This flash slideshow shows you some of the ways I have used our beet¹s lately.We have eaten about half of our first batch of red beets (some of the other beets we have planted include: Shiraz Tall Top Beet, Chioggia Beet, Lutz Salad Leaf Beet, Yellow Mangel Beet). Their greens are starting to look mighty ragged so we will be accelerating our beet-feasts to catch them before they simply go bad in the ground.Various recipes have been or will be blogged at my food blog Nika’s Culinaria.The one dish that has the yellow disk like item (its polenta) was blogged at this post “The unbearable intensity of homegrown food” and it is called “Homegrown organic beets and greens served over beet juice infused polenta², dribbled with a beet, garlic, apricot gastrique“.I think I like the following detail photo especially because it shows the dark voluptuous nature of the beet along with some of it’s delicate inner leaves. These leaves are revealed sometimes when you pull away the much larger ones.

Slightly steamed with a sprinkle of sea salt, beets are such a lovely part of summer.

~~Definitions~~
1 beet
Definitions

1. a biennial garden plant (Beta vulgaris) of the goosefoot family that includes several cultivars (as Swiss chard and sugar beet) and that has thick edible leaves with long petioles and often swollen purplish-red roots
2. its root used especially as a vegetable, as a source of sugar, or for forage

Pronounciation: ˈbēt
Function: noun
Date: before 12th century
Etymology: Middle English bete, from Old English bēte, from Latin beta

2 polenta
Definitions

1. mush made of chestnut meal, cornmeal, semolina, or farina

Pronounciation: pō-ˈlen-tə, pə-, -ˌt?
Function: noun
Date: 1764
Etymology: Italian, from Latin, crushed and hulled barley; akin to Latin pollen fine flour

If you have been reading here a bit, you will remember that we are in the process of building a new chicken house. I have not mentioned this in a while because construction on the house has been delayed. Why? We live not too far from Old Lyme, Connecticut and live in the Lyme Disease Hot Zone and as a result, like everyone else around here, we are awash in deer ticks and the constant lingering menace of Lyme Disease.

My husband, while building the decking between the wood shed and the chicken house, was bitten and came down with lyme disease. Let me assure you, this is not a minor annoyance. Lyme disease, the way he got it put him in the ER several times, bought him a spinal tap and dubious concerns by ER docs of Eastern Equine Encephalitis, West Nile, even Malaria (which his symptoms were mimicking tho they said since he didn’t just come from some stinking steamy malarial swamp - they haven’t seen parts of our land! - that malaria was not likely). It finally took our family doc, who is just awesome, to know as soon as he heard the details that this was lyme disease.

Whew.

Back to the chickens.

Some of the chickens we are thinking of raising include the white silkies which the Chinese love for it’s black meat and traditional medicinal value, MAYBE we can get a hold of some blue feet chickens, some hearty brown and other color layers, and perhaps some cubalayas.

In my previous chicken experience we had meat chickens and I am still traumatized by the experience of killing and butchering them. As a scientist, I have taken down numerous rodents but I never butchered them nor ate them (yikes). I always did it because I had to and I always detached mentally from it. That doesn’t mean I don’t still think about those animals and I certainly appreciate their contribution to my thesis and published works.

To get more experience from people who have done this a lot and who raise organic pasture chickens, I attended the “Chickens for meat and eggs” workshop at the Many Hands Organic Farm.

I have put together a slideshow of some of the photos from the part of the workshop that demonstrated how to kill and then butcher the chickens below.

I share this with the intent of helping to educate. I do not share this to traumatize anyone so if this sort of thing bothers you please do not click through the show.

I also do not share this so that it can be used to traumatize others! I believe in mindful eating and mindful animal husbandry. Its important to know from where and how your meat comes to you.