On-going Fall Harvest

I've just about gotten everything planted for the fall garden, with the exception of radishes, turnips, mustard greens and spinach.  We're still getting pretty strong bug and worm pressure right now, so we'd like to get some cooler weather that may dissuade them from nightly all-you-can-eat buffets in the garden before we plant.

Speaking of all-you-can-eat buffets, I came back from work the other day to find one of our goats named Popcorn had jumped over a weakened part of the garden fence and that dude was in the garden eating.  Fortunately, he only got to the sweet potato vines when I caught him.  I was still some kind of angry with him.  I had used landscape timbers as fence posts (bad decision) and they rotted.  The goats took advantage of this and pushed the post down and it enabled Popcorn to get in the garden.  Today I picked up 6 treated 8 foot 4x4s at the hardware store.  Mending the garden fence is my next project.  (Thank you, Popcorn.)

One thing that's really coming in strong right now is peppers.  They are in abundance, healthy, and colorful.  We bring baskets and baskets in and have started taking them to church to give away.  They'll continue producing until the first frost kills them.  The average first frost date for our area is November 10th.  That means lots more peppers forthcoming.

The photo below shows Anaheim peppers at top and right, bell peppers at bottom, lilac bell peppers at left and underneath them are sweet banana peppers.  Not pictured are the jalapenos.  We've been picking a bunch of those, halving them and coring/seeding them and freezing for making jalapeno poppers.  With the Anaheim peppers (mild) and bell peppers and banana peppers (sweet), we chop those up and freeze for cooking.

Around here there's something called the trinity of Cajun cooking.  That includes bell pepper, celery and onion.  When we were in the grocery business, one of our more popular selling items was Pictsweet Seasoning blend.  This was pre-cut and frozen Cajun trinity.  No chopping or work.  Cajun Trinity frozen in a bag.  Open the bag and dump in your skillet to cook down.  Easy peezy.  Although we don't freeze them all together.  We cut and freeze peppers, onions, and celery to use in cooking.  It's a great time saver in the kitchen.

The bright orange peppers below are called Datil peppers.  They are HOT!  We core these and put them on the dehydrator for drying.  Once completely dry, we put them in a food processor and make pepper for seasoning.  We learned you've got to be careful.  We've added a little too much to dishes and you had to have a glass of water handy while you ate!  The peppers on the right are Hot Banana Peppers.  Unlike their cousins, sweet banana peppers, these will start a five alarm fire in your mouth.  They look just like the sweet ones, too!  We normally pickle most of the banana peppers - both sweet and hot.

The last photo is okra.  The production of okra is certainly way down since the summer.  We grow several varieties (Louisiana longhorn, Burgundy okra, Beck's Big okra, and Clemson spineless).  We chop them up and cook down with onions and then freeze in quart freezer bags.  We'll freeze a lot of this to use in winter gumbos.  Once you have an inventory of all the garden harvest in the freezer, it makes cooking the meal that much easier and cuts out trips to the grocery store.

In a few weeks, I'll chop all the okra down and plant mustard greens, spinach, radishes and turnips between rows on the fallow ground between where the okra was planted.

Garlic is Up

Fourteen days ago we posted that we're giving garlic another shot, so we planted a bunch of it.  Let's check in and see how things are going.  I planted the Elephant Garlic in some molasses tubs full of homemade potting soil amended with leaves and chicken litter.  I've kept it watered each day.  October is one of our driest months and it's living up to its reputation.  From the looks of it, we've gotten a little better than 50% germination on the elephant garlic.  Maybe more will pop up in a few days.

In the garden in the side yard, I planted all of the softneck garlic.  The soil is heavily amended with composted mulch.  Like the others, I watered this bed heavily and a bunch of the garlic is popping up here as well.  I'd venture to say, so far, it's about a 70% germination rate.

Perhaps more will come up as time goes on.  This is a crop that teaches patience.  It's the longest crop to harvest that we grow - a full 210 days to maturity.

Garlic is worth the wait, though.  It's so delicious!

The Fall Flow is On

In fallow fields all around us at this time of year, you see a bright, happy yellow hue that radiates happiness.  To some, the sight of this radiates allergy problems because this is goldenrod.  Interestingly enough, the honeybees love this stuff.  All day long they forage for pollen and nectar in these yellow fields.

