Springtime Blooms & New Growth

For most of my day, I sit on my rear-end in an office job looking at a computer.  Now that the days are getting longer, when I get home on our little family farm, I can actually go outside, breathe fresh air and live!  Sometimes I like to just walk around and take in sights that I might otherwise overlook.  In the posting yesterday, I showed you the dewberries that are in full bloom along the fence rows and ditches.

On my way out to feed the chickens, I had to set my feed buckets down and admire a navel orange tree that is absolutely covered in blooms.

Future oranges

Here is a close up of a few orange blossoms.  There was a strong east wind blowing and I stood on the west side of the tree and enjoyed the wonderful fragrance.  There are few fragrances on this earth that can compare to that of an orange blossom.  

If only this picture was a 'scratch and sniff'

This picture is blurry as my camera couldn't figure out what to focus on, but what I'm trying to highlight are the blueberry blossoms.  If all of the blooms hold, we'll be in for a record harvest on our little blueberry bushes this year.

I found my thrill, on Blueberry Hill...

A tree that we planted in the side yard that we call a Japanese Magnolia is beginning to bloom.  It puts on big striking, pinkish-colored blooms in early Spring prior to putting on foliage.


Japanese Magnolia or Magnolia liliiflora

Here is a close up of the Japanese Magnolia flower.  It smells pretty good, too.


Japanese Magnolia bloom

Although not quite as pretty to look at, the next picture is what excites me - White Dutch Clover.  I think it excites the cows, too.  Clover is a member of the pea family and is widely used as a pasture crop.  It is also a very beneficial thing to have for your soil as this plant has an ability to fix nitrogen in the soil, thus generating fertilizer.  I can remember being a kid searching for the elusive 'four leaf clover' amongst the leaves of this plant while trying not to get stung by the honeybees that are attracted to the white blooms.


White Dutch Clover

This moss growing under a live oak tree caught my eye.  I have no idea of what it is called, but the sun setting in the western sky made it light up. 

Mystery moss

 Here is another shot of it from ground level, catching the setting sun's rays:

Finally as I was heading back inside from enjoying the scenery, I noticed some new growth on one of our peach trees.


Peach tree growth

It's pretty neat how the seasons change.  Plants that have been dormant are now exhibiting new life with fresh growth and gets me itchin' to start the Spring Garden!

Making Homemade Dewberry Jelly

Being that we're knocking on the door to the month of March, I figured I'd meander over to the ditch in front of the house and see how the blackberry bushes survived the plow.  They are actually dewberries, a close relative of blackberries that grow alongside the ditch.  The landowner, after a number of years of not plowing, paid a farmer to plow the field this past fall and I was worried that the wild blackberries (actually dewberries) were toast.  But alas...


Blooming, healthy dewberries

See those little white blooms I focused in on?  Yep, those'll be beautiful berries, waiting to be picked and put in a bucket before long.  

Dewberry blooms

Armed with buckets and a penchant for getting stickers stuck in our fingers, we crossed the road last Spring and picked four one gallon size freezer bags full of dewberries.  We wash them and put them in individual layers in the freezer and then put them in freezer bags.  This way you can pour out the exact amount you need to make jelly, pie, muffins or cobbler.  We've eaten a bunch, but with the Spring blackberry harvest approaching quickly, we need to clear out the inventory in the freezer and make some jelly!  Here goes.  Pour 5 pints of whole berries in a container:  I took these out of the freezer.

Berry Good!

   

Measured out

While I'm taking care of processing the berries, I put the half pint jelly jars, along with the lids and rubber gaskets in the canner to sterilize.  I'm actually using a new type of lid, called Tattler lids.  They are reusable so I won't have to ever buy store bought lids again!


Sterilizing jars, lids, and gaskets

I put the 5 pints of berries in a pot on the stove and grab a potato masher and commence to mashing up the berries.  This is good exercise and an excellent stress reliever.
 

Use some 'elbow grease' to mash them up

Pretty soon this is what it looks like:


Dewberry puree

Now this is an optional step that we do.  Dewberries have a million little seeds that we don't really like, so we pour the mashed up concoction into a fine sieve to strain out the seeds.     

Straining out the seeds

By using a spoon to stir and force through the sieve, you'll end up with 3 3/4 cups of prepared Dewberry juice in a measuring cup.


