Tomato Seedling Update 2015

Tricia and I were discussing today how time flies.  We have two "kids" in college and our 'baby' will be starting high school in the fall.  They sure do grow up fast! Time flies by in a blur.  In addition to our kids and my waistline (from winter gumbo eating), there's something else growing - our tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.

It was about 12 days ago in This Post where we talked about getting our seeds started and placing them above the freezer in our laundry room to sprout.  Each day I've diligently sprayed the soil with water when I get home from work.  It is nice and toasty atop the freezer.  I placed a thermometer and it is 77 degrees up there. Perfect for coaxing some slumbering seeds to awaken from their nap.  The top of the freezer is also a storage spot for our egg cartons.  Since Spring is on its way the hens have started to lay a few more eggs each day and soon all the cartons will be filled with fresh country eggs.

I listened to the weather report today about the snowfall in the northeast and I remember our trip to South Dakota a month ago with the frigid temperatures. Brrrr!  It makes me feel a little guilty to think that I'm getting a shovel to dig a bit in the garden to prepare to put in our Irish Potato crop and our neighbors to the north are using their shovels to dig their way out of the snow.

Well, here are our tomato seedlings, jumping up out of the ground with vigor.  I planted about a week and a half late and I think that they are making up for lost time.  

It's Grow Time!

It looks like the germination percentage is about 95%, except for one variety (Riesentraube), whose germination is only about 5%.  I don't know what happened there.  You can see that the tomato cotyledons (first leaves) are green and healthy. We won't transplant into larger containers until they put on their first true leaves.

Tomato cotyledons

Here is a list of the different heirloom tomato varieties we planted this year:

• Pink Brandywine
• Amish Paste
• Abu Ruwan
• Riesentraube
• Organic Beefsteak
• Black Krim
• Gypsy
• Black from Tula
• Big Rainbow
• Mortgage Lifter
• Thessaloniki
• Moneymaker

They are all open-pollinated, heirloom varieties.  Our favorite, by far, is the Black Krim!  As you can notice from the picture below, the seedlings grow toward the sunlight that floods through a window in our laundry room.  I need to pull down the shade, lest the plants get too "leggy."

Growing toward the sunlight

The peppers take a little bit longer to germinate and although we planted all of these seeds on the same day, the peppers are just now popping up.  These are the pepper varieties we planted this year:

• Buren Red Bell Pepper
• Cayenne Pepper
• Sweet Chocolate Pepper
• Purple Beauty Bell Pepper
• Anaheim Pepper
• Criolla Sella Pepper
• Jalapeno Pepper

Peppers Popping out of the soil

And finally, pulling up the rear, is the Eggplant.  If you look very closely, you can see the little seedling that is about to make its presence known.

Eggplant seedling

We'll keep a close eye on our seedlings and baby them until they are ready to transplant into a larger container.  The small seed pots they are in now don't have a lot of soil and they dry out quickly.  I normally will separate the seedlings when two or more are growing and transplant them each to one pot.  Then when the plants have grown and the risk of frost is gone, I'll replant them all directly into the garden row.

You Just Can't BEET it!

I walked out to the garden and walked down the rows looking for a vegetable or two to cook as a side dish for some homemade chicken and dumplings that Tricia was working on preparing in the kitchen. Tricia likes a variety of colors on the plate to liven things up.  I've read somewhere that vegetables with lots of color are loaded with nutrition.

Well, I think I found just the thing to meet the color requirement on a row smack dab in the middle of the garden - Bull's Blood Beets!  We have a few beets on the row that were the perfect 'pulling size,' so I pulled a couple beets from the ground. Bull's Blood beets get their name from the rich, dark red color of the beet leaves.

Bull's Blood Beets

We have had lots of rain, so the beets came up easy from the moist soil. Just a gentle tug brought the beet roots out of the soil and ready to bring inside and prepare.

Beet roots

While walking back to the house, I also broke off some purple cauliflower and some Swiss Chard. How's that for some color?  The wife was pleased!  The colors were so striking that I laid down the produce on a bed of turnips I have growing to show the contrast of the colors.  Just look at the brilliant beauty of tonight's vegetable side dish.

A palette of colors for our palates

I took them inside and cut the greens (in this case, reds) off the beet roots.

Then I got the potato peeler and peeled the skins off the roots.  Handling them turned my hands red. Now normally I feed the leaves and stems and beet pulp to the cows, but not today.  I have something else in store for the beet greens.

I sliced and quartered the beet roots on a cutting board.  This should make them cook a little faster.