During the springtime, for spring honey, it is primarily made from the flowers of Chinese tallow trees, white Dutch clover, and privet.  We pulled all that honey in July.  For the fall crop of honey, it is almost entirely goldenrod honey.  Goldenrod honey has a very strange attribute.  It stinks.  Seriously.  It smells like a sweaty t-shirt that you took off after mowing and through into a hamper, maybe along with a pair of sweaty socks.  The sour smell is exactly what goldenrod honey smells like.  You walk around the hives and you can't miss it.  It is beneficial to your health, though, and so, this year for the first time, we are planning to pull fall honey.

It's time we inspect the hives to make sure the bees have enough space in the hive to put the stores of nectar they are bringing in.  We apply a little smoke to calm them down.  As soon as you open the telescoping lid, you hear a humming sound as they come up to greet you.

I pulled out a frame and it's heavy.  It's almost completely capped.  The uncapped cells have nectar in them and they'll be capped soon.  Almost all the frames are full of honey.  They are going to run out of room.  That means we'll need to add another medium super on the top to give them more room.  The rule of thumb is that when the box is 80% full of capped honey, add another box.  If you don't, you run the risk of them running out of room and leaving.

Before putting the top on, I put another swiffer sheet on top of the frames, to catch small hive beetles.

Before I put the empty box on top, let me pull it back off and show you how active the bees are.  This was at about 9 AM, so many of the bees are out in the goldenrod field already, foraging for nectar and pollen.

They are very busy and are not afraid to get in my face and let me know they mean business!  I am very thankful for my bee suit.

So all in all, once we added the empty supers on top of the full ones, we have nine total honey supers.  We'll be pulling honey in early November when the goldenrod blooms taper off.

We'll let you know how it goes next month.

Have Your Cake and Eat it Too

My sister is a remarkable woman.  She is the mother of six boys, works a full time job teaching high school and makes cakes as a side-hustle.  As a result, her schedule is full.  I get tired just thinking about all she fits in a 24 hour day.  Recently, her second oldest son got married in Natchitoches.  We talked about it on the blog a little while back.  Jenny, in addition to being mother of the groom, took on the responsibility of making BOTH the bride's cake and the groom's cake.

She never let's anyone see her sweat.  She's motivated by doing things at the very last minute.  It always works out.  Around noon on the day of the wedding that was to take place that afternoon, the cake-making operation went into overdrive.  She got the cake put together and (surprisingly) enlisted the help of my brother and I to bedazzle the top of the cake with fresh, red raspberries.  We washed our hands and began methodically placing the raspberries atop the cake, sneaking a few to eat during the process.

My brother, Kristian, calculating the width of a raspberry while ciphering the radius of the cake

Before you knew it, the cake was about finished.  It looked elegant and smelled delicious.  There were raspberries left over and we indulged ourselves.

Jenny feverishly worked to get things finalized, piping more icing onto the cake.

Now that the cake was done, we just had to get it out to the venue of the wedding reception.  This happened to be about 8 miles out of Natchitoches, in the country.  Amid the rolling hills and oak trees, a big white tent was set up in the middle of a rodeo arena.  That was the next mission: to get the cakes out to the reception site, a tall task, to be sure.

Everyone loaded up in their Tahoe and Jenny hopped in the very back to hold the cake.  All was going well.  However, once you get near the rehearsal venue, the road changes from paved road to gravel road.  Unfortunately, the gravel road had what we call "corduroy" in it.  Some people call this "washboard."  I think you get the point.  There are deep grooves in the road that will rattle the fillings out of your head.  Imagine what it could do to a wedding cake!

Suddenly the cake broke into 3 pieces.  Like the walls of Jericho, the cake and carefully placed raspberries tumbled.  What a mess!  The wedding was only a few hours away now but Jenny was unshaken, unflappable and unfazed.  Here's what she did:  To hold it together until the wedding reception started, she took cardboard and placed around the edges of the cake and then put a ribbon around the cardboard and cinched it up.  The cake came back together.  Everything worked out.  Jenny bound up the broken cake.  All in attendance enjoyed the delicious and beautiful cake.

