One woman's junk is another woman's treasure. UPDATED!! Grain mill - no dice. :(

My old mixer says Rival on the side, but it is a Kenwood, made in the UK.  It is about 20 years old, and I have loved it since the first time I hit the "ON" button.  Now that I have a home bakery, I am making loaves and loaves of bread with it.  I can knead the dough for six baguettes at once.  It has paid for itself many times over.

It has survived two trips onto the floor when I turned my back on it while using it to knead bread dough.  First time, Allen, my housekeeper extraordinaire, put it back together.  Second time, I fixed it.  And it worked fine after both accidents.  But in the last year, it has been slowing down.  It makes a nasty noise sometimes, so I know it is time to replace.

Oil leaks stained the housing

A little masking tape holds a cover on.

But she was still my workhorse!

Alas,  a new one similar to mine can only be had from the UK, as they are no longer distributed in the US.  DeLonghi used the design for a bit, but there were many complaints about their machine.  Made in China.  Any questions?

I got into discussion with other Kenwood diehard fans on Amazon.  The only one listed there said not available, and no guess as to when or IF they would carry it again.  I tried eBay, but nothing there.  Someone suggested I try eBay UK, but they were for 220V only, so those wouldn't work.  And the price!  I paid around $350 for mine 20 years ago, and now they are around £450.  Multiply that times 1.62 for the bad news.  And what is worse, they are now farming out manufacturing to - you guessed it - China!

I tried eBay US again, and lo and behold! there was a Kenwood, only $99 opening bid.  Missing a dough hook, but with a little research, I knew my hook would work.  The copy said wife used it once, thought it took up too much space (her junk), so it had sat in the back of a closet for years.  Then, with bated breath, I asked the seller the magic question - was it built in China or the UK.  The UK!  I started bidding and won at $153 (my treasure!).  

One can use many attachments on this machine, which I never bought for my old one.  Another piece of my equipment that is not going to last much longer is my grain mill.  It has two granite wheels, and perhaps I could get it fixed, but I decided to check out the grain mill attachment for this machine.  Alas, it is now obsolete.  eBay to the rescue!  I found one, built in 1970.  Ah, perfect!  I checked out what part numbers it would work on, and mine was on the list.  I noticed that this mill had been listed before, so I thought I would take a chance and bid a little under his low bid, since it said "best offer."  An hour later, I got an email saying it was mine!  Now I can hope it works.  I used the new mixer this morning, made four loaves of bread, and it worked like a charm!

UPDATE!  Alas, the grain mill did not fit on my machine.  I thought I did my research, but it was listed for more machines than it would actually work with.  It's back to the PO with it right now.  :(  I wonder how many other people have bought it and sent it back.  Sigh . . .

Isn't she beautiful?

 

First batch - beautiful dough!

Broken down and weighed into four loaves

First baguettes from new mixer.

Steak over fire

Tonight I wanted to try a recipe for grilled steak with garlic butter sauce.  My grill pan makes a mess on the stove, and frankly it is too damned cold to be grilling on the gas grill out on my screen porch.

Then I realized I have two wood fires going.  I looked them over and decided that the fire in my soapstone stove in the bedroom looked just about right, nice coals, good and hot.  I ran out to the garage and got a small devise for cooking over campfires.  It was my mom's and I was the lucky kid who inherited it.  I brought it in and put it in the stove to get it hot before putting the steak in it (that keeps the meat from sticking).

On went the steak.  The rest is history, including the steak.

Into the stove

Preparing the garlic butter sauce

All done - with a few capers added

Ready

Yum!

Who could ask for anything more?

My friend the inventor

My friend Mel, helpful and organized person that she is, loves to organize people's houses, including garages.  She had a problem in garages, despairing of trying to organize tools inexpensively, and in a manner that would accommodate different types and sizes of tools.  Straightening and organizing for people when you know the tools won't go back where they came from for long seemed fruitless.

Mel is a manufacturing Black Belt, trained at Honeywell, where we both worked at one time.  She is good.  When she is visiting me, she is constantly looking at ways to improve my work flow.  It is just her nature.  And it being her nature to solve problems, she came up with an invention and (after waiting on the patent) is finally is able to launch her product, just in time for the holidays.  Seems like a great gift for people who have a lot of tools.  I'm thinking of buying a couple to put in kitchen drawers for my kitchen tools that frequently go missing! 

