The Best Relish I Ever Tasted

I have a friend, Chris, that has a green thumb. He says that he doesn’t but his garden is green and actually grows vegetables. He has giant artichokes and many types of greens including some mustard greens that will clear your sinuses they are so hot. Compared to my plants that lose their leaves and never produce anything he has ten green thumbs. He recently gave me some twelve inch plus Daikon radishes that looked like giant white carrots. Chris’s wife is talented at canning the produce that he grows and cans most everything that comes from the garden. They recently had us over to a group gathering where his wife, Sandi, put out a wonderful hor d’oeuvre spread of cheeses and crackers along with the best relishes and chow chows I had ever tasted. I was surprised to find that many were made with different radishes and produce from Chris’s garden. Sandi sent us home with several jars of the wonderful treats.

The next weekend me, my wife, my brother and his wife gathered at our country place for a work day. The girls packed a picnic basket with a wonderful lunch consisting of gourmet crackers, cheeses, summer sausage, boiled natural eggs and you guessed it, some of Sandi’s relish. The lunch was great after a morning of cutting and welding on a steel building frame and the fact that we were out in nature on a beautiful day made it that much more pleasant. We all agreed that Sandi’s Radish Relish was the one of the best we had ever eaten. To make a long story short I sent Sandi an email and begged a couple of her recipes so you guys could try and reproduce her wonderful relish. Be sure to file these away somewhere safe as you will want to make them over and over. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do, Wild Ed

Sandi’s Relish
Red radishes (pink relish)


3 cups radish


1 large red onion


2 tsp salt


1/2 cup sugar


1 tbsp mustard seed


1 cup vinegar


2 tbsp garlic

Mix together and boil for 10 minutes. Spoon into jars and water process for 20 minutes



Sandi’s Daikon Radish relish

1 pound radishes


1/2 pound celery stalks


1 cup sweet onions


1 red pepper


1/2 cup sugar


1 tablespoon mustard seed


2 tsp salt


Vinegar to cover


Boil for 10 minutes. Hot water process for 20 minutes

Feel free to click on Post a Comment and leave a comment or read the comments of others. Thanks, Ed

Learning New Skills Like Welding and Woodworking

As I have grown older I have been expanding my skill base and knowledge of how to do different things. In the last few years I have tackled some projects that I had always wanted to do and never had the time. I have learned to build wood boats that are light, fast and beautiful. Every time my wife and I take them somewhere everyone wants to know where we got them. It gives me a great feeling of pride to tell people that I hand built them. I have been learning new skills with woodworking tools and other hand tools. I recently built parts for some bee traps and put frames together for the inside of my bee hives. A new deer and birding blind at the place are the direct result of some of these skills. I have made homemade Canadian bacon and other cured meats along with sausage and corned venison this last season. I have started raising laying hens and now have all natural fresh eggs to eat on a regular basis. With implements for our new-to-us tractor I have plowed and harrowed food plots, grated some of the ranch roads and moved dirt to support the ramps into our barn. My wife and I recently trenched about two hundred feet with the single blade mold board plow and hand shovels to lay electric wire to two water wells.

This last project is as a result of me pricing small metal buildings and seeing the lack of quality in some of the small building kits we checked out. I decided to build a metal well house myself with colors to match our new barn. My brother is helping me with the project and teaching me to cut metal and weld. I purchased a small flux wire welder from Harbor Freight for under $100.00 and it is performing very well on this project. We have measured and cut all the steel for the frame with a metal bladed chop saw and welded them into a sturdy steel frame with the little welder. It is a lot of work but is coming along as we will only be able to put about 4 hours a week into the project. I will keep you posted as to how it comes along. I am already thinking of building some all-metal loafing sheds and pens for livestock when we get moved out to the country. Get out and learn something new or teach a skill you know to someone else, it will help your mind. Wild Ed

Feel free to click on Post a Comment and leave a comment or read the comments of others. Thanks, Ed

Spring Observations in Bleak Winter

I am working from the farm for the next 10 days or so, trying to get some writing done on the next book project. It's a bleak, raw day here—every single thing seems to be some shade of gray, drab olive, or brown. The utterly bare branches of the deciduous trees, devoid of swelling buds, beseech the sky to let the sun come out to play. Even the normally cheery carmine red of the northern cardinals seems subdued. 'Round these parts we call this book-writin' weather. May as well, it's too muddy and bone-chilling to be outside.

Tufted titmouse, peanut pig.

There are a couple of subtle signs of spring among the feathers. And for this I am truly thankful.

• The male American goldfinches are showing just a few small spots of bright yellow spring finery.
• Stick your head outside and you'll hear spring singing already! Cardinal, white-breasted nuthatch, tufted titmouse, Carolina chickadee, American robin, Carolina wren, and song sparrow are all in spring tune-up mode.
• The red-tailed hawks at the end of our driveway are perching a bit closer together each day. One day soon they'll be close enough to touch each other, and we all know what happens next boomchickywahwahchickywahwah.
• And finally, now, when I see a Carolina wren, I nearly always see TWO Carolina wrens. A small wisp of moss on the bird feeder tells me they are already nest building in the copper bucket under the front door eave.

The Carolina wrens are nest building, though not on our weather vane.

I admire our birds for how they carry on living despite the fact that the weather is bleak and cold. I'd admire them even more if one of them would get in here and help me finish this book chapter.