I've thought about that a lot over the past several weeks.  It reminded me of something.  In Isaiah 61:1 Isaiah said, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;"

What great news for Israel!  The Prophet Isaiah was saying that one day Israel would be restored and all would work out.  700 years later, at the inauguration of Jesus Christ's public ministry, He walked to the synagogue, opened the scroll and, out of all the verses in Scripture, read that very verse, saying, "Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."  The Messiah, Jesus, had come to bring salvation and... bind up the broken-hearted.  Perhaps you are broken-hearted.  You are crushed in spirit.  You have no hope.  Your dreams are unrealized.  Discouragement, sadness, and depression abounds.

I have good news for you.  First, you are not alone.  Jesus knows what it feels like.  You see, He was despised and rejected of men.  They put the King of Glory on a cross and killed Him.  Fortunately, that's not the end of the story.  Jesus' death and then resurrection in His finished work at Calvary, gave us victory over sin and death.  We deserved death and yet HE stood in our place, pardoning us and taking the full weight of punishment upon Himself.  The Word tells us that He was wounded for our transgressions.  By His stripes, we are healed!

Maybe we're right smack-dab in the middle of sin right now.  Maybe our lives, like that raspberry-topped bride's cake, has broken into pieces.  What was once beautiful and put together is now an unmitigated disaster - a mess.  Our very heart is broken.  Time has run out and all appears lost.  Have no fear.  We have an Advocate, a Friend who sticketh closer than a brother.  One who has carried our burdens and has forgiven us.  One who has promised to bind up the brokenhearted.  Place your trust in Jesus today.

Psalm 147:3 "He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds."

Jolie Blon (Pretty Blonde)

I've talked several times about one of my favorite authors, James Lee Burke.  I especially like his "Dave Robicheaux" novels with Clete Purcell as his sidekick.  I've read all of them, and I'm going back and re-reading them on audiobook with the Libby App from my library.  I just finished Jolie Blon's Bounce.  James Lee Burke's prose drips from the pages like honey on a summer Sunday afternoon, inviting the reader into the scene being described where you can not only see from the vantage point of the protagonist, but you can smell the scents in the room.  You suddenly are reminded of memories dredged to the surface from another time or place - even from places that no longer exist.

In case you aren't familiar with his work, I've cut & pasted an excerpt that I had to go back and read two or three times:

"A love affair with Louisiana is in some ways like falling in love with the Biblical Whore of Babylon.  We try to smile at its carnival-like politics, its sweaty whiskey-soaked demagogues, the ignorance bred by the poverty and insularity of its Cajun and afro-Caribbean culture, but our self-deprecating manner is a poor disguise for the realities that hover on the edges of one's vision like dirty smudges on a family portrait.  The State roadsides and parking lots of discount stores are strewn, if not actually layered, with mind-numbing amounts of litter thrown there by the poor and uneducated and the revelers for whom a self-congratulatory hedonism is a way of life.  With regularity, land developers who are accountable to no one, bulldoze down stands of virgin cypress and 200 year old live oaks often at night so the irrevocable nature of their work cannot be seen until daylight when it is too late to stop it.  The petrochemical industry poisons waters with impunity, and even trucks in waste from out of state and dumps it into open sludge pits usually in rural black communities.  Rather than fight monied interests, most of the State's politicians give their constituencies casinos and power ball lotteries and drive-by daquiri windows along with low income taxes for the wealthy and 8.25% sales tax on food for the poor."

James Lee Burke
Jolie Blon's Bounce

Ouch!  That's scathing.  James Lee Burke is from New Iberia, Louisiana.  That's 62 miles away from our home.  Only a local can talk this way with an understanding of problems that plague our area in honest terms.  At the same time as confronting painful realities in our state, there is a deep love for its people and the beauty of the landscape.  A heart that yearns for better times and better outcomes.

As I listened to that paragraph from Jolie Blon's Bounce, my mind went back to memories of driving past Cypress swamps that are beautiful as any picture you want to see, and yet, someone has dumped an old washing machine or a black plastic bag full of crawfish heads from a recent boil over the bridge.  I was going to drive out and take a photo to document that, but decided against it.  Nature's beauty, but man has marred the landscape.  Why do we do this?  I don't know or maybe I don't want to know.  

