It all sounds – and looks – so idyllic – it’s a wonder you do anything at all but regard your animals and surroundings, and use your universal literacy to blog about them.
I was wondering how the hens are? They are also very photogenic, too; and I haven’t seen any report on them for a while? Unless I’ve missed one…
Now I know what hazel looks like. Years ago they used to name little girls after plants like hazel and myrtle.
But now so many more goat questions. How can they eat a tree with no lower teeth? I can’t do that with twice as many teeth. And what about winter? Misty looks like she just got a haircut. I’ve been wondering how often they get haircuts and whether they need some of their coat for the winter.
My daughter trims them twice a year. Misty & Holly just got haircuts and they are wearing coats for two weeks, until their wool grows to a respectable length. Even though it’s the softest, Vesla’s wool grows more slowly, so we didn’t cut hers this time.
Hazel grows as a tree in England, but here it’s just a vigorous bush.
The hens have gone inside for the winter, I think. It’s their own decision and I don’t know how they decide (I’m pretty sure we’d consider it rational, though).
Misty is my favourite, but I have to protect Vesla against being butted by her. Other Crowns have other favourites.
No upper incisors, wasn’t it? I think I could nibble a bit of bark without using my upper incisors — sort of scrape with lower incisors against the upper lip — but I probably won’t try.
The nuts of all hazels are edible. The Common Hazel is the species most extensively grown for its nuts, followed in importance by the Filbert. Nuts are also harvested from the other species, but apart from the Filbert, none is of significant commercial importance.
You’re quite right. Here is my piece about goats’ incisors.
We have lots of hazel but the squirrels take all the nuts, as they should. The only time I came across ‘filbert’ was at the lovely Filbert Steps, in San Francisco, a place I wanted to live when I was in my twenties and still my favourite place in the city. None of the pictures can do it justice, because the dimensions of the place are so important. You have to see both sets of houses on either side, as well as the garden in the middle; which is impossible, I expect.
We have a local sport of the grey tree rat viz the black tree rat. I regret to say that a family of them drowned themselves in our water butt. Still, one must take one’s compost accelerator where one finds it.
There have been black “grey squirrels” in Cambridge, Mass., for years. I have also seen pied ones here in the Boston area.
This species is not as widely or perhaps deeply hated here in its native land as it is in Britain, where it is invasive. Although they would look like rats if they had rats’ tails, I find them attractive (with their fluffy tails and all).
Pigeons have been called rats with feathers, but they can also be called doves. I say if you can’t say something nice about an animal don’t say anything.
We have the smaller red squirrels, too, and I admit that they are even more attractive. Ahem.
I always thought the black ones just needed a good wash and they’d be grey again. If squirrels are tree rats, then logically rats are four-legged pigeons with whiskers.
(Please ignore the “hem,” or make it “ahem” if you prefer. It was an editing malfunction, no doubt the remnant of a “them”.)
Are grey squirrels tree rats, or are rats ground grey squirrels? Isn’t a marmot a kind of ground squirrel? Isn’t a groundhog a kind of marmot? Why would anybody grind up a squirrel, anyway? What is marmite made of?
Thanks for that, AJPC. Our water butt is connected to the gutter on the garage and we suspect that a squirrel bairn fell down into the butt and others doomed themselves by going to his rescue. Actually, they have often entertained us, dancing along the top of the wire fence beyond the hedge at the bottom of the garden. But yesterday a large machine pitched up and tore down the fence, lest it interfere with agriculture. Progress, eh?
It was very surprising to see squirrels running full speed from tree to tree in the middle of Bangkok (latitude: 14° N). Hazel might be unknown there, though.
Nijma, if you have never seen a hazel tree, the pictures here (although very nice) are a little misleading since the branches (twigs really) are practically bare, and the few leaves are shown in profile, so to speak, so you can’t see that they are in fact almost round. The bottom picture shows the several stems (rather than trunks) growing together in bush fashion.
If the nuts were still on the tree, you could see that they grow out of an attractive flower-like “sheath” (if that is the right word – I don’t think it is). When they are immature they are a very pretty light green, which slowly turns brown as the shell hardens into wood (hence the eye colour “hazel”). Fresh hazelnuts, not quite brown and hardened, are good to eat too, with a less “nutty” taste.
The hazel must not grow in this region, I don’t remember ever seeing one. Odd they would name children after an uncommon plant. We had “myrtle”, but it was the ground cover with the little purple flowers also called periwinkle or vinca, and not the other plants usually called myrtle.
In Jordan I was introduced to the hazelnut butter–nice chocolate, and we would spread it on the fresh cah-eek with sesame seeds on the top. Vendors would bring it around on the streets for ten cents. My neighbor never had the ten cents but she had the chocolate, plus being female wasn’t really supposed to go out without her husband knowing, but her husband approved of me, so she would sent a little girl over to my balcony to get my attention, and I would spend the ashera groosh, bring the stuff up, and hang out there, watching her teach her kids the alphabet and learning how to make the thick yogurt they calllabna.