Just for New Beekeepers

Frame of Capped Honey

Now that I have been a beekeeper for a while I am learning how to identify what the bees are doing and what is actually in the frames of comb.  The hardest thing for me, besides getting over the fear of being stung, was to identify and tell the difference between brood, drone brood, pollen, capped honey etc.  I ran across these pictures on Google the other day and wanted to put them up as they are the best I have seen for new or otherwise beekeepers to identify what each comb frame actually has in it.  If you are not a beekeeper take some time and think about getting involved and keeping a hive of bees, Wild Ed

I would invite anyone in Williamson County or anywhere in that general part of Central Texas to come visit the

WILLIAMSON COUNTY AREA BEEKEEPERS ASSOCIATION

A great group of beekeepers ready to help you get started in keeping bees

http://www.wcaba.org/

Feel free to click on Post a Comment and leave a comment or read the comments of others. Thanks, Ed

 

New TBL Podcast Episode: Snowy Owl Invasion!

Episode 35 of my podcast This Birding Life is now available (free as always) over at Podcast Central on the Bird Watcher's Digest website as well as in the iTunes Podcasts channel.

This episode is kind of an audio travelogue, tracking my birding posse as we mount up and drive north in Ohio looking for a snowy owl, with a short audio side trip to talk to owl expert Denver Holt from the Owl Research Institute in Montana.

Denver Holt of the owl Research Institute with a nestling snowy owl.

Readers of Bill of the Birds already know how our snowy owl adventure turned out from two posts from last month, which can be found here and here.

I wish it didn't take me so long to create each episode of This Birding Life but I get kind of carried away with the story/topic and I really want them to be engaging for anyone on the listening end, thus the long gestation period.

I hope you got to see (or will get to see) a snowy owl this winter. And I hope you'll enjoy this episode of my podcast.

Vanishing Bees

I got involved with beekeeping several months ago.  I currently have one hive and two more on the way.  Along the way I have learned a great deal about bees and how they are responsible for a large portion of the food on our tables.  Most of the food we grow is pollinated by bees and without this pollination the amount of food in this country will decrease dramatically.  The bees have been disappearing at a frightening pace, not speculation but a proven fact.  The Government has been dragging their feet on taking action even though other countries have banned poisons that are killing our bees.  What really scares me is the substances are getting into our farm soils and water tables.  What will they do to us or what are they already doing to us?  Take a moment to watch this video and then scream to everyone you know to watch it and contact your representatives and congressmen to get these substances off the market.  There comes a time when profit is not a good enough motive or a good enough excuse to destroy our environment and maybe even us. 

Yesterday I went to check my bees and found a large number of the pollen gatherers dead just outside the hive and on the ground around the hive.  Some kind of poison is killing them.  They still had pollen in the carriers on their legs.  Please be careful with pesticides and herbicides around your house and yard for if they are killing the bees they very well may be killing us, Wild Ed

You may wish to go to the bottom of the page and cut the sound down, mute or cut off the music playlist before starting the video.

Feel free to click on Post a Comment and leave a comment or read the comments of others. Thanks, Ed

Raccoons Start a Hog Massage Service at the Deer Feeder

I wish I knew who to give credit for the following pictures that I got in an email this last week. I have searched the web to no avail, but these are some great game camera pictures. It appears that the raccoons at this feeder have started a massage service for hogs after they have finished dinner. I suspect that this is really some sort of mutual benefit for both species. My guess is the raccoons are feeding on ticks or some other parasite that is on the hog and the hogs put up with the coons removing the parasite from them. I have seen hogs and coons give each other a wide berth at the feeder and the hogs have even run the coons off. This behavior is unusual and is probably a learned behavior just in this locale. If you have any different or unusual game cam pictures send them my way and I will post them up for everyone to see. Enjoy the outdoors and keep the cameras running, Wild Ed

The App of My Eye!

Not sure if you've heard this, but there's now a Bird Watcher's Digest app available for mobile devices, digital readers, and digi-things with an "i" and a "pad" in their name.

The BWD app is free to download and this gets you a preview of the content in the current issue. If you are a subscriber to the printed edition of BWD (and bless you if you are!) you can get free access to every issue during your subscription on whichever digital platform you prefer, simply by providing your e-mail address.

When I say "whichever digital platform you prefer" I mean that you have choices.

You can:
1.) Read eBWD on your desktop computer or laptop

2.) Read BWD via the BWD app on your Apple-based mobile device: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch.

3.) Read BWD via the BWD app on your Android-based mobile device.

Links to the two platforms of the BWD app are here.

If you're not a subscriber to Bird Watcher's Digest (and why the heck AREN'T you?) you can subscribe here, or you can purchase an in-app subscription, which gives you app-only access for just $4.99/year. A single issue of BWD via in-app purchase is just $0.99.


So now you can take Bird Watcher's Digest with you wherever you go!

And in the digital versions you can enjoy cool stuff like:
• listening to bird calls/songs/sounds
• enjoy audio recordings of authors reading their columns
• watch video clips of key bird species featured in each issue
• click on any link or blue-highlighted text and go directly to related pages/sites on the Internet

It's amazing to think back to when we started BWD in our living room in 1978—and to see how much has changed in the 33 years since. Lucky for all of us there are still birds to watch and friends to go birding with. And now BWD can go along with you, in printed or digital form!

If you get the BWD app, this is the icon you will see on your device:
If you're feeling seriously high-tech, and your smart phone has a QR code reader, scan this QR code and you'll be magically transported to our BWD app page!
We've had thousands of readers from all over the world download the BWD app just since late November 2011. We hope you'll join us soon!

Happy reading from all of us at Bird Watcher's Digest!