Why do we farm?

Why do we farm?  That's a good question, albeit one that requires a little context before answering.  Please forgive me for waxing poetic in this post.  I think this post probably should have been among the first of the blog as it lays out why we do what we do.  This may take a while, so grab a mug of coffee and butter your biscuit while you read this.  Oh, I see you... don't spread that fake stuff on your biscuit.  Put some real butter on there along with some homemade mayhaw jelly.  Now we're talking!

There is an author that I really enjoy reading.  His name is Wendell Berry and he's the author of a book called The Unsettling of America.  He also wrote an essay entitled For the Love of the Land, that I'd like to share some excerpts from as it eloquently answers the question posed in today's posting: Why do we farm?

I've bolded excerpts from this essay and will make a few personal notes which I'll leave unbolded.  Mr. Berry talks about good farmers who husband the land that they are blessed to possess.  They are more like the Shepherds that Jesus talks about in the book of John, than the hirelings.  A hireling works solely for compensation, whereas a Shepherd, or a Farmer in this instance, is personally vested and truly cares about the crops, animals, land and legacy he leaves behind:

Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery. 

All that is what farmers ought to do. But since our present society's first standard in all things is profit and it loves to dwell on "economic reality," I can't resist a glance at these good farmers in their economic circumstances, because these farmers will be poorly paid for the goods they produce, and for the services they render to conservation they will not be paid at all. Good farmers today may market products of high quality and perform well all the services I have listed, and still be unable to afford health insurance, and still find themselves mercilessly caricatured in the public media as rural simpletons, hicks, or rednecks. And then they hear the voices of the "economic realists": "Get big or get out. Sell out and go to town. Adapt or die." We have had 50 years of such realism in agriculture, and the result has been more and more large-scale monocultures and factory farms, with their ever larger social and ecological-and ultimately economic-costs.

Why is it that hard-working farmers, must have off farm income in order to make ends meet?  Thankfully, I see a growing demand for locally produced meats and vegetables in the rise in popularity of farmer's markets.  We discussed in another post about a "factory egg" not being the same product as a pastured egg in terms of nutrients.  The same can be said for produce and meat. 

"Get big or get out" is so detrimental to the land, so detrimental to the farmer's family, and so detrimental to our future.  This mentality forces the farmer to depend upon chemicals and GMOs and the jury is still out (for some) on the adverse effects of excessive chemical and genetic manuipulation has upon our health. 

Why do good farmers farm well for poor pay and work as good stewards of nature for no pay, many of them, moreover, having no hope that their farms will be farmed by their children (for the reasons given) or that they will be farmed by anybody?

In the 1800's nearly 80% of the population was involved in agriculture.  By the 1900's that percentage fell to 35%.  In 2000 only 1.5% of the population was involved in agriculture.  Those are stunning statistics.  That is a very small percentage of people growing food, fiber and fuel for the world.  Furthermore, 40% of the remaining farmers are 55 years old or older.  I don't want to be an alarmist, but those figures don't bode well for the future.

In the 1800's most people were farmers or were very close to someone who was.  If someone were to lose their "city job", they could fall back on farming.  Today, not many people are involved in farming and don't have the land or skills to do it if they had to.

Well, I was raised by farmers, have farmed myself, and have in turn raised two farmers-which suggests to me that I may know something about farmers, and also that I don't know very much. But over the years I, along with a lot of other people, have wondered, Why do they do it? Why do farmers farm, given their economic adversities on top of the many frustrations and difficulties normal to farming? And always the answer is: Love. They must do it for love. Farmers farm for the love of farming. They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants. They love to live in the presence of animals. They love to work outdoors. They love the weather, maybe even when it is making them miserable. They love to live where they work and do work where they live. If the scale of their farming is small enough, they like to work in the company of their children and with the help of their children. They love the measure of independence that farm life can still provide. I have an idea that a lot of farmers have gone to a lot of trouble merely to be self-employed, to live at least a part of their lives without a boss.

And there is the answer to the question posed in the title of today's post said more profoundly than I could ever hope to.  Trying to add anything to Mr. Berry's answer is superfluous.  I'll zip my lips.