This is such an ingenious idea!  I wish her much success.   Go here to see how ToolLodge works.

I hope many of you decide to try one out.  What a unique gift, for yourself or for that person with disorganized tool drawers. Happy shopping.

 

Pain? What pain?

I take a reading daily to see whether or not I am in ketosis (have been 99% of the time for the last four years as of January), and this morning I wasn't surprised to see a reading of 40.  I rarely attain that.  One little cheat, and I'm at 15, sometimes 5, and occasionally I drop out altogether.  What is interesting is that I slept well last night, had absolutely NO pain, shoulder was quiet, bursitis in hip was a non-issue.  My mind has been clear and focused all day.

I wonder how much "illness" could be cured by eating a diet high in fat and low in carbohydrates.  If it is true that insulin resistance is the precursor of nearly all of our Western physical ills, then we need to quit pushing that latest food plate (replaced the ridiculous pyramid) that is so heavy on grains.  I know more people who can't tolerate gluten.  Where is gluten?  In grain!  Why do we need it?  I don't think we do.

On top of that, there now is a growing body of evidence that a low carbohydrate diet can affect mood.  How much better to eat a steak topped with blue cheese, maybe a lettuce salad heavy on the dressing and a mess of greens cooked in bacon grease.  Then top it off with a shot of whiskey (no beer or wine, please, they are full of carbohydrates).  All of those things we were told not to eat - and they have moved to the top of the list of GOOD foods.  Well, maybe not the whiskey, but I did include that so that you could see that giving up beer and wine isn't all bad.  ;-)


Follow this link if you want to read more, lest you think I am speaking off the cuff.  The use of ketogenic diets for better health

Nix the potatoes, rice, pasta and fruit, bring on the butter, the meat and the greens.  Try it.  You might like it. 

My sourdough died!

I noticed that my sourdough wasn't bubbling as much as usual when I went to make my sourdough rye for Purple Porch last week.  I went ahead with the process and ended up with five pounds of soggy wet rye flour that wasn't going anywhere!

I spread it out on a jelly roll pan and baked it for the chickens and dogs, then started the long task of making more.  I finely ground more organic rye berries and mixed a cup of the flour with a cup of water.  (If you are going to try this, don't use city water, as it has some stuff in it that will prevent the sourdough from forming.)

I beat it for a minute or two, then threw in six big, fat organic grapes, unwashed.  I wanted that bloom on the skin of the grape - that's yeast!  I covered the bowl with cheesecloth so that any yeast floating around in the kitchen would make it into the dough, but the bugs wouldn't.

Last time I made sourdough, which was three or four years ago, it failed on the first try, then took nearly a week to get going.  This was bubbling within three days.  I fished out the grapes and then added a couple of tablespoons of rye flour each day for three days, beating it well after each addition.

This morning, I used all but enough for another starter to make rye bread.  It looks beautiful!!  I wonder if the old sourdough was wearing out and I just didn't realize it.  I won't know until the bread is baked tomorrow if it is as good as the old batch was.  Sure hope so!!

Food and health

I've been thinking about food and health.  We all have our opinions - low carb, low fat, grass fed meat, raw milk, no dairy, vegetarian, vegan - the list goes on and on.  And everyone can find plenty of "data" to back up their opinions.  Dr. Weston A. Price (my food guru) studied long lived peoples all over the world, and something that stood out was that healthy indigenous peoples ate copious amounts of fat (no polyunsaturated fat), raw milk and fermented food /soaked grains.  And when these healthy people were introduced to our Western diet, full of sugar and processed foods, they became ill.  So it sounds like a pretty resounding endorsement for upping our fat intake and cutting out sugar, both of which I have done.

However (and isn't there always a "however"?), even though this old body just can't tolerate sugar and carbohydrates in general, I know people who can, who remain slim in spite of indulging in potatoes and apples, who don't suffer from depression after eating a couple of cookies, who don't have to use lettuce in place of bread when making a sandwich, and who don't make their pizza dough out of shredded cheese and eggs.  (Yup, I do that, and it is REALLY good.)

I know one woman who couldn't wait to get out of her household as a teenager so she wouldn't be forced to eat meat anymore; can't stand it, hasn't eaten a bite of it since leaving for college.  She is slim, energetic and healthy.  So there you have it.  No single magic bullet so far as food and health are concerned.

