We Are The Eggmen

While a group of us were out riding the other afternoon a pickup truck carrying what must have been at least a thousand eggs passed us on the way from a chicken production warehouse to wherever it is that they take this many eggs. They will be left in their cartons standing in warehouses and stores for a number of weeks or until they are bought. Eggs, oddly enough, stay fresh unrefrigerated for months UNTIL you refrigerate them....and then they must be kept cold.

Semi-mechanised

Modern food consumers generally associate farmers with tractors. After all, fields must be plowed somehow. I don't know what proportion of Egyptian farms are big enough to justify owning a tractor, but around here, it isn't a lot. So usually one man in an area owns a tractor, often an ancient Russian machine like this that has probably been repaired with so many odd parts that it's more of a United Nations piece. He's hired by the hour or by the area of land to do the plowing. All the rest of the work is done by hand.

An Egyptian Cattle Drive

 While driving into Maadi yesterday I encountered an Egyptian cattle drive of sorts. The farmers from the eastern province bring their cows and some of their sheep and goats into the farming area here around Sakkara and Dahshur every July/August. The animals graze from fields that are being harvested and avoid some of the spraying of the cotton plants in their home province. In the old days, they used to walk them here but now they use trucks.

Truth In Advertising

I bought a case of white vinegar a few days ago to use in cleaning my lawn sprinklers. We have a lot of calcium in our water and it gums up the valves and outlets. But I love the carton. The brand name is Ganna (heaven, I believe) and it is almost 5% degree vinegar, whatever that is. But even more important it must be new, as it warns us to "Beware tradition"...... or maybe that just means it won't clean my sprinklers?

Feather Dusters

Palms are a member of the grass family and not real trees as such. Whatever they are they have so many wonderful aspects: entirely edible, producing wonderful food, and easy to grow. They also can look like a tidal pool of grey-green sea creatures from a hilltop or a plantation of enormous feather dusters.

Strange Dry Spiky Thing

While visiting Adam Henein's garden, I noticed a string of objects hanging from a tree in the sun. It's a long time since I've seen dried okra, which the Nubians and Sudanese use to make a dish known as wayka. Wayka is a stew of ground beef, tomatoes and the ground dried okra. It has a rather interesting texture and is often eaten scooped up in bread. Delicious.

A Twofer

You can only eat so much cabbage at a time, but you don't want to miss out on the wheat crop. So what is a farmer to do? In this case he just planted the wheat around the cabbages that were still in the field. Should last him the rest of winter.

Sweet Prickliness of Summer

The prickly pear cactus bears its fruit in the summer, flowers giving way to bulbs that ripen to a red yellow on the oval leaves. Farmers harvest them and bring them into the city where they sell them one by one to passersby who want some of the sweet, sticky fruit. The seller peals them for the buyer so that thorns aren't an issue. Interestingly, no one seems to use the leaves in salads as the Mexicans do. One of these days I will collect some leaves to make nopalitos.

Moringa Trees

The Moringa tree is a miracle. Almost every part of the tree is edible and it is well-suited to our climate. A friend of mine brought seeds from east Africa and another friend with a nursery is growing seedlings to be planted in the countryside here. The only specification is that they cannot be sold but must be given as a gift. Their lacy foliage is beautiful and will be a welcome addition to our farmlands and gardens.

Moringa Trees

The Moringa tree is a miracle. Almost every part of the tree is edible and it is well-suited to our climate. A friend of mine brought seeds from east Africa and another friend with a nursery is growing seedlings to be planted in the countryside here. The only specification is that they cannot be sold but must be given as a gift. Their lacy foliage is beautiful and will be a welcome addition to our farmlands and gardens.

Managing Summer

Our fields are amazingly fertile and supply Egypt with its vegetables. This is all done with irrigation since essentially it doesn't rain. Summers are hard here for my work, riding and teaching, because they are so hot but shady trails and the cooling effect of evaporation help a lot.

Motherhood

On New Year's Eve about 4 in the afternoon, our water buffalo Amar gave birth to a son that we named Kofta. This was her first offspring and it took her a while to figure out just what this creature was and what she was supposed to do with him. (That's right, guys, we have to figure this stuff out too...it isn't entirely hardwired.) Mother and son are doing well and while Kofta will be loved and petted for about 10 months, he is, unfortunately destined to be, well...kofta and kebab. That is the fate of most male bovines, after all.

Guess The Crop

They look like a field of day lilies that haven't yet bloomed, but these are sesame plants with pods that are almost ready to harvest. All those hamburger buns and crackers all my life, and I had no idea this is what the sesame plant would look like.

The Feed Store

We hardly ever have any rain here, a bit of wind, no snow, lots of sun. This means that things like animal feeds don't have to be locked into vaults to protect them from the elements and the local feed store looks sort of like this. Inventories aren't huge, but they are usually adequate. This guy stocks corn, soymeal, soy beans, barley, beet pulp, wheat chaff, rice straw, and clover hay.

Konefa Preparation

Konefa looks like shredded wheat when you see a tray of it prepared. It is threads of batter that are buttered and baked around something sweet like nuts or cream for a dessert or baked around something savoury like a prawn for an appetizer. But these threads are probably headed for the sweet batch as Ramadan housewives buy them up by the kilo to bake at home. The threads are cooked on a flat griddle on the round oven at the right as the konefa-man swirls a pot of batter with tiny holes punched in the bottom over the griddle. He wasn't working when we came by.

Fast Milk

This is a milk man. I have no idea where he is taking his milk but from the jars it would appear that he is bringing it fresh from the farms.

Milling the grain

We were riding through Sakkara village and saw these two women seated on the ground facing each other milling grain with an old stone hand mill. I suspect that they were grinding sorghum and possibly fenugreek to make a very old type of local bread. It's extremely thin and crispy with a slight herbal taste...Egyptian crackers. I love it and it isn't something that you can buy anywhere. You have to get it from the village women.

Green on Green: Grapes

The PE was photographing our Girl Scout visitors and got distracted in the back garden by the bunches of young grapes.

Still Life With Seeds

The Photography Elf has done it again with a lovely photo of one of our sunflower heads. Sunflowers are grown here for oil or for snacking, although we grow them for the parrots. The lines of seed radiating out from the center are mesmerising.

Going To The Butcher

The village butcher is an open-air establishment where they slaughter an animal (cow, buffalo, sheep, or goat) early in the morning and then people come to get meat throughout the day. Egyptians like their meat fresh. The village women sit and chat while waiting their turn.