And so the first thing farmers as conservationists must try to conserve is their love of farming and their love of independence. Of course they can conserve these things only by handing them down, by passing them on to their children, or to somebody's children. Perhaps the most urgent task for all of us who want to eat well and to keep eating is to encourage farm-raised children to take up farming. And we must recognize that this only can be done when the economics are fair. Farm children are not encouraged by watching their parents take their crops to market only to have them stolen at prices less than the cost of production.

Ah, the love of farming and the love for independence.  I can remember being a small boy and rushing outside after supper to plant my fruit cocktail!?!  I can remember having toy tractors and combines and making "fields" in the backyard.  I'd wait until my Dad came home from the farm and I'd empty out his rubber boots in order to get grains of rice to plant in my "fields."  I remember my grandfather showing me how to garden and how I marveled at the miracle of how you plant this seed in the ground and a few days later, tiny green shoots would break the soil, face the sunlight and grow!  I remember my other grandfather showing me how to compost.  I've always loved the musty, rich smell of dirt being broken open and the sight of the sun either rising in the eastern sky or setting on the western horizon, the sounds of a rooster announcing a new day and a mama cow bellowing for her calf.  How can one not love these things?  A foreign concept to me.

Unfortunately, passing down the farm or the love of farming to the next generation is where the difficulty lies.  For if it is your life's work and you wish to do it for any length of time, you must be compensated for it.  So how do you accomplish this?  How do farmers "set" a fair price?  Commercial farmers really cannot set a price.  They are at the mercy of the world market, government target prices, and/or subsidies which are pretty much out of the farmer's control.  It's not an easy answer, and this is merely my opinion, but perhaps our entire paradigm of farming is wrong.  Maybe we aren't supposed to be growing food for the world.  Maybe we're supposed to be growing food for ourselves and our neighbors.  Maybe our focus should be local.

Perhaps it starts with educating our friends and neighbors about what they are putting into their bodies.  Mad Cow disease, e coli, etc. are exhibit A and B of what happens when large scale industrial farming goes wrong.  For example, in the old days, when you bought milk or eggs or vegetables from Farmer Jones down the road, you knew him.  Your kids went to school with his and you probably attended Sunday Service with him.  You looked him in the eye and shook his hand.  There is no way on God's green earth that Farmer Jones would sell you milk from a sick cow, or rotten eggs, or bad looking produce or meat from a sick animal.  There was accountability.  If Farmer Brown made you or your family sick, it would be a personal thing, for the consumer and producer were friends.  Now, the milk from 10,000 cows is commingled.  There is no face to face exchange.  We're so distanced from our food that school children think their food comes from the grocery store.  The only way to seemingly inject accountability is to put computer chips in cows and tracing the cow from the pasture to feedlot to factory to store to table.  NO! 

Maybe "progress" is to go backward and get to know your farmer.  Buy directly from him or her.  Be discerning about what you put in your body.  Pay your farmer fairly for his or her products and don't compare the pricing to Wal Mart.  Locally grown food is not the same as the factory food in the store.  It's an apples to oranges comparison.  Truth be told, regardless the price, a farmer will always farm.  It is who he is and what he does.  A farmer takes pride in sitting down to a suppertable with his family and looking down at a table filled with a bountiful harvest of produce, meat and milk that he raised on his land.  A farmer also gets satisfaction in seeing someone else enjoying the product of his toils.  If he has to get a "real job," he'll still farm nights and weekends, but largely he'll farm for the benefit of his family and a few neighbors.

But farmers are obviously responsible for conserving much more than agrarian skills and attitudes. I have already told why farmers should be, as much as any conservationist, conservers of the wildness of the world-and that is their inescapable dependence on nature. Good farmers, I believe, recognize a difference that is fundamental between what is natural and what is manmade. They know that if you treat a farm as a factory and living creatures as machines, or if you tolerate the idea of "engineering" organisms, then you are on your way to something destructive and, sooner or later, expensive. To treat creatures as machines is an error with large practical implications.