Nijma, you can look up “hazel” on Wikipedia, and see pictures of the leaves and of the nuts both green and dry. They also list about 15 species of hazel, two of them in North America, but do not say where they grow. I have never seen them in the wild here, but they grow wild in Europe. In some native languages of the West Coast there are words for “hazelnut’, so there must be wild hazels in the region. Those words often contain a reference to “thunder”, perhaps because of the sound produced when breaking the shells.
The Jordan delicacy you describe sounds similar to “Nutella” which you can buy in jars. Perhaps that is where the Nutella makers got the idea from. Read the whole article on Wikipedia.
AJP, about “filbert”: the quotation separates “common hazel” from “other species”, and “filberts” (the long nuts?) are among the other species, most of which are not commercialized.
Nutella–yes, that’s the brand available in Jordan. I think it comes from somewhere in Europe. Maybe they bring it in with the Amstel beer. All our local Arab shops have it too, and you can even find it in our big supermercado that caters to Mexican and Polish ethnic groups.
From my local grocery store down the street, here is a nice hazelnut candy bar, made in Hrvatska (Croatia). The language should be Croatian, although the Croatians are supposed to be slavs, whatever that means–definitely it means they’re not Hungarian. http://www.kras.hr/index.php?page=photoGallery&photoGallery_id=1
Signs used to be posted in nine different European languages at the local steel mill–Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, …but now the main language is Spanish.
oh, thank you all for encouraging me, i hope i could raise at least a thousand, counting my friends i’ve sent emails and my sisters, and hopefully some people at LH and U and other sites clicked through and donated
if you click on the link ‘burtgegdsen bukh duu’, there are 6000 mp3s you can listen to, about downloading i’m not sure , if you listen it downloads automatically via real player iirc, i’ll tell you what artists i like later in the evening when i have more time
cheers
A Bad Guide
It looks as if there is some discrimation going on against Misty (as opposed to Vesla). This is not fair, Mr Crown.
Nice to see the goats are back!
It all sounds – and looks – so idyllic – it’s a wonder you do anything at all but regard your animals and surroundings, and use your universal literacy to blog about them.
I was wondering how the hens are? They are also very photogenic, too; and I haven’t seen any report on them for a while? Unless I’ve missed one…
Now I know what hazel looks like. Years ago they used to name little girls after plants like hazel and myrtle.
But now so many more goat questions. How can they eat a tree with no lower teeth? I can’t do that with twice as many teeth. And what about winter? Misty looks like she just got a haircut. I’ve been wondering how often they get haircuts and whether they need some of their coat for the winter.
My daughter trims them twice a year. Misty & Holly just got haircuts and they are wearing coats for two weeks, until their wool grows to a respectable length. Even though it’s the softest, Vesla’s wool grows more slowly, so we didn’t cut hers this time.
Hazel grows as a tree in England, but here it’s just a vigorous bush.
The hens have gone inside for the winter, I think. It’s their own decision and I don’t know how they decide (I’m pretty sure we’d consider it rational, though).
Misty is my favourite, but I have to protect Vesla against being butted by her. Other Crowns have other favourites.
How can they eat a tree with no lower teeth?
No upper incisors, wasn’t it? I think I could nibble a bit of bark without using my upper incisors — sort of scrape with lower incisors against the upper lip — but I probably won’t try.
From Wikipedia:
The nuts of all hazels are edible. The Common Hazel is the species most extensively grown for its nuts, followed in importance by the Filbert. Nuts are also harvested from the other species, but apart from the Filbert, none is of significant commercial importance.
Is there a contradiction here?
You’re quite right. Here is my piece about goats’ incisors.
We have lots of hazel but the squirrels take all the nuts, as they should. The only time I came across ‘filbert’ was at the lovely Filbert Steps, in San Francisco, a place I wanted to live when I was in my twenties and still my favourite place in the city. None of the pictures can do it justice, because the dimensions of the place are so important. You have to see both sets of houses on either side, as well as the garden in the middle; which is impossible, I expect.
Still, I dare say your hazelnut-guzzling squirrels are Squirrels Proper, rather than our grey tree rats.
Yes, they are dark reddish, but I like grey squirrels too.
We have a local sport of the grey tree rat viz the black tree rat. I regret to say that a family of them drowned themselves in our water butt. Still, one must take one’s compost accelerator where one finds it.
But not one’s drinking water, presumably. I didn’t know they had the black ones in Britain. I thought they only lived in New York.
There have been black “grey squirrels” in Cambridge, Mass., for years. I have also seen pied ones here in the Boston area.