Seedless Dewberry juice ready for jelly-making

Go ahead and pour the juice into a dutch oven and add 4 1/2 cups sugar and stir while heating.   

Adding the sugar

To the juice and sugar mixture, Benjamin adds one box of Sure Jell Fruit Pectin:


Adding Sure Jell

 While stirring continuously, bring this to a full boil on high heat so that it continues to boil even as you stir it.   

Full rolling boil

Remove from heat and then quickly ladle this into the sterilized half pint jars using a canning funnel.  Fill to within 1/8 inch of the top of the jars.  This is very hot and sticky so be careful.  Not to worry though, any spills offer an opportunity to test the flavor of the jelly.


Ladling the sweet elixir into the jars

Then I'll take the sterilized Tattler lids and put the rubber gaskets on the rims.  

Affixing the gasket on the Tattler lid

If you've gotten any jelly on the rim of the jar, wipe clean with a rag and put the lid on each jar.

Screw the rings on the lids tightly and put in your canner on an elevated rack for processing, ensuring that the water covers the top of the jars by 1 or 2 inches.


Processing the jelly

Cover and bring your water to a gentle boil, allowing the jelly to process for 5 minutes before removing them from the water bath with your canning tongs.     

Removing the processed jelly after 5 minutes

This is our compost bucket that we keep under our sink for coffee grounds and fruit and vegetable peelings.  To this, we'll add the dewberry seeds and incorporate into the garden soil.  We constantly amend our garden soil with as much organic matter as we can get our hands on.


Dewberry seed compost

Back to the work at hand, remove all the jars of processed jelly from the water bath canner and allow them to cool and sit undisturbed for 24 hours.
 

Ready for a spoon and a homemade piping-hot buttermilk biscuit!

I made two batches of homemade dewberry jelly which yielded 12 half pints (10 1/2 pint and 1 pint) of dewberry jelly.  These will be labeled and go into our pantry to be used over the next year.

Interesting (to me) facts about blackberries (or dewberries) from: http://www.pickyourown.org/blackberryjelly.php - an excellent source for 'berrying' information.

• Blackberry tea was thought to be a cure for dysentery during the Civil War.  During outbreaks, temporary truces were declared so that both Confederate and Union soldiers could forage for blackberries to ward off the disease.  Who knew?
• Berries contain antioxidants to ward off cancer causing free radicals. 
• Blackberries were enjoyed by the ancient Greeks, who believed them to be a cure for diseases of the mouth and throat as well as gout.
• The blackberry leaf was also used as an early hair dye, having been recommended by Culpeper, the English herbalist, to be boiled in a lye solution in order to "maketh the hair black."  (Not gonna try this one.)

Drying Miss Daisy

Daisy is our oldest Jersey Cow and the 'boss' of the barnyard.  The old matriarch of the milk stall will be 6 years old in June.  You might call her the "Dairy Queen."  She has given birth to Stryker, our little Jersey bull, who we'll be putting up for sale shortly.  Jersey bulls are notoriously mean as they get older and I don't want to have a safety issue out on our pasture.  Stryker is 1 year and 5 months old.  She also gave birth to Romeo, another bull calf who had a heart on his forehead:

Romeo, Daisy's other little bull calf

We're praying Daisy gives us a heifer this time.  We have been milking Daisy for about a year and a half now.  Milk production peaks at about 4 months after birth, but they'll continue to produce as long as you milk them, but the volume drops off.  Daisy is an interesting case.  Cows have four teats on their udder and she only produces milk out of three.  When we were weaning Rosie, her half sister, we put Rosie and Daisy together in order to separate Rosie from her mother, Buttercup.  We affectionately called Buttercup, 'Mama Cow."

Well, Rosie began to nurse on Daisy even though Daisy had never calved and was not in milk.  This ended up ruining one of Daisy's teats.  This was a valuable lesson that we learned - one of those expensive lessons you learn by making mistakes.  In a commercial dairy, this would have rendered Daisy useless and she would have probably been sold since her production would be only 3/4 of what it could have been.  Well, at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, we believe Quality > Quantity.  Daisy produces wonderful, rich, creamy milk.  She's a gentle cow, too, and has won Russ belt buckles and many ribbons with her friendly demeanor.

Russ & Miss Daisy

We are now beginning the process of drying Daisy off.  You see, Daisy is expecting a calf in early May.  We always dry off a cow 2 months prior to her calving.  We do this for several reasons.  First, Daisy needs a rest and so do we.  We milked her once a day for the first six months after she calved as we shared the milk with her calf.  When we weaned Stryker at six months, then we started milking her twice a day and we've done that for the last year.  We're all tired!


