Henny Penny Farmette

Are they venturing out of the nearby dry hills and canyons for water? Or, in search of a fresh chicken dinner? Whatever the reason for their forays into our neighborhood, the foxes are back.

This fox pair  dug a den near a compost pile on the property adjoining our Henny Penny Farmette last year . . . now they’re back

My neighbor, who also has a farmette with chickens, bees, and fruit trees, alerted me first that the foxes had returned because they got one of his chickens.

With that worrisome news, I’ve decided against allowing my chickens to free-range forage around our property. Instead, I’m keeping them safe in the chicken run that also has poultry wire across the top to protect against high-flying predators like hawks or cunning little climbers like foxes.

Although we live fairly close (a mile or so) away from designated agricultural land, ours is still a neighborhood of families with pets. Some of us keep chickens and bees and even goats and horses and burros. I sometimes hear braying or neighing while having coffee in my garden on a bright, crisp autumn morning.

A flock of wild turkeys roams through our property this time of year, too. We don’t mind the turkeys but foxes, large raccoons, coyotes, and wolves can attack small dogs and cats. For that reason, we all stay alert and share news with our neighbors of predators prowling about.

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If you enjoy reading about farmette topics (including gardening, beekeeping, and delicious recipes), check out my cozy mysteries A BEELINE TO MURDER and also THE MURDER OF A QUEEN BEE in the Henny Penny Farmette series (from Kensington Publishing).

Enter the Goodreads Giveaway–September 29 to October 6–for a chance to win a signed copy of a first-edition hardcover of The Murder of a Queen Bee. Three lucky winners will be chosen.

These novels are chocked full of recipes, farming tips, and sayings as well as a charming cozy mystery.

The books are available through online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo Books, and Walmart as well as from traditional bookstores everywhere.

See, http://tinyurl.com/hxy3s8q

This debut novel launched the Henny Penny Farmette series of mysteries and sold out its first press run. It’s now available in mass market paperback and other formats.

See, http://tinyurl.com/h4kou4g

NEWLY RELEASED! This, the second cozy mystery in the Henny Penny Farmette series, is garnering great reviews from readers and industry publications.

Happy New Year! What are you planning for your New Year’s Day dinner? Here on our Northern California farmette, we love a New Year’s meal of cracked crab, sourdough bread, and a crisp winter salad, but this year I think we’ll have duck instead.

Crab season in Northern California has been put on hold thanks to an unprecedented algae season. Our local Dungeness crab has become infected with domaic acid, a neurotoxin produced by the microscopic algae that can cause human illness and death. Testing continues until the crab is safe to eat.

In the meantime, crab is being imported to local stores and restaurants, but it is expensive. With other issues with salmon, sardines, shrimp, and tuna, a seafood shopper might turn to Safeway. The store now offers Fair Trade Certified seafood, in an effort to reduce the seafood/fishing industry’s human rights abuses. But if there’s crab, it’s not local.

There are many other options, but I wouldn’t mind a farm-raised (mind you, I don’t mean “factory-farm raised,” which I’m against), free-range duck for dinner. I was raised on a farm and my grandparents (who raised me for a period in my life) kept chickens, cows, pigs, and horses. Meat (like Boone County ham and, yes, pickled pigs feet) was part of our diet along with all the delicious vegetables and fruits my grandmother grew and in her various gardens and preserved in myriad ways.

Maybe the rest of our duck meal could include a winter salad with citrus, pears, goat cheese, and sugared pecans; roast potatoes, green beans, and a chocolate sheet cake. We’ve got sparkling cider and wine. That sounds pretty good, but it isn’t crab, which is really the meal with which we wanted to start 2016. So, I guess duck will have to do.