We love our animals.  We love the land.  We love farming.  Our labor is a labor of love.  Get to know your local farmer.  He loves what he does and loves to put good stuff on his table and YOURS!

Maggie Mae says to make the "moo've" to locally grown.

Farewell Isaac

A couple of days ago I mentioned the arrival of Hurricane Isaac, a Category 1 Storm that was in no hurry to get out of here.  Below is the slow path he took through the Bayou State:



We were very fortunate and saw only Tropical Storm force winds and rain.  This afternoon when I asked Russ and Benjamin how much rain we got, Benjamin said, "6 inches and 6 tadpoles."  He had filled the rain gauge with tadpoles from the water trough.  In reality, we only got one inch of rain.



Raining cats and dogs and tadpoles

College classes were cancelled for 3 days due to the storm and as a result, Laura got to come home and we had the entire family together again for a few days.  The only bad thing for her is that in order to make up those days, they have to forgo their fall break and go to classes on a Saturday.  The boys were out of school too.  This afternoon when I returned, they had picked up a lot of the fallen branches in the yard and built up the burn pile to new heights.

Tricia took the opportunity during the stormy weather to make a big pot of beef stew and use the pressure cooker to can 7 wide mouth quart jars to build up our inventory of canned goods in the pantry.  We ate a bunch of it that wouldn't fit in the jars.  Good stuff!


This puts Dinty Moore to shame

We've had repeated problems with our roof over the last 11 years.  I think the shingles were fastened down with bubble gum instead of roofing tacks.  I watched with dismay as the shingles blew off the roof during the gusting wind.  First on the east side:


Flippity flop



Then, not to be left out, the west side:


Flop, Flop

I'll have to get those replaced.  The roof is way too steep for me to get on top of, so I'll call a roofer.  But this is minor damage.  We're so blessed compared to many who lost their homes in Southeast Louisiana.  We pray for those who suffered losses in the storm.  We also think about the farmers who worked long hours before Isaac's arrival to harvest the rice still in the field and those farmers who have soybeans in standing water, with their crops and as a result, their livelihood at risk. 

In addition to shingles falling to the ground, there were critters falling from the sky as well!  Benjamin and Russ found a baby squirrel that had been blown out of his nest and was on the ground and would have died.  The boys adopted him, named the little fellow Tucker, and are feeding him Daisy's milk from a dropper.  Our neighbor found a baby squirrel just like this about 5 years ago that fell out of his nest in a tree during a storm.  He named her Stormy and raised it from a baby.  It was the darnedest thing.  You'd go next door and Mr. Bill could call Stormy girl down out of the tree and she'd eat pecans off of his shoulder!

Here are a few shots of the newest member of our family, Tucker, the baby squirrel:


Let sleepin' squirrels lie.



A real handful



Benjamin and his new friend, Tucker

As the remnants of Isaac leave the area, we give thanks for our safety.  We put the focus on preparing for the onslaught of the storm aside and can now start preparing for putting in the fall garden as soon as the ground dries out.  We'll be talking about that in the upcoming days.

Gates

Benjamin and I are still reading To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.  While reading last night we came across a particularly poignant dialogue between Atticus Finch and his daughter Scout.  To set it up a bit, Atticus is a lawyer in racially segregated Maycomb, Alabama in 1938.  He is representing a black man in a legal case and his son Jem, aged 12, and daughter Scout, aged 9, are being tormented by their classmates and adults alike for it.  They are calling Atticus a racial epithet in front of the kids and the kids are getting in fights in order to defend their Dad's honor.  Atticus is talking to his daughter Scout, who is rambunctious, and trying to prepare her for a rough summer as the trial of Tom Robinson gets underway.

"Scout," said Atticus, "when summer comes you'll have to keep your head about far worse things... it's not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down -- well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you'll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn't let you down.  This case, Tom Robinson's case, is something that goes to the essence of a man's conscience -- Scout, I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn't try to help that man."

 

"Atticus, you must be wrong..."

 

"How's that?"

"Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong..."

