County Fair!

It’s Fair time again.

(To readers on slow connections, I apologize. This issue is heavy on pictures. I know it’s a pain. Just keep in mind, as you wait, that I am on a dial-up, too, and waited with you.)

This year I was doing duty in the Keep Our Libraries Open campaign booth, so my Fair-seeing time was limited to some short dashes through the grounds. Here is my friend, ally, and Library Director Doris, offering advocacy materials from the booth.

You just have to think you can still live in simpler times when you go to the Fair. It is the opportunity to spend your summer’s earnings on any kind of (what was I thinking) treat,

cotton candy,

fine personalized portraiture,

and authentic historical experiences,

not to mention curly fries, tattoos (fake ones), and thrill rides on the midway.

You can buy anything from elastic shoelaces to a tractor. You can buy a cure for any kind of discomfort,

find free entertainment watching the stage hypnotist,

or the rodeo riders exercising their horses,

or… whatever…

(Sorry, women, I tried to get a nice photo for our side. I followed a guy around for about 5 minutes, wanting a shot of his ass in tight shorts, but he kept being behind something or facing the wrong way, or, worse yet, sitting on it. I finally had to give up and go back to the Library booth.)

In the exhibition hall you see the displays of quilts,

needlework, knitting (the 2 blue-ribbon sweaters in the foreground were entered by our neighbor Jackie),

and tatting, the fine, award winning fleeces,

the displays of photographs,

and the paintings. Always, there are the portraits of horse’s heads.

There is, this year, the Taj Mahal made entirely of match sticks.

In the animal barns are sleeping pigs, impeccably groomed llamas, brushed-up cattle, clipped sheep, bouquets of chickens,

and rabbits dozing in the summer heat, waiting for their opportunity to bite.

At last the weary Fair-goer requires a reward for her efforts. What better than a bit of church?

(What, one wonders, is a Methodist Pie?)

Ah. Yes.

All in all, it’s a journey through a world redolent with the smells of animals and food, loud with the clash of musicians and hawkers, crowded, dusty, garish, and wonderful. Incomparable. Wonderful.

You have to love a fair.

Eggs and Eggs

First fruits have arrived.

As I have complained already, the vegetable garden is more or less… a failure, this year. The combination of ill weather and the new septic system have conspired against the whole idea of production. Down in the garden, we have a couple of hard, green Early Girl tomatoes on the vine, about 3 infant zucchini (imagine if you can, a summer when the zucchini are scarce!), and the stubs of bean plants left behind by the rabbits. It’s not looking good for subsistence gardening. It’s fortunate we have markets.

But, unexpectedly, my stop-gap garden, the one in pots at the studio door, is doing quite well.

The cucumbers are looking good, the Swiss chard is coming on, we’ve had lettuce and radishes, and here are the eggplants. Eggplants have to be one of the loveliest of vegetable garden plants. They’re fit to be ornamentals.

Even in the best of seasons, it’s a challenge to mature full-sized eggplants here. But we can grow the smaller, short-season variety Ichiban,

and we had our first rewards this week. If we want a Moussaka, I go to the market for big, black-skinned eggplants. The little Ichibans are terrific for stir-fry dinners, though. Never mind all that business about peeling, salting to leach the bitterness, rinsing, squeezing out, and patting dry. Just slice these little guys into dollars (well, quarter-dollars maybe, given their size), and toss them into the mix. You want them to be thoroughly cooked, but they really require nothing more special than the other ingredients in the pan.

Now, isn’t that pretty? It was nice on the palate, too!

But wait! There’s more!

We have new eggs, too. Real eggs, not vegetable ones. The young Barred Plymouth Rock hens have started to lay. (The Ameraucanas seem to be a little slower to mature.)

When a hen first lays eggs, they come out quite small, as befits her young anatomy.

Soon enough, they will size up.

…That may be a small exaggeration of scale.

The view below shows a first egg and one from a hen who has been laying for merely a week.

Thank you, ladies.

So, odd season that it is, we won’t go hungry out here. But it looks like slim pickin’s overall. This is the kind of year in which, in earlier times, farmers starved.

Goats at Work

What does a goat do best?

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It eats.

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Our friend George E. just sent us an item about weed-clearing goats. “Look!” he said. “Is this a great idea, or what!” And, coincidentally, last evening I drove past a crew of goats earning their keep in just that way.

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It’s called targeted grazing, and it’s been going on around here for a while now. I first noticed a flock at work about 5 years ago. As an alternative to herbicidal sprays and heavy machinery, it’s brilliant in its elegance and simplicity. Where you have weeds, feed goats.

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Here is the flock I passed this week, working on the blackberries choking an old orchard ground:

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Click for a slightly bigger image.

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Goats on the job are not necessarily cheap. But figure, here is a crew of a couple hundred weed pickers working about 12 hours a day inside portable electric fencing to keep them out of the roadway or adjacent properties. They’ll clear 2 acres of blackberries in 4 or 5 days. The wrangler has an investment in his stock and in his expertise, and he’s making a living with them. Local cities and county agencies have found, in appropriate areas, hiring a flock at $800 to $1,000 a day is a better deal than trying to control undesirable vegetation with sprays and bulldozers.

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If you’re thinking of running out to get a goat, do keep in mind that the goat is a living thing, not a weed whacker. Goat wranglers survey the ground before bringing the flock in, to make sure nothing on the menu is toxic to the animals. Livestock needs to be cared for, provided water, given a balanced diet (they can’t live on sticks alone), given health checks, kept safe and contained. They’re not a free pass to a luxury lawn. And while they’re more than happy to nibble down the invasive plants, y’know, they’re not all that discriminating and will digest rare native plants just as gaily.

This browsing goat, below, reminds me so much of the one I cited back in March, I just have to include the link again here. I knew there was a reason that image rang my bell. You remind me, George, there is no new thing under the sun.

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Probably any goat will get to the job without a lot of fuss, but Boer goats in particular are noted for their vegetation clearing expertise. In South Africa where they originated, they were bred particularly to control growth in areas of difficult access. This flock looks to me like mostly Boers or Boer crosses. I’m not a goat breed expert, however it would make sense to me, if I were hiring, to go looking for specialists.

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A goat hard at work

They seem happy in their work.