I'm thinking, "Perhaps it is something else altogether."  Are there other reasons, such as the Western lifestyle that goes with the Western diet?  I was in the bookstore perusing cookbooks.  And I was thinking of how many famous cooks live to a ripe old age.

• James Beard - died at 82, and he ate plenty of bread!
• Julia Child - died at 92, and ate plenty of butter
• François Massialot - died at 77 in the 18th century, French chef and cookbook author 
• Georges Auguste Escoffier - died at 88 in the 20th century
•  Prosper Montagne - died at 83 in 1948, author of Larousse gastronomique
• Jacques Pépin - 77 and still going strong

I'm having a hard time finding a truly fine chef who checked out early from poor health.

What do/did they have in common?  They ate well.  The ingredients were good, the methods of cooking were good, and the end result was a feast for the eyes and the nose as well as the taste buds.  And they were doing what they loved - including loving to eat.

The age-old question "Do you eat to live or live to eat?" seems to imply, at least to me, that perhaps some of us, such as I, are too focused on food, that the healthiest among us just eat when hungry, when it is time, and eat what is available in the fridge and cupboard.

I am rethinking that attitude of mine - perhaps it is the "live to eat" part that is the most important.  I love to cook.  I love to shop for food.  I am so delighted that I work at the Farmers Market in South Bend, and belong to Purple Porch, and live on a certified organic farm so that I can eat my own grass fed meat, drink raw milk, make my own cheese, eat eggs from free range chickens.   Food is a daily delight in my life.

Yup, I live to eat, and I think perhaps that is a good thing!  And I love what I do to earn my living - very much associated with food.  Now it is time to cook another great breakfast - bacon from Berkshire pigs raised right here on organic feed, eggs collected yesterday from my friends the hens, a cup of espresso, and some thick and luscious kefir made from raw milk from cows I am looking at.

Bon appetit.  

Rest in peace . . .

Clay usually makes sure that Susie is in the Moop at night, but he must have been in a hurry last night.  She hides underneath, and I often have to reach under for her or chase her out with the handle of the broom rake. 

This morning, there were a few remaining bits of her under the truck.

I am very sad.  She was a beautiful pullet, and my favorite of all the chicks born this year.

The chicks are growing up!

Goldie and the Twins have been on their own since Goldie went back to the flock.  We have been putting them in a tote with a lid and carrying them from their nest in the water tank in the old barn to the Moop each night, trying to get them used to being with the flock.  The hens are not very nice to them.  When they hop out of the Moop in the morning, their mission is to find a place in the fence that they can squeeze through, and still being small enough, they find one.  Then they run around outside the chicken run all day, free from the pecking and abuse of the older hens.  Then the cycle starts over again, and we haul them back to the Moop the next evening.

Late yesterday afternoon, I opened up the gate into the chicken run and closed all of the doors into the old barn, hoping that the chicks would go into the Moop on their own, since access to their nest was blocked.   Then at dusk I sneaked out to the Moop to see what was happening.

Little Susie was in the Moop!  Such a smart little girl!!  The Twins were bedded down under the Moop, and it took Clay and me working at it a few minutes to get them both out and put inside the Moop, but we got it done.  We will do the same thing tonight and hope for the best. 

Another batch of chicks is on its way to being part of the larger flock.  :)

Fridays off - it's like summer vacation, only in the fall!

The Farmers Market in South Bend is open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, year round.  I look forward to being there.  It is a great place to be three days a week. However . . .

April through September, we are open on Fridays as well.  That extra day seems to push it from a pleasure to a job, if you know what I mean!

On Tuesday and Thursday, Annemarie, whose mother has the booth next to me, opens for me and works at my booth until I come in with the raw milk and market baskets at about 11:00 am. But on Fridays, Annemarie is not there.  Having your booth open on Friday is voluntary, so many are empty. 

Fridays are pretty dead; being late is not a big deal.  I try to get there by 9:30, but I usually roll in an hour later.  The lunch counter at the market is pretty awesome, and we have many regulars who are there every day, so most of my business occurs over the lunch hour.  But that doesn't mean I'm not busy.  It is the perfect time to dust jars on the shelve, do inventory, make shopping lists and sometimes get out from behind the booth and do a little shopping myself.  Friday has its redeeming qualities.