"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself.  The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

 Atticus made some profound statements there.  I admire the way he was honorable and respectful to those who differed with him and the way he modeled civility to his children.  He was a man of steadfast conviction.  I can imagine that he was experiencing a great amount of guilt for causing his children pain, but he didn't lash out in anger at his adversaries.  He instead used a "teachable moment" to convey some great points to his children:

• Be true to yourself and believe in your convictions,
• Help your neighbors and stand up for what is right,
• Be cognizant that majority opinion is not always right

I think about that dialogue and agree that pressure always exists to conform - in all aspects of life.  Sometimes when you take a certain direction that maybe others haven't chosen and find yourself in the minority, you question yourself.  You start to waver and lose confidence and wonder if you are heading in the right direction.  Doubt enters in and you begin to wonder if you are on the right path.
 

Which way do you go?  What path do you take?  To go down a path, lots of times you must go through a gate and on a farm there are all sorts of gates.  Gates are for keeping animals in or out and also as a means of entry and exit for people.  There are wide gates,

 

  

 

 Medium sized picket gates,

 

 

 Small, decorative, old fashioned gates,

 


And NARROW GATES:



I painted that verse of Scripture on our narrow gate to remind me every day of the Truth.  The Truth of the words of Jesus, when He said:

"Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter by it.  For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it."  - Matthew 7:13-14

I firmly believe Jesus was talking about choices set before us - choices we can make that lead to eternal life and choices we can make that lead to eternal torment.  He is the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE, regardless of what a secular society says.  Majority rule doesn't necessarily apply in spiritual matters.  In fact, the opposite is often true.   

The analogy of the wide gate and the narrow gate also applies to most everything in life as Atticus was trying to teach his kids.  Just because most people thought Atticus was wrong didn't make it wrong.  Jem and Scout would learn this later and admire their Dad for his conviction.  Don't blindly follow the crowd.  Don't assume that just because you find yourself in the minority opinion that you are wrong.  Be guided by your conscience and do what is right.  You must live with the decisions you make.  Be honorable, steadfast and upright in your dealings. 

The narrow gate exemplifies a way of life, a way of relating to God and to others.  I hate to say it but sometimes walking through the narrow gate is hard.  You may feel like a salmon swimming against the current, but keep going.  Walk through the narrow gate, for there is victory at the end of the path!

Don't count your chickens before they hatch!

We've been watching a hen sitting on a clutch of eggs for a while now - 22 days to be exact.  Since I began counting the day I found the nest, it is safe to say that most of the eggs in the nest are older than 22 days.  I lifted myself up to Sally sitting on the nest and listened.  I didn't hear a peep - literally.  This is not a good sign considering that chicks hatch out in 21 days.  I think it puts an exclamation point on the end of the old adage, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch!"  That's a saying that means don't assume you're going to get something until you actually have it.


Sally Hennypenny on her nest in the loft

Sally doesn't understand, but her eggs aren't going to hatch.  The poor old girl would sit on them forever, being hopefully optimistic that they'd hatch.  But they won't.  In fact, they're beginning to smell.  I reached up to grab her and she fluffed up her feathers, squawked and pecked at me.  I lifted her off her nest and put her on the ground.  Here is her nest:


Six very smelly, rotten eggs.

I picked up the sulfurous smelling eggs, putting them into a bucket with hay, handling them like I would imagine a bomb squad would handle a ticking time bomb, knowing full well that breaking one of these eggs would unleash biological agents equivalent to those found in the arsenals of Middle Eastern dictators.  I carried them to the garden, dug a hole and buried them.  Six weapons of mass destruction effectively disarmed.  Whew!


Peeeeeyeeeeewwww!

As you can see, they never formed.  None of them had chicks in them.  So what happened?  Why did she not hatch out any chicks?  I have several theories, but I'm not ashamed to say that I really don't know.  One theory is that maybe the eggs weren't fertilized.  This would be probable if you don't have enough roosters on the flock.  I've read that you need one rooster for every ten hens.  We've got that ratio, so it seems improbable that the eggs weren't fertilized.  Unless, of course, our macho roosters are infertile. What else could be the problem?