Bull's Blood beets sliced and quartered

Then I got on the Internet and found just what I was looking for: This Recipe from www.allrecipes.com.  Roasted Beets and Sauteed Beet Greens.  It is a simple dish to prep and the only change that we made to it was that we substituted butter instead of olive oil.  I preheated the oven to 350 degrees, put the cut up beets in a roasting dish, poured 2 Tablespoons melted butter over them and tossed them around so that the butter coated the beets.  I put them in the oven and set the timer for 45 minutes.

Butter is Better

When the beets were almost done, I put 2 Tablespoons butter, 2 cloves of minced garlic, and 2 tablespoons of chopped Purple Onion in a cast iron skillet and let them get all happy.

This smells so good!

Then (sorry cows), I put the beet greens that I had torn in pieces into the skillet.  I will admit that I brought the stems out for the cows to eat, but I'm sure that they were disappointed to not get the whole thing.

I stirred them while they cooked and once they withered, I added some sea salt and criolla sella ground pepper and mixed it all in.

Ready to eat!

By that time, the buzzer went off on the oven and we removed the roasted beets and place them atop the bed of sauteed beet greens in my plate alongside the green cauliflower.  We saved the purple cauliflower for another day and instead cooked some green cauliflower that I had picked a day earlier.

A delicious vegetable side dish

I served a bowl of Chicken and Dumplings and I was going to take a picture of that too, but by the time I thought of it, they were all gone.  The beets and beet greens were delicious.  The flavors of the garlic, onion and butter were great, but didn't overpower the great tasting greens.  This Allrecipes recipe was fantastic and will be added into our rotation.  The recipe says to add some red wine vinegar to the top of the greens.  We didn't do that, but I'm sure it would have been good.  The cows' loss was definitely our gain.  

Cold Morning in the Duck Blind

In This Post we chronicled how we built our duck blind this year and envisioned ducks falling from the sky and eventually ending up in our freezer for making duck gumbo.  The season, to this point, was a bust.  We had heard from other hunters that there just weren't many ducks this year and some weekends we had other things going and weren't able to get out to the blind.

With the season down to the final weekend, Benjamin said, "Let's give it one last shot, Dad."  And so we did.  We woke up at 5:20, put on camouflage, and loaded up our guns and hit the road.  It was dark and we had a 30 minute drive ahead of us to make it to Oberlin.  We were racing the sun as we had to be in the blind before sunrise so as not to scare off the ducks that may be already in the pond.
We stopped off first by the shop and grabbed a couple of five gallon buckets to sit on.

We parked the car and walked to the blind.  It was cold and the frozen, frosty ground crunched as we walked.  We made it before sunrise and took a seat scanning the horizon, looking for ducks and watching God paint a masterpiece on the canvas that was the Eastern sky.

The Hunter

Our blind was a good blind and we were hidden from sight.  We were able to peer out at the pond and see the decoys.  Benjamin took his glove off his trigger finger hand and waited.

Decoys on the pond

As we scanned the skies, we saw a nice sunrise and as we shifted on our buckets trying to stay warm, we looked overhead and saw a large group of ducks flying overhead, but they were high - too high, and flying with purpose somewhere, just not to our blind.

The Creator's Canvas

We waited and waited and waited and soon the sun had fully risen over the horizon with not a duck in sight.  Benjamin noticed 3 empty shotgun shells on the ground in our blind and said, "Someone must have shot some ducks in our blind, Dad."  But I told him that I had talked to my buddy, Gary, and he had come out to the blind on a previous weekend and like us, didn't see many ducks.  He told me that finally, he looked over and saw a coyote walking on the road.  He emptied his 12 gauge, but the coyote was too far away.

Finally, we decided to head back home.  As we walked back in the daylight, we were able to see that it was indeed cold.  There was a thin layer of ice on the pond.

Ice on the Duck Pond

There was also frost on the weeds on the ground on our way back to the car.

We drove back home, duckless and a little disappointed, but we had a good time just getting out and being in the great outdoors and having some 'guy time.'  We'll look forward to next duck hunting season.  There's always next year.  At least we have some squirrels and doves that Benjamin has tucked away in the freezer.  Next year we'll get the ducks...

Wasted Energy

Our cows have a bad habit.  When I push the chicken tractor forward so that the chickens can eat fresh grass everyday, the cows see that as snack time.  They run to the spot where the chicken tractor was and look for spilled feed or rice to eat.  I DON'T like them doing that, because when cows eat close to the ground like that, they can pick up parasites.  That's why we use rotational grazing to constantly move them to fresh grass so that they don't eat close to ground level.