Today is the first Friday off, and it is quite lovely!  I'm playing catch-up with paperwork, and will be heading down to the soap room when I'm done with lunch.  Today I need to make Belly Butter, Drummer's Hands and Organic Yarrow Cream.  It will be nice to have the luxury of getting this stuff done now, instead of cramming it into my evening, or worse yet scurrying around in the morning trying to make sure the products are ready to go by the time I leave.  No late arrivals on Saturday!  I'm out the door by 7:00 at the latest, and it means getting up by 4:30 if I have product to make before I leave.  Ugh!!  But not tomorrow.  I can "sleep in," alarm won't go off until about 5:45.  Yup, I love my Fridays off.

Filling horns

Yesterday we did our semi-annual job of spreading BD-500 on the land here.  It is our only fertilizer application on the pastures, other than what the dairy herd is doing naturally.

We fill horns with our own manure in the fall, then bury the horns until spring, when we dig them up for our first application.  The composted manure is knocked out of about half of the horns and the rest stay underground until our fall task.  We usually have 15 to 20 people here, and each person gets a bucket with about three gallons of water in it and a stick.  I put a fourth cup of this horn manure into each pail, and each person gets busy creating vortices and chaos in the bucket for an hour. 

At the end of the hour, we really don't care much about the manure, the remains of which have sunk to the bottom of the pail.  What we do care about is the energized water, which is applied with pine boughs, cut from the trees here on the farm.  That one fourth of horn manure is good for fertilizing up to one acre, a pretty amazing feat.

We did all 30 paddocks, plus my greenhouse and gardens yesterday.  Oh, and the three calf pens as well.  Can't forget about them!

Tina never misses this operation, but yesterday she couldn't be here.  She is always the one in charge of refilling the horns for next year's applications.  Well, I was saving that job for her, but Ava insisted that she and her dad could fill them.  So I sent them out with spoons and instructions.  They hooked up with Kristina and her two kids Keira and Dane, and before I knew it, the job was done!  The kids had a ball, and it was nice to know that everything got completed in that one afternoon.  Here are some pics of the kids burying the filled horns, as well as some pictures of BD-500 days past.

News from the farm

Things have been hectic lately.  Kim is such an integral part of this farm!  He got double pneumonia, spent nearly a week in the hospital, then couldn't work for several more days.  He came back on light duty last week, but it was obvious that he couldn't work more than a couple of hours, then had to go home to rest.  Thank goodness for Jake, a high school senior who was here every morning at 5:30 before school, to fill in for Kim in the dairy barn.

Little by little, Kim has been training Clay to do more of the work around here.  Clay is really shining!  He is even moving the cows from paddock to paddock now.  He is also doing nearly all of my picking from the garden since Androo left.  And he is picking up more duties in the greenhouse.  Clay has really blossomed in his seven years here at the farm.

Goldie's three chicks are learning to go to the Moop to sleep at night.  Of course, they need a little help.  I put them in a tote with a lid when they bed down in the water tank in the old barn, then haul them to the Moop.  Night before last, it was a little too light when Clay and I moved them, and they jumped back out of the Moop.  I thought I would have to start the procedure over, but lo and behold I saw one of them jump into the Moop.  I checked in the back of it, and there they were, all three of them hunkered down on the floor. 

Last night, I carried them to the Moop in the tote, lifted them out one by one and set them on a roost, and they stayed!  Hopefully soon they will be completely integrated into the bigger flock.  I am pretty sure that Little Susie is properly named and is a pullet.  The other two are a breed I am not used to, and it is a crap shoot.  I can hope for some hens out of the six chicks that were born here this year.  The three that hatched on June 2 should be starting to lay within a few weeks if they are pullets.  I have not heard any of them crowing, so I can hope!  I'm looking for those first small pullet eggs.  In the chicken world, the boys are not so valuable.  And since I can't bear to butcher them, I will have to sell them.  I already have four roosters, and that is about enough for the size of my flock.

The calves are growing!  Scrappy was born in February and is quite big.  Big Ben was always big from day one, and he is keeping up with Scrappy.  Eddie is a little smaller, and of course Lily is the smallest, a beautiful heifer born the latest.

My business at both Purple Porch and the South Bend Farmers Market are thriving this year in spite of the poor production in the garden.  I'm still selling frozen pork from the pig project.  So all in all, receipts are up quite a bit from last year.  Every little bit counts!