Well, when you incubate eggs in an incubator, and we've done that several times, you've got to make sure that the humidity is right and the temperature is right.  I would assume that the same holds true for hens sitting on eggs.  The ideal temperature is 100.5 and the ideal humidity is 60% in an incubator.  Now, we never have to worry about the lack of humidity in Louisiana, but on most days it exceeds 60%, so this could be an issue that caused the hatch to fail?  Not sure.  The heat during the period Sally was sitting exceeded 100.5 degrees Farenheit many days, especially considering Sally that laid the eggs in the loft of the barn and three feet above her nest is a corrugated tin roof radiating heat like an oven.  Poached eggs, anyone?

I think it is safe to say that I don't know the reason and I'm thankful that I didn't count my chickens before they hatched and ordered 31 pullets instead of counting on the potential chicks under Sally to be 2013 egg producers.  One more thing, as I was in the loft removing the eggs from Sally's nest, look what else I found (doggonit!):

Another nest!

I gathered these, though.  No one's sitting on 'em.  They just find creative places to lay and gathering eggs remains a daily Easter egg hunt.  In some of our egg boxes, I've placed ceramic and wooden nest eggs.  They look and feel just like real eggs.  In the picture below, the center nesting box has a nest egg in it.  It is the dark brown one right in the center of the picture.  This particular one is made of cedar wood.  We have some ceramic ones as well.

Nest eggs are used for two purposes.  The first is to train your pullets to lay in a particular area.  You can buy fake ceramic eggs from the feed store.  When your pullets get ready to start laying, you put the fake egg in a nest box and that fools them into thinking that the boxes are a good spot to lay their eggs as well.  Hopefully this will save you from hunting in numerous places for eggs.

There is a second purpose for placing these fake eggs in the nests - Chicken snakes!  Chicken snakes, or rat snakes, are harmless snakes, BUT they are humongous and will scare the ever-livin' daylights out of you.  They will eat your eggs and then go rub up against something to break the eggs they've swalled in order to digest them.  The idea of the fake eggs is that the snake will eat the ceramic or wooden egg and it will end up killing him as he won't be able to digest the fake eggs.  Now, I'm just as generous as the next guy, but I think a snake needs to earn his living honestly and not steal our eggs.  They also eat rats and should be eating rats instead.  

Poor old Sally.  She worked hard, showed persistence, exhibited tenacity and was faithful to the end - traits we should aspire to possess.  In the end, it didn't work out for her.  But judging by her resolve in the picture below, I think she'll live to fight another day.




If at first you don't succeed... try, try again!



The pantry

We're on alert right now watching Tropical Storm Isaac.  In the Old Testament, Sarah bore Abraham a son named Isaac.  If you remember, the name Isaac, means "he laughs."  Hopefully once he tears through here (remember when hurricanes used to be named for girls?) we'll laugh about it.  From the looks of the storm track below, New Orleans and Mississippi seem to be in the crosshairs.  They'll need our prayers.

 

 

At the current time, most models put Isaac running right up the mouth of the mighty Mississippi River.  That is well east of us but even if it holds that course, we should still get some decent winds and rain.  Most of the models have Isaac making landfall between Tuesday midnight and Wednesday morning.

We have a little checklist we go through each summer to ensure we're ready when hurricane season rolls around, you know, batteries, flashlights, water, gasoline, lamp oil, candles, ice, etc.  As far as food is concerned, we have a freezer full of chickens that we raise once a year and butcher.  The problem with that is electricity.  If the power goes out for any length of time, we'll have to shift about 50 cut up chickens to ice chests as well as begin eating BBQ chicken for breakfast, lunch and supper to avoid spoilage!

For weather emergencies or just good preparedness, it is a good idea to have a well-stocked pantry.  As you can see our potato harvest from back in mid-May is almost depleted.  We like the new red potatoes (crawfish potatoes, some people call them).  We dig them up in May and hang them in an onion sack from a tree for a couple of days to let them cure.  That allows them to dry before putting them in a cool, dark place (the pantry) for a while.  They have lasted over 3 months with little to no spoilage and we eat a lot of potatoes.