This species is not as widely or perhaps deeply hated here in its native land as it is in Britain, where it is invasive. Although they would look like rats if they had rats’ tails, I find them attractive (with their fluffy tails and all).
Pigeons have been called rats with feathers, but they can also be called doves. I say if you can’t say something nice about an animal don’t say anything.
We have the smaller red squirrels, too, and I admit that they are even more attractive. Ahem.
I always thought the black ones just needed a good wash and they’d be grey again. If squirrels are tree rats, then logically rats are four-legged pigeons with whiskers.
(Please ignore the “hem,” or make it “ahem” if you prefer. It was an editing malfunction, no doubt the remnant of a “them”.)
Are grey squirrels tree rats, or are rats ground grey squirrels? Isn’t a marmot a kind of ground squirrel? Isn’t a groundhog a kind of marmot? Why would anybody grind up a squirrel, anyway? What is marmite made of?
Dearie might be interested in Empty’s squirrel story, published today.
Thanks for that, AJPC. Our water butt is connected to the gutter on the garage and we suspect that a squirrel bairn fell down into the butt and others doomed themselves by going to his rescue. Actually, they have often entertained us, dancing along the top of the wire fence beyond the hedge at the bottom of the garden. But yesterday a large machine pitched up and tore down the fence, lest it interfere with agriculture. Progress, eh?
It was very surprising to see squirrels running full speed from tree to tree in the middle of Bangkok (latitude: 14° N). Hazel might be unknown there, though.
Nijma, if you have never seen a hazel tree, the pictures here (although very nice) are a little misleading since the branches (twigs really) are practically bare, and the few leaves are shown in profile, so to speak, so you can’t see that they are in fact almost round. The bottom picture shows the several stems (rather than trunks) growing together in bush fashion.
If the nuts were still on the tree, you could see that they grow out of an attractive flower-like “sheath” (if that is the right word – I don’t think it is). When they are immature they are a very pretty light green, which slowly turns brown as the shell hardens into wood (hence the eye colour “hazel”). Fresh hazelnuts, not quite brown and hardened, are good to eat too, with a less “nutty” taste.
The hazel must not grow in this region, I don’t remember ever seeing one. Odd they would name children after an uncommon plant. We had “myrtle”, but it was the ground cover with the little purple flowers also called periwinkle or vinca, and not the other plants usually called myrtle.
In Jordan I was introduced to the hazelnut butter–nice chocolate, and we would spread it on the fresh cah-eek with sesame seeds on the top. Vendors would bring it around on the streets for ten cents. My neighbor never had the ten cents but she had the chocolate, plus being female wasn’t really supposed to go out without her husband knowing, but her husband approved of me, so she would sent a little girl over to my balcony to get my attention, and I would spend the ashera groosh, bring the stuff up, and hang out there, watching her teach her kids the alphabet and learning how to make the thick yogurt they calllabna.
Nijma, you can look up “hazel” on Wikipedia, and see pictures of the leaves and of the nuts both green and dry. They also list about 15 species of hazel, two of them in North America, but do not say where they grow. I have never seen them in the wild here, but they grow wild in Europe. In some native languages of the West Coast there are words for “hazelnut’, so there must be wild hazels in the region. Those words often contain a reference to “thunder”, perhaps because of the sound produced when breaking the shells.
The Jordan delicacy you describe sounds similar to “Nutella” which you can buy in jars. Perhaps that is where the Nutella makers got the idea from. Read the whole article on Wikipedia.
AJP, about “filbert”: the quotation separates “common hazel” from “other species”, and “filberts” (the long nuts?) are among the other species, most of which are not commercialized.
Youtube doesn’t seem to carry a performance of the music hall ditty
“Gilbert the Filbert the Colonel of the Nuts”. Quel dommage.
Nutella–yes, that’s the brand available in Jordan. I think it comes from somewhere in Europe. Maybe they bring it in with the Amstel beer. All our local Arab shops have it too, and you can even find it in our big supermercado that caters to Mexican and Polish ethnic groups.
From my local grocery store down the street, here is a nice hazelnut candy bar, made in Hrvatska (Croatia). The language should be Croatian, although the Croatians are supposed to be slavs, whatever that means–definitely it means they’re not Hungarian.
http://www.kras.hr/index.php?page=photoGallery&photoGallery_id=1
Signs used to be posted in nine different European languages at the local steel mill–Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, …but now the main language is Spanish.
oh, thank you all for encouraging me, i hope i could raise at least a thousand, counting my friends i’ve sent emails and my sisters, and hopefully some people at LH and U and other sites clicked through and donated
if you click on the link ‘burtgegdsen bukh duu’, there are 6000 mp3s you can listen to, about downloading i’m not sure , if you listen it downloads automatically via real player iirc, i’ll tell you what artists i like later in the evening when i have more time
cheers