30-40 minutes.
I prefer to let the pressure go back to zero on its own, but depressurizing suddenly could suck the juice out of the chicken, but it isn't as important at this stage because the chicken meat is still marinating in the juice. So that is day one.
On day 2, I pick the meat from the bones. Don't throw away the juices! I usually have a large stainless steel bowl in which I place the meat. You can still keep the bones for broth, but that's another recipe. I discard the skin and fat [and give it to my chickens: I don't have a dog or a cat]
You will notice that I didn't add any veggies, onions or seasonings. That's because I may do different recipes, my choice, on day 2.
If I only want chicken in the jars [wide mouth pints, you will save yourself some grief!], I put salt and pepper in the scalded jars then ad the meat, any other spices I like, veggies if you want, and proceed to pack the meat. [a bit of wine will make the meat scrumptiously tender!] Tighten the lids.
Process, again with the pressure canner, and let it cool before you take the jars out. Sudden depressurization isn't good with jars in the canner: the juice goes out and you risk having half filled jars.
If I have too much juice, I will can an assortment of veggies along with the extra chicken juice, separately and if I took the time to break the chicken bones and roasted them a bit, I will filter the bone broth and add that bone broth to the veggies.
It is nice to have jars with just meat and jars with just veggies. We take one of each and do a monster soup when it's cold outside.
Every 4 years, I make sauerkraut the old fashioned way: Just add salt, carefully layered with shredded cabbage, in a big crock. You can go with a recipe, but a better idea is to taste the slaw once in a while. If it tastes right for coleslaw, it will make great sauerkraut. It is easier to cold pack the sauerkraut in jars than cook it first.  And there too: Wide mouth jars work best. I've done it both ways, but I was afraid to run out of juice in the evaporation by heating it before hot packing it.
Finally, when I found some good bacon, or some decent priced  ham, cubed, I made some Boston baked beans. It turned out pretty good: I only have to add one tablespoon of brown sugar as the following recipe needed to be 'adjusted' to my taste.. Then, it tasted just right.
The beans need to be cooked till tender first [Navy beans].
Doing them in the oven gives good results, but I preferred to do them in a very large slow cooker. I felt I had more control over the heat and the speed of cooking... this is the recipe I used:
https://www.seriouseats.com/boston-baked-beans-recipe

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:You do not mention deer pressure, and that's surprising to me because they love the young tips as much as I love asparagus, and they will keep coming night after night, snipping everything they can in the spring. That will eventually kill a patch that is not fenced, as the plant is never allowed to grow to its full stature, so it cannot grow tubers either.
...
If you are a hunter, deer love sunchokes almost as much as they love apples... Just saying...

This remains a fascinating distinction to me. We have substantial deer pressure. They ruin any apple trees left small and unfenced. They eat the hell out of my brassicas, including digging up turnips after the first couple freezes. I have never once seen any sign that the deer have the slightest interest in sunchokes.

They ruin any tree that's not fenced! If the caliper is around 2-3", they strip the bark, or just lay on top to get at the top/juicier branches & buds. In the spring, they go after the young sunchoke plants as they emerge. In the fall, if you have a hunting stand where baiting is permitted, just put out a few sunchokes. Yep.
They will also go after brassicas like turnips as long as the ground isn't frozen too hard. I see that you are close to Duluth. You may get early snows that partially insulate the ground, but in a dry winter, yep, I see that it could freeze pretty deep. 80" is the legal footing for buildings, but I'm not sure it corresponds exactly with depth of frost in the ground. I suspect they demand that footing because it *could* happen. Wisconsin code requires footings to be placed below the frost line or at least 48 inches deep, whichever is greater.
In central Wisconsin, the frost depth last winter (2023–2024) likely went down more than 2 feet, but was unusually shallow due to record-breaking warm temperatures and below-normal snowfall.
Essentially, it is a crap shoot. Some winters have been bitterly cold and other winters, rather balmy. I pray for a couple of early snowfalls that insulate the ground: then it doesn't freeze too deep.
If you get lake snows, that can change the profile too. That's the beauty of investing in crops: Even if it doesn't turn out, you don't have too much invested.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Blaine Clark wrote:They were, however so obnoxiously turnipy/herbal flavored that one tuber chunked into a large soup pot nearly overpowered the soup. I got rid of them.

I kind of like best the ones that taste like pine-sap and medicine. :)

I've heard before that some taste a bit like pine, never like turnip. Because of the inulin in them, they taste very much like expensive artichokes to me, especially if harvested after a good frost.
It would be interesting to find out if the cause of the off flavor is caused by [???] soil amendments? a different cultivar? drought or rainy season? timing of harvest?

Christopher Weeks wrote:This is my second patch of sunchokes. They were planted late fall of 2023. It's 2/3 Lofthouse sunchokes and 1/3 mixed others. I only harvested a few around the back right (in this picture) edge last fall. Last year they grew fewer plants, but each seemed more vigorous -- thicker stalks, taller, more flowers.

What happens to a patch that you don't harvest? Once? After years? And what's the yield like after neglect? I'm trying to gauge how important it is to disrupt the whole patch.

And if you don't have especially friable soil, how do you harvest at a reasonable speed? I find this takes hours of hard work to get relatively few. I have a half inch of soil, eight inches of sand(y loam), and then dozens of feet of sand and rocks that have compacted somehow even without much clay.