The bottom of the barrel.

 We like these potatoes cooked with fresh green beans, oven fries, and especially homemade hash browns.  Look at them cooking away below.  Add some fresh green onions, some grated cheese with some scrambled eggs with onions and mushrooms and some homemade salsa on top and look out!

 

 

Everything tastes better in a cast iron skillet!


Back to the pantry:  I have read that Mormons keep a year's supply of food stored to ensure that they can take care of themselves, their families and their neighbors in case of an emergency.  That sounds like good advice.  It seems overwhelming to have that much food, but from what I read they do it a little at a time, buying (or canning) a few cans here, a few cans there, and before you know it, you have a storehouse.

 

Our beginnings of a storehouse

We mainly can food to preserve the harvest.  We try to grow more than we can eat.  Then we eat as much as we can fresh.  For the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables we can't eat fresh, we blanch and freeze.  Blanching is when you plunge fresh vegetables under boiling water for a brief period of time and then remove and put immediately under ice water to stop the cooking process.  Then you freeze in serving size containers.  Once you thaw and cook, it is very close to tasting like fresh picked produce.  The items we don't eat fresh and we don't blanch and freeze, we can.  In the picture above, you can see sliced carrots, beets, corn, jalapenos, cucumbers, pickled okra, pickled green beans, pickled beets, pickles, fig preserves, blackberry jelly and muscadine jelly.  

  

We also try to keep a lot of honey on hand.  We actually trade products from our farm for honey from a friend who is a beekeeper.  We love honey.  It is healthy and delicious.  We use it instead of sugar.  It is sweeter than sugar so you don't need as much when substituting honey for sugar in recipes.  It doesn't spoil.  It just crystallizes.  In fact, did you know that honey was found in King Tut's tomb that was still edible?  Hard to believe.


Pints of local honey

If you're interested in getting started with canning foods or learning about anything to do with homesteading, a good reference we've found is a book by Carla Emery called The Encyclopedia of Country Living.   

Here are just a few of the things you'll learn to do in this helpful reference manual:

• Find and buy your plot of land
• Site and build your house or cabin
• Create a vegetable garden
• Log your land
• Manage a herd of cattle
• Raise chickens, goats, and pigs
• Mill your own flour
• Bake your own bread
• Sharpen an axe and all your knives
• Prune a tree
• Can, dry and preserve food
• Learn basic beekeeping
• Light your table with candles you made

Why,  who knows, you learn all that and you may move out to Walnut Grove with Charles Ingalls and his family!

We'll be battening down the hatches tomorrow afternoon at our little house on the prairie in preparation for Isaac.  We'll keep you posted.  Stay safe (and prepared!)

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

How can anyone not remember the Disney movie, "Song of the South", in which Uncle Remus sang Zip-a-dee-doo-dah?  With the Bluebird on his shoulder, everything was joyful.  One thing that we built that has provided our own song of the south and lots of joy is a zip line.  All it took was about 60 feet of cable, two cable clamps, a piece of steel tubing from the frame of a vibra shank cultivator, a pulley and some scrap pieces of iron to weld together and make a handle.  You pull the cable real tight and stretch between two trees at an angle.  That's it.

Looking up from the end of the cable run

In the photo above you can see that there is no grass growing.  There are two reasons for this.  First, this is a very shady spot - the spot where the cows like to come relax and snooze during the heat of the day - a spot too shady for grass to grow.  Also, this is the spot where I get big round bales of couple year old hay and unroll them.  The hay decomposes with help from the cows and chickens and makes rich soil that I scoop up and use to amend the soil in the garden.

Back to the zip line.  All you do is put the pulley on the tightly stretched cable and pull it to the top of the incline:

We currently have to use a ladder, but we had a tree house in the water oak tree in the picture below.  You would launch off the deck of the tree house which was about 10 feet off the ground.  The treehouse was built with untreated wood that rotted after about 5 years and we tore it down after it became a safety hazard.

You let go and fly!

Benjamin in flight - look ma, one hand!