I need a rest, people!

This rest allows Daisy to 'take a vacation' and, most importantly, build up quality colostrum. Unlike a human baby, the calf doesn't get any antibodies through the placenta. It only gets them through the colostrum the first 24 hours when its gut is permeable. If you don't dry off your cow before she calves, good colostrum never builds up and you will end up with a sickly or dead calf. Finally, drying the cow off allows the cow to concentrate all that energy that would be used to produce milk into growing her calf.

Generally, if the cow is producing less than 2 gallons a day, you can just stop milking without concerns of the cow getting mastitis and having problems.  Daisy produces right at two gallons.  Our plan of action is as follows: This week we'll only milk her once a day versus two times a day.  Cows produce based on demand, so the reduced demand this week should lessen production.  Next week we'll completely stop milking her, but will keep an eye on her to ensure her udder doesn't get hard or hot. 

She'll rest up and so will we as Daisy directs all her energy toward her baby due in May!  Well, we're still milking Rosie, so not total rest for us, but time to direct some of our energy into preparing the Spring Garden. 

Like Two Peas in a Pod

Ever hear this expression?  It simply means that two people are very similar and that the two people you are comparing either look the same or act the same.

Today's topic of discussion is our Purple Podded Garden Peas.  We've had a nice harvest of Sugar Snap Peas this year and they are just about finishing up.  The ones that are still out there, I'm leaving for seed for next year.  We harvested our first purple podded peas this past week.  These peas really add some zing to the visual feast in the garden.  Unlike the Sugar Snap Peas, whose blooms are white, these peas bloom in purple, maroon, and lavender colors and true to their namesake, sport deep purple pods.  The peas inside the pod are not purple, they are, well... pea green.


Purple blooms & Purple pods

Here is an up-close and personal photo of the bloom from one of the peas:


Nice color contrast against the green foliage

Here are a few of the purple pods that have not filled out yet: 

Purple Pods

As the pea pods fill up, the pod takes on less of a dark purple hue.  Here are a few I've lined up as examples:

Ready for shelling

There are machines that are made for shelling peas, but since we're just growing for personal consumption and don't have a whole bunch of them, we do it the old fashioned way - by hand.  Benjamin is an especially good pea sheller.  Below I've posted a few shots of the shelled garden pea.  The simplicity and symmetry of the peas are sort of neat to look at.

This photograph is a good example of the saying, "Like two peas in a pod" and illustrates why it means that two things are very similar.  Well, except for the pea on the far right.  He's the runt of the litter.

All in all, if I had my 'druthers, I'd rather a sugar snap pea.  Sugar snap peas seem to be a better producing pea and a better tasting pea.  Perhaps it's not a fair comparison, since the Purple Podded Pea is a 'soup pea' and not as sweet as sugar snap peas.  We shelled the purple podded peas and added them to a homemade chicken, vegetable and wild rice soup that Tricia prepared and we all thought they were good.  Tune in tomorrow for more of my pea-brained ramblings...

Waste not, Want not

We harvested our broccoli weeks ago, but we've still been enjoying fresh broccoli time and time again since then.  Wanna know how we do it?

First, let's back up a bit.  Like maybe 3,400 years ago.  In the Bible, the Book of Leviticus tells us in Chapter 19:

9 ‘Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God.

Back in those days, this was 'welfare'.  Farmers were commanded (by God) to NOT pick up every single grain from their fields and to NOT pick up fruit that falls on the ground in their orchard or vineyard as this was to be left to the poor to pick to eat.  In the Book of Ruth, we see this law in action as Ruth, the Moabitess (a foreigner), goes to the field of Boaz to glean grain after the harvesters so that she and her mother-in-law, Naomi, could eat.

Now, fast-forward back to the future to the broccoli in our garden.  Most of the broccoli that is grown in the United States is produced in the fertile Salinas Valley in California.  More than a decade ago (time flies!), I was blessed to be able to be on the Rice Leadership Development Team.  One of the things we did was to visit the Rice growing areas in California.  We took a side trip to the Salinas Valley to see vegetables being grown.  It was remarkable.  I stood in fields where there was broccoli growing as far as the eye could see.  We watched them harvest the broccoli heads and pack them into boxes that were gathered and flown to distribution centers from which 18 wheelers would pick up the broccoli to be trucked to a grocery store near you.