Yes, that is normal: "Last year they grew fewer plants, but each seemed more vigorous -- thicker stalks, taller, more flowers."
The picture shows very crowded sunchokes. Once you harvest a few, that leaves room for others; it disturbs the soil, making it easier for new sunchokes to enter and thrive, pushing through unoccupied soil.
"I'm trying to gauge how important it is to disrupt the whole patch". It is quite important. If you do not harvest, they tend to multiply erratically and they eventually overcrowd each other, leading to diminished yields, smaller tubers, more contorted tubers. You say you have loam under there: These sunchokes should do especially well. The lower strata, however, being sand and rock, may make it devilishly hard to harvest the tubers.
You do not mention deer pressure, and that's surprising to me because they love the young tips as much as I love asparagus, and they will keep coming night after night, snipping everything they can in the spring. That will eventually kill a patch that is not fenced, as the plant is never allowed to grow to its full stature, so it cannot grow tubers either.
The patch also needs a little TLC: Whenever a plant grows, it takes specific nutrients from the ground. They need to be replaced, or there will not be enough of the *right* nutrients for tubers to grow.. [That's why crop rotation].
"If you don't have especially friable soil, how do you harvest at a reasonable speed?"
Hmmm why is speed important to you? You can take it easy with this crop, as you can harvest whenever the ground isn't frozen...
The main problem with sunchokes is: "Have roots, will travel!". I had some that would spread 6 ft in every direction and 3 ft down [at least!] Some may have gone deeper, but I did find some 3 ft deep. If they are planted close, their roots mingle, adding to the trouble! [Ask Oikos, if they are still in business: they had some cultivars that didn't stray too far from momma.]
I find it very important to grow them in large 1/2  of those blue 55 gallon barrels, where they cannot spread. I get to choose the soil [I just have to amend my sandbox a bit and water, so I can usually dig them out by hand], and they can't go farther than the barrel where they are confined. At harvest time, I do one barrel at a time, and I just use my hands. If I don't get the whole thing harvested, there are quite a few days, even after frost, when I can dig for them. I can cover them if it rains a lot, because turning over a half barrel that is full of wet soil is too hard for me to do!
Another point: I try to harvest every one of them, as the first year, the young tubers will be relatively round. The second year, a tuber that is left in will start to grow its own roots in a tetra shaped fashion.[some up, some down, some left, some right] That tuber will still be good to harvest,[They survive, even in a barrel outside in Wisconsin zone 4b winters] but it will have all sorts of growths, arranged  along 4 "spines" so to speak, going from front to back. That will make it harder to use, as you may have some crevices where soil lodges..
I think that you may be dreaming of a food forest that you could harvest only when and if you want to? This crop is relatively easy, but it doesn't *thrive* on neglect. With the 10 half barrels or so that I use, I can grow much more than I need, giving some to my chickens as well, and harvest is EASY. I harvest in the fall, in the winter as long as the ground isn't frozen, and I harvest in the spring too.
I'm glad I made the switch from "in the open ground" to in barrels. I also have more room for the other things I want to plant, so it's a win-win for me.
If you are a hunter, deer love sunchokes almost as much as they love apples... Just saying...

Matt McSpadden wrote:I would consider how long it would take that bird to lay as many eggs as they would normally sit on... and use that length of time as the standard.
For instance an average hen lays 1 egg a day and can sit on 12-15 eggs at a time. I would not want to store the hatching eggs more than 15 days.
Google says quail lay about 1 egg a day, and can sit on 8-12 eggs at a time. I personally would not want to store them for longer than 12 days.

My only experience is with chicken eggs. Hens often make communal nests, which enables the farmer to get enough in a couple of days to bother incubating, so storage should not even enter the picture. I would not store them at all if I can. 3-4 days in a warmish spot is the most I'd consider. I know I could store them longer, but why take the risk?
Eggs have to incubate 21 days, so, let's say you get eggs from 2 hens, and wait until there are 15 to incubate, the hatch would stretch well over 21 days. [Once they are born, she may lose interest if the hatching lasts too long: Like all species, she will prioritize the living over the not yet born, take them to food, water, an start teaching them. Most good broodies will give it a great effort though.
Of course, don't refrigerate and don't put in a sunny window. (It goes without saying that the longer you wait to put in in an incubator, the worse results you are likely to get).
But with a hen incubating her own, Matt is right on the money. The hens can't really take good care of more than 15, so it's no use allowing more than that: It stresses the hen: mark them and don't let her sit on more eggs than 15. (Besides the hen's ability to cover *all* the eggs, she also has to turn them and sort out the bad ones, clean the nest...
More critical, I feel, in a successful incubation, is the choice of the perfect eggs:
Don't use eggs that were dirty and you had to wash.
Don't use very large eggs: If they have a double yolk, they won't hatch a bigger chick. They will have to compete for the very limited space and food in the egg. Very rarely, they will hatch but be unhealthy. Reptiles and birds lay eggs, and they are limited by the prison they are in. It is an advantage of mammals to have a womb that can stretch to accommodate ,more babies.
Use eggs that are as round as possible: Eggs that are abnormally elongated will make it hard for the hatchling to get out.
Finally, do a candling on the first day: That will allow you to spot an eggs with a weak or porous shell; it looks dark with all sorts of little pin holes [that don't go all the way through, of course]. Darker eggs are harder to diagnose too, except for the porous ones. You have to experience a few hatches to be able to discern blood vessels in the darker ones.