Then rinse, wash, repeat:

As you're speeding toward the bottom, you're heading toward a smaller barn that we used when we raised goats.  "Oh say can you see..."  We painted an American Flag on the side of it.  I'm 46 going on 76 and am very old fashioned.  I think all barns should have American flags painted on the side of them.  Either that or "See Rock City".  Speaking of Old Glory, I need to get some bleach and clean her up, She's looking kind of weathered.


Stars and Stripes (and chicken)



On this lazy Sunday afternoon, I happened to capture on film a rebel soldier with a Confederate cap and musket in the side yard preparing for an assault in the Battle of Bull Run.  I think it is one of the legendary "Fightin' Tigers".  Here he is now in a skirmish with a Union soldier beneath the pecan trees.  The Yankee falls in a crumpled heap at the feet of the valiant soldier.  If you listen closely, you can almost hear Dixie being played.

Unfortunately the North rebounds and with much drama, Stonewall Jackson has been hit by a musket ball! Medic! 

Right on the periphery of the battleground, Daisy and Rosie graze peacefully, unfazed by the artillery fire.  If you look closely you can see three cattle egrets alongside them.

Cattle egrets will follow grazing cows and can sometimes be seen riding on their backs.  They are actually a friend to the cows and have a sort of a symbiotic relationship with them as they eat flies and other bugs that are attracted to the cows.  They also will eat frogs that are disturbed by the walking cattle.

That's about it for today - a nice, relaxing Sunday.  Craig Morgan has a country song called, That's what I love about Sundays, that sums it up nicely:

That's what I love about Sunday:
Sing along as the choir sways;
Every verse of Amazin' Grace,
An' then we shake the Preacher's hand.
Go home, into your blue jeans;
Have some chicken an' some baked beans.
Pick a back yard football team,
Not do much of anything:
That's what I love about Sunday.

New growth due to rains

The neat thing about farming is that things change every day.  If you work in an office, you may look out of the same window at the same view.  Even though our seasons, except for summer, are very short, when the seasons change, you see the land change as the leaves turn colors and then plants go dormant.  You see burst of tender, new bright green growth in Spring.  Even when it isn't Spring, after a rain, you'll see a revitalized growth on plants as the dull green color of leaves gives way to bright green leaves on all the plants.

Rain prompted new growth on blueberry bushes

A ficus tree that was in the sunroom that we moved outside is enjoying the rain and sunshine and is putting on new leaves in abundance. 

We also have lots of new growth on our orange trees and satsuma trees.  As I was checking out the orange trees, I noticed that they are loaded up with oranges.  The only problem is that most of the oranges have damage to the fruit done by birds.  We have an overabundance of blackbirds, grackles, mockingbirds, and blue jays.  The fruit itself isn't damaged I don't think, just the orange peel, but it isn't pretty to look at.  Next year I'll put up bird netting on all the trees to better protect the fruit.

The impatiens by the side door are full and blooming.



Crepe Myrtles showing off their blooms

Due to all the rainfall we've received lately, I did some searching for YTD rainfall totals for our area.  The latest update I could find from a month ago and was from the local TV station in Lafayette, a city about 45 minutes east of us.  They stated,

Earlier this month, Lafayette surpassed all the precipitation that it received for the entire calender year of 2011.
To date, more than 40" of rain has fallen in Lafayette this year...compared to the 36-37" of rain that fell in 2011. This time last year many spots across Acadiana were struggling with drought and rainfall of less than 20 inches for the year.
Normal year total rainfall in the area is around 60 inches.

That was a month ago.  We've easily gotten 8 or 10 inches since then, putting us within spitting distance of reaching our normal yearly rainfall total in August.  Wow!  Now, I feel a little guilty about complaning about rain when our friends in the midwest are suffering through a brutal drought.  I'm starting to get ready to get the fall garden in and would like to have it planted by September 1.  The ground is too wet to even think about planting anything for a while.  In the meantime, I'll start checking my seed inventory and planning what all I'll plant.  Hopefully we'll get a few dry days so that the land can dry up and we can begin planting.  

