076 Keeping Your Poultry Healthy with Dr. Maurice Pitesky

...is an Assistant Specialist in Cooperative Extension for Poultry Health and Food Safety Epidemiology at the University of California Davis where he researches disease surveillance, food safety management, and other topics related to poultry health. He also does education and outreach to backyard and commercial poultry owners. During the podcast he mentions the UC Davis poultry resource website, a backyard poultry census that you can take part in, a...

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How to Rodent Proof a Chicken Coop

...be taken care of with simple sanitation. In my case that meant putting the food away at night and investing in rodent proof feed containers. Every night I put the entire feeder within the trash can you can see in the picture on the right (it has a much more secure lid than the larger can I used to keep the feed in). In the morning I put the food out again for our four hens. It means that I have to get up just a few minutes earlier than I usually d...

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I picked a peck of pickled peaches

...aches? Yes, you can pickle them. This I learned from Kevin West’s bible of food preservation, Saving the Season. In the introduction to his pickled green almond recipe (p. 103) West notes that immature stone fruit such as peaches and nectarines can be pickled in the same way as green almonds (almonds are a stone fruit too). If you don’t thin this branch it will break off. I’d share Kevin’s recipe with you but he’s a fellow author and you really sh...

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Salted Spruce Tips and Pine Infused Garlic Salt

...might be very fine, or a little rough. You could do this more quickly in a food processor. I use kosher salt for this, you could use a fancier salt if you like. When you’re done, you spread the salt on a plate and leave it out to dry for a day or two. The salt really accelerates the dry time. Then transfer it to a jar. That’s all there is to it. The only decisions to make are which aromatics you’re going to try–I’ll give some suggestions below–and...

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A new spice sensation in the Root Simple kitchen

...ught about combining them before, perhaps because they come from different food families, so to speak. So many wasted years! Now they’re going on nuts, seeds, popcorn…maybe as a fish crust. Oh, the things we shall do! Gochugaru, Korean red pepper powder (also referred to as red chile flakes), is a deep red, coarse powder or flake. Its flavor is spicy, smokey and a little bit sweet. It’s easy to fall in love with this stuff all on it’s own. Gochuga...

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