Jolie Blon means pretty blonde.  It's also the name of a song that has been deemed the Cajun National Anthem and may be the most famous Cajun song of all time.  It has been sung by numerous people (Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Bruce Springsteen, and Jo El Sonnier, to name a few) and each made it a little different.  It was first written and recorded in the 1920's, but made famous in 1946 when Harry Choates' French version was recorded.  It has been said that he sold the rights to the song for $100 and a bottle of whiskey.  The song is a waltz.  As you listen to it, you can count 1,2,3  1,2,3 as it draws you to the dancefloor, even if, like me, you can't dance.  It is a sad, haunting song about a pretty blonde that has run off and left him for another lover.  McNeese State University in Lake Charles, LA, named Jolie Blon their fight song and each time the Cowboys score, the Pride of McNeese marching band plays Jolie Blon.  

If you've never heard it, I've attached a You Tube link below to Harry Choates' ENGLISH version where you can hear the sad fiddle and hear the heartbreak of a man who has experienced great loss.  Click the arrow below.  Forgive me in advance if the tune stays stuck in your head like it has been in mine!

Cowpeas & Butterbeans

One of the crops that thrive in our hot, humid climate is southern cowpeas.  I like to plant purple hull peas, blackeyed peas, and ozark razorback peas.  These produce prolifically and we eat a lot of peas and rice with sausage at our house, so we keep up a nice inventory of these in the pantry.  I want to show you another item that we like - Blackeyed Butterbeans.  These are a relatively new item we've rotated in and grown to like.  It has the markings of a blackeyed pea, but is a butter bean.  It vines up on a trellis.  Here is a pod that I just picked.

The blackeyed peas and purple hull peas are all done, but I still have a row of Ozark Razorback peas left to pick.  These peas are mottled with red and white markings.  They're a little smaller than purple hulls or blackeyed peas, but they sure taste great.  Here is a pod I'm about to shell right now:

Shelling peas is a job I don't mind at all.  You don't have to think about it.  You can shell peas while you are rocking on the front porch or watching TV.  It's rewarding to see your bowl fill!  Once we get them shelled, we eat them, freeze them, or put them on the dehydrator and let them dry.  Here is a half of a quart of Blackeyed butterbeans all dried and ready for long-term storage in the pantry.

And here is a half gallon of Ozark Razorback peas that will go in the pantry as well.

When we're ready, we'll soak the peas overnight and then cook them the next day with some onions and tasso and smoked sausage.  Tricia will make a skillet of cornbread with some jalapenos diced in there.  Then she'll put some rice cooking.  Mmmmmmmmm.....

Don't Tread on Me

Our hen house borders the woods on the south side of the property.  That's always been a problem.  There are lots of critters in the woods - possums, rabbits, rats, MINKS, stray cats, squirrels, and snakes.  Rat snakes grow to be six feet long, easily.  They look scary, but they are harmless.  In fact, we leave them alone for the most part.  They are like heat-seeking missiles that take out rats and keep the population under control.

Where we run into problems is when the rat snakes (we call them chicken snakes) opt for easier prey and begin eating our eggs.  When I went out to the hen house with my egg basket to begin gathering eggs, look what was waiting for me in the very first box.  No wonder all the hens were acting real nervous right outside the hen house.

It's quite obvious the snake had eaten an egg.  Its skin is stretched taut and you can see the oval shape of an egg there.  It is also an amazing thing that the snake can open its mouth wide enough to ingest the egg.

To assist in combatting egg loss by these reptilian rascals, we have placed ceramic eggs in each of the nesting boxes bordering the woods.  I use a black sharpie to draw a stripe around the egg so that I'll be able to tell the fake eggs from the real ones.  You can see those below.  If you look above, you'll note that the fake egg is missing from the box.  The snake had eaten the fake egg.  It's a death sentence for the snake.  He'll get a terminal case of constipation, because he'll never break that egg and he's sure not gonna pass it.

Sometimes, the snake slithers off into the woods and dies and we'll find the ceramic egg in a snake skeleton months later.  This time, I'm not going to wait.  I'm going to get our egg back.  Armed with a shovel, I performed a surgical procedure to remove it.  I got our egg back.

If the snake would have just stayed in his lane, all would have been well.  He would have been free to kill rats - a practice that rat snakes are quite adept at doing.  Tragically, the snake got "tread" on.