Liquid Sunshine

Friday it rained and rained and rained.  By the time we got home, gathered eggs, fed the animals and did the rest of the chores, we were soaked.  As I walked to the barn for the evening milking of Rosie, I checked the rain buckets.  They were all full.  Then I stopped by the rain gauge.  Take a look for yourself:


3 and 1/2 inches of the wet stuff

We sloshed through the mud to get to the barn.  With all of the rain, the ground is saturated and unable to soak up any more.  This is when it gets really messy on the farm and you're really thankful to have a dry barn.  The first item of business is to get Blackberry into her stall for the night.  She stays apart from Daisy so we will have milk in the morning.

She is protesting less and less to be separated from Daisy in the evenings as grass is becoming more and more a part of her diet.  She is so very healthy right now and seems to grow every day.  Our plan is to completely wean her from Daisy in another month - when she's about five months old.  We'll time that to coincide with when we dry Rosie up in order to prepare her for the birth of her calf (hopefully a little heifer) which she's expecting around December 16th. We'll stop milking her completely and begin milking Daisy twice a day instead of the current one time a day.  At that point Blackberry will be on her own and grass/hay will be her diet - no more good Jersey milk.  Our plans for her are to eventually move her back to the herd of beef cattle where she'll hopefully raise many little ones of her own.



The girls are happy to be in a dry barn for a while

Most of the chickens roost out in the chicken tractors that I move daily out in the pasture.  We do have a small flock that demands nicer accommodations and they roost in the barn.  We have 3 roosters on the flock - one Barred Rock, one Rhode Island Red, and one Aracauna.  They have sorted it out amongst themselves and there is one "king".  The others submit to his leadership and strut cautiously around him acting very humble.  But they are just biding their time, waiting for a moment of weakness.  At that time they'll pounce.  Old Red, our one-time king of the pasture, was killed by a younger rooster who sought dominance over the barnyard - and Old Red's HENS.  Brutal and sad, but such is life on the farm.  You may be king and on top of the world, but you better enjoy it while it lasts because your days are numbered.

Here's the king of the barn.  He's the old Barred Rock who roosts in the barn with his "harem".  I think he's got a lot of character.


The neighborhood alarm clock!

He roosts in the barn by the window and watches us as we walk up.  In the morning when we turn on the lights, he begins crowing so loudly we really need ear plugs.  I can't begin to tell you how loud it is.  Sometimes I want to throw something at him.  What I want to show you is this guy's "guns".


Don't mess with me, buddy, I'm packing heat.

I can't really give you perspective in this picture of how big the spurs of this rooster are, but I am not exaggerating when I tell you they are two inches long and capable of inflicting a world of pain on another rooster or a person.  We had a neighbor's grand-daughter who loved to come play with the animals.  One day she came over and was attacked by a mean rooster and he spurred her in her thigh, causing a puncture wound.  She had to be taken to the emergency room.  That rooster ended up in a delicious gumbo shortly after that.

Spurs are used for fighting with other roosters to achieve dominance (the pecking order) and become the leader of the hens and also for helping him hold the hens when mating. There is no delicate way of saying that chicken courtship is not a pleasurable affair.  It is vicious, violent and fast.  No romance here.  

 

Since it was too wet to do much outside, I went inside and had a little job to finish up.  The other day we showed how we were making Basil infused olive oil.  We had put it in the pantry for a week to let the flavors leak out of the basil and into the oil.  The week is up.  Today is the day for filtering out the basil leaves.  So Russ and I used a sieve and filtered out the leaves, leaving only oil in a jar.  We then used a funnel in order to pour the basil-infused oil into a new oil bottle.

Here is the finished product:

Now we've got to taste it.  We pour a liberal amount on a plate, grind some peppercorns over it along with some sea salt.  Then we dip some fresh sourdough bread in this heavenly concoction.

What's the verdict?



Ca C'est Bon!  It's good!

He causes the grass to grow for the cattle,
And vegetation for the labor of man,
So that he may bring forth food from the earth,
And wine which makes a man's heart glad,
So that he may make his face glisten with oil,
And food which sustains man's heart.

   - Psalm 104:14-15

We have a winner!