Farming is hard work, but the rewards are great.

This year's garden

I just spent an hour (I don't really have an hour for such things) compiling pictures of gardens past.  I want to show it to Kim.  He keeps telling me that we will get past this year of disasters in the garden, and all will be well next year.  I want him to see what beautiful gardens I had in the past.  And for the most part, Androo, Clay and I did them alone!

This year we had a lot of people working the garden, but it was only because we were playing catch-up, after finally realizing that my former farming partner was not going to provide the labor for anything that he didn't feel like doing.  He's an idea man, a dreamer.  The winter greenhouse turned out to be a good thing, but everything else he started was half finished when he finally left.  And that meant the spring greenhouse was a disaster - about 5% to 10% germination - and by mid-April the garden wasn't even cleared yet of last year's debris, much less prepped and planted for this year's early crops.

So we have been digging out of a hole for months.  I called to see if Androo could spare any time, and lo and behold he could.  He singlehandedly resurrected the garden, and I managed to eke out enough product to take care of my one restaurant account plus 10 members in the CSA.  We had 17 last year, and I wanted to increase to 25 this year.  But there is no way that could have happened given the poor garden and greenhouse this year.  Besides, by the time I had enough produce to start selling my Market Basket packages, most people who want to be in a CSA had signed up somewhere else!

I know Androo was upset by the state of the garden, but he had no reason to be.  Given what he started with, I am so very thankful for everything he did.  I retained my restaurant account, I have made most (it's never ALL) of my CSA members happy and have been doing a booming business at Purple Porch each week.  I have sold or used for myself at least 90% of what I get out of the garden, and the chickens happily take care of the rest.

So why am I messing with a collage of gardens past?  Because I want to be reminded that we can do it - next year's garden will be the best ever!

Blessed rain!!!

Since June 30, my farm has gotten only 4.75" of rain, until last night, that is.

In July, rainfall totalled two inches, in August 2.75", and in September a big fat zero!  Pitiful!  Thank goodness we have 30 paddocks for the cows to graze on, so we made it through July and August with little affect on our milk production.  However, by September, every paddock had been grazed at least twice, and what grass was left was brown and crunchy. 

We got a shipment of hay yesterday - $875, that is what this drought is costing us.  But last night, the clouds opened.  I am about to head out to the rain gage in my pj's, since the TV report said rainfall is spotty, ranging from 0.16" in South Bend to nearly 2" in Valparaiso.  My farm falls between those two, so I am hoping for something closer to the higher number.  I'm off to the rain gage!

So just got back in the house - 7/8" of rain, and more to come.  The garden will love it, the grass will love it, the shareholders will love it.  Rain means more milk.  And the cows munched on fresh hay all day yesterday.  Life is good.

Goldie has retired from the mama job

Late yesterday afternoon, Goldie ran frantically back and forth in front of the chicken run.  I finally broke down and let her in.  Chicks were not with her.

At dusk, I went to the barn to see if by any chance the chicks went back there on their own.  Yup, they did.  They seemed quite settled in, no crying for mama.  And there were two eggs in there!!  Goldie is laying again, and she has definitely retired from her mama job.

It has been so fascinating to watch this process.  Listening to her talk to them made me even more aware of how many different sounds a hen can make when tending to her family.  I watched Goldie break up a piece of cheese I gave her into three pretty equal parts and lay them in front of the chicks.  I saw her take after both of my dogs when they got too close, and I had no worries that they would harm those chicks!  Goldie would take care of them!!!  She is such a good mom.  But she also knew when it was time to cut the ties.

I am looking forward to moving to my river house in town - meeting with the kitchen contractor this afternoon, and I'm excited about that.  However, I am not excited about leaving the chickens when the farm sells.  They have taught me so much, and it will be a sad day when I tell them good-bye.

My heart is breaking.

My heart is breaking.  Goldie is done with the chicks.  She is trying to get back with the flock, and the chicks are still just a little too small to put with them.  She has abandoned them today, and they are all peeping and looking for her.  I can't find her.  If I do, I will lock her in the barn with them, at least for today.