Once the broccoli head was picked, the commercial grower then plows the plant under and prepares to replant.  What a waste!  You see, after the main head has been harvested, the plant is still trying to produce seeds.  So it sends out shoots, miniature broccoli florets, to hopefully be allowed to bloom and produce seeds.  You can see some of them below from our garden:


Shoots from the side of a broccoli plant

These florets are great to eat.  Similar to Ruth (only not in Boaz's field, but our own), we bring a colander out to the garden and pick the leftovers from the first harvest and continue to eat on them for weeks.  Waste Not, Want Not at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm!

A Second, Third, and Fourth Harvest

The plant has been programmed by the Creator to yield fruit and produce seed, so it keeps trying.  As fast as we pick it, it sends out another shoot.  Almost everyday you must harvest the broccoli florets as they are "bolting" to flower and produce seed.  Here is one that we didn't quite get to in time and it has produced beautiful yellow flowers.

Broccoli that has flowered

Here is a broccoli plant from which we've gleaned all the smaller florets:


Picked clean!

And here is the fruit of our labor (literally), a colander of tender broccoli florets ready for steaming with some butter and to serve as an accompaniment to tonight's steak.

Broccoli florets for supper

In a commercial situation, it is just not possible from a labor standpoint nor is it feasible logistically to do this with broccoli, but can you imagine the amount of food that is wasted?  Tons of it!  We don't waste on our farm.  We eat the main broccoli head, as well as all the little florets for weeks.  Many people don't know that you can eat the leaves and stem as well.  Today, I tossed them over the fence to our cows, who were waiting like the 'needy' in Leviticus to consume the 'second gleanings' from our field!

Mud

“There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud”

Carl Sandburg (American Historian, Poet and Novelist, 1878-1967)

Not me.  I'm tired of wallowing in the mud!

During the month of January, we got 14.85 inches of rain.  February, thankfully, has yielded a little less of the liquid sunshine, but as of February 23rd, we have still received 6 inches month to date.  So far in 2013, we have gotten over 20 inches of rain.  The ground is saturated.  It is a soggy, nasty mess everywhere you walk.  Walking out to the barn requires rubber boots.

The chickens and cows seem to say, "Enough, already!"

I've had on my To Do list to have a bonfire to burn the burn pile, but as you can see below, the burn pile is surrounded by a sea of mud.   You can also see the winter grass in the garden where the carrots were prior to us harvesting them. 

The second batch of meat chickens are growing well despite the rain.  We've lost a few of these birds to the weather, though, and although I haven't counted lately, I think we have around 94 birds left out of 100.



Cornish Cross Chickens drinking water

To effectively feed all these birds, I needed to think of something new.  The homemade wooden feeders simply were not big enough to allow all the birds access to the feed.  I could make more or I could buy some feeders, but I had an idea that I thought would save time and money.  I purchased two 10 foot PVC gutters from the local hardware store for $5 each and it works like a charm.  You can see all the wet birds lined up on either side of the gutters like me at an all you can eat buffet line.  I think once we butcher these birds, I'll install the gutters on the barn to sequester rainwater for the cows' drinking water.



Rain gutters used as feed troughs

After all the rain and mud, similar to the dove bringing to Noah the olive branch, I saw a beautiful azalea blooming this morning with bright green new-growth leaves, signifying that today was going to be a better day with NO RAIN! 

Azalea Bloom

First thing on my agenda today was a little maintenance on the chicken tractors.  The bars that the chickens roost on had broken and as a result, more and more hens have been coming into the barn to roost.  Here is a "bird's eye" view through chicken wire of what it looks like looking out on the pasture from inside the chicken tractor. 

Framed in chicken wire

I went into the woods and cut some new roosting bars from some straight Chinese Tallow Trees to use.  Of course when I was drilling and screwing the new roosting bars, Maggie Mae had to come check things out.


The field foreman supervising the work

Not to be left out, Stryker the bull came to inspect the work as well.   

Stryker the Bull

Here is the finished work.  New roosting bars.  Unfortunately, the birds, being creatures of habit, have gotten used to roosting in the barn.  I'll have to move them to the tractor and lock them in for a few days until they develop a new habit of roosting in the chicken tractor again.



New roosting bars in the tractor.