Kim and Clay were working on the chicken run, cleaning out trees and brush to put up new deer netting over the top.  Kim is in the hospital now, won't be out for days, and he will not be in any shape to work on the chicken run for a while.  He pushed himself too hard, and I feel guilty about it.  There is always too much do around here, and Kim is so conscientious!  But now he is paying the price.  Kim, get well soon!  Hope you are feeling better today.

I have hired a new person to fill in at least for a bit, until Kim is back on his feet, but I don't really have time to explain what needs to be done before I leave for market today.  Maybe tomorrow.  Then I can put Goldie AND her chicks into the big chicken run, and hopefully the hawks will leave them alone.

I just checked again, and I cannot find Goldie anywhere.  Of course, I always worry that the worst happened.  I hope no wild critter got her!

Looking for mama.

Looking for mama.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side.

 

Little Susie and the Twins are one month old today!!

Pot of gold in a pepper

A few years ago, my meter reader stopped to talk to me while I was working in the greenhouse.  He told me about this wonderful pepper that his family had grown for years, called a Melrose.  He gave me some seeds the next time he was at the farm and told me the history of these peppers.  When many Italian farmers migrated to Melrose Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, they brought with them seeds for these wonderful sweet red peppers.  Those farmers brought bushels of them to the farmers' market in Melrose Park, and the peppers came to be known simply as Melrose peppers.

I gratefully took the seeds and have been growing them for years.  I looked on line from time to time to see if I could find the seeds, just in case.  Nice to have a backup, you know.  Well, lo and behold, I found the seeds a couple of years ago, and with it the same story my meter reader had told me.  Truly, that is their origin in the US. 

One of my greenhouse plant customers grows nothing but Melrose peppers and usually gets a dozen plants a year.  Alas, this year it was not to be!  Steve had some problems with germination in the greenhouse, and by the time I discovered what was going on out there, I found that he had used every last Melrose seed, and his germination rate was about 5%, as opposed to the 90% to 95% germination rate I always got.  Only nine plants total!  I sold six to my regular Melrose customer and kept three for myself, planting one in a bed well away from the main garden.  There can be some cross pollination with peppers and I grow a lot of others that might mix up the results, so I wanted the "mother plant" to be isolated.

My customer had promised to save me some seeds.  But then he stopped by my booth to tell me that the rabbits got all but one of his plants.

I am so relieved that my lone plant sitting in the middle of a bunch of tomatoes in a small caged area behind my garage had three beautiful red peppers on it.  Two of them were very ripe.  I picked them a few days ago, pulled the seeds out and spread them on a plate.  I let them dry a couple more days, packaged them and can now rest assured that I will have Melrose peppers galore next year! 

Here are some pictures of the peppers and the seeds.  Back in business!  Melrose peppers will live on at Ceres & Co.!

Melrose peppers in the garden

   

Two extra ripe ones harvested for seed

Chock full of seeds

Big ripe bundles of seeds

Too many to count!

Melrose pepper seeds in their origami packet

Goldie and the chicks immortalized

Yesterday Kim saw Goldie trying to lure the chicks out of their water tank home in the barn.  He took pity on her and lifted the three chicks out.  They spent the day outside, and they roamed far and wide!  Goldie wanted to be back with the flock, but the chicks are far too little, and they would have just become fodder for the hawks and other wildlife.

I had one heck of a time rounding them up to put them away last night!  I got the two adoptees, but Little Susie was far too crafty.  She dodged into a thicket while I carried the other two chicks and Goldie back to the barn.  I went back for her, chasing her through the thicket (I am a mass of raspberry and nettle scratches!) following her plaintive peeps.  But then she got quiet.  That is how crafty she was.  She knew if she was quiet, I wouldn't be able to find her.  So I went back to the barn and got Goldie.  I carried Goldie, squawking loudly, to the edge of the thicket.  Susie ran out to her mama, and I finally got her when she got tangled in some weeds.

Amy was able to get a great watercolor of the three of them.  She did several pictures and let me take my pick.  I feel honored that I now have another watercolor by Amy Babinec, this time of Goldie and the chicks.

Goldie and the chicks.  Little Susie is on the right.

Hiding in the weeds

Goldie and the chicks

Here are some pictures of Goldie with her chicks.  Notice the ruffled out feathers in some of them.  She gets very protective when I am out there, and she has pecked at my hand several times!  Very good mama!!

Ruffled feathers!

Having some lunch

 

Little Susie is middle chick.  Notice the difference in her head markings.