In order to stop that bad behavior, I enlisted Benjamin's help to run the electric poly wire fence around the chicken tractor so that the cows couldn't get to it.  It sounded like a good plan and we got busy.  We are always careful when reeling up the electric fence because the solar charger really packs a punch.  If you touch the poly wire, it will pop you and you will scream.  Invariably, I'll get a little careless and get popped.  Of course it would be less painful if I was to turn the charger off first, but I was in a rush - like usual.  As I was reeling up the poly-wire, it touched my arm and... didn't shock me.  There was no electricity running through it.

That can be caused by one of several things.  First, the charger could be off.  We checked it. Nope, it was on. Second, the charger battery could be dead or the charger broken, but I could distinctly hear it pulsing. So I knew what the problem was.  The hot wire that runs along the perimeter of two sides of our fence was grounding out somewhere.  I'm not an electrician, but I know that electricity seeks the path of least resistance and likes to go to the ground.  Somewhere, our hot wire was touching something (a conductor) that was carrying our electricity into the ground instead of through the perimeter wire, through our "jump wire" and into the poly-wire cross fences.

Now all we had to do was find it.  Easy enough.  Benjamin and I began walking on one end of the perimeter wire and hadn't walked twenty feed before we found it.  In the picture below, about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom, you can see a wire running almost horizontally.  That is the hot wire. We notice that it was touching the hog wire fence which was conducting all the electricity to the ground.

Grounded out!

The bull uses his head to bang things around in the pasture and had pushed an empty water trough into the hot wire.  The hot wire got wrapped around the hog wire in the process, causing the problem. All we had to do was unravel the wire. Benjamin said, "Isn't it going to shock you when it is off of the fence, Dad?"  I answered, "YES! It will." as it popped the fool out of me.  Then I got some tie wire and pulled the fence tight where the bull had bent it, so it wouldn't lean in and touch the hot wire and our job was done. We got the tester and tested the fence in numerous locations and all five lights on the tester lit up, letting us know that the charger was sending electricity through the fence just fine now.

A little tie wire keeps the fence from touching the hot wire

Sometimes I think God uses things in His Creation to speak to us and I began to realize that this was one of those times.  I struggle sometimes when I think about precious time and energy that I waste in doing things that I'm not passionate about.  As the head of my household, it is my responsibility to provide for my family and that requires going to a job Monday through Friday that keeps me away from my passion from 6:30 am to 5:30 pm every day, which is my family and our little farm.

That can be a source of discouragement for me and I'm sure others might struggle with that, too. Like the hot wire story above, there are times when my energy seems to be "wrapped around and/or tangled up" by this and it saps my energy, leaving me feeling lethargic, depressed, discouraged and sometimes feeling more deflated than Tom Brady's football. What to do?  Well, I think God was trying to tell me that I needed to "untangle my wires."

Let the power flow!

The Source of Power can give you power, if you ask.  Where were my wires tangled? Well, first I untwisted a wire off of selfishness.  And I found another wire that was ensnared with self pity and lack of a grateful spirit that was grounding me out. Once I got those off and a few more, I began to have more energy and got a 'pep back in my step.'  Trouble is, at least with me, is that I continually have to "walk my perimeter fence," looking for those areas in my life that sap my energy, drain my power, and ground me out.  It seems just as soon as I untangle one, another gets wrapped up somewhere else!

28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth Does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. 29 He gives strength to the weary, And to him who lacks might He increases power. 30 Though youths grow weary and tired, And vigorous young men stumble badly, 31 Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.  Isaiah 40: 28-31

Sometimes the Grass ISN'T Much Greener on the Other Side

There are times when you make plans and put in the work to bring those plans to fruition and things just don't work out.  This was one of those times.  In the fall, we mowed a section of the pasture, purchased rye grass seed, used the fertilizer spreader to broadcast the seed in the paddock, and then put up an electric fence to keep the cows out.

Then we wait for the rye grass seed to germinate and grow.  And we waited and waited and waited. We drove past other people's rye grass fields and looked with envy at their lush, dark green rye grass waving in the wind as if to taunt us.  When we look out over our rye grass pasture, all we see is a slight tinge of green.  You almost need a magnifying glass to see the rye grass.  I decided to go ahead and open the fence and allow the cows to go ahead and graze on what little was there.

It's not easy being green...

When they saw me opening the fence, they RAN to where I was, playfully jumping around, all excited that they were going to get to eat in an ungrazed pasture.  I felt sorry for them and tried to tell them not to get so happy because there wasn't much for them to eat.  As I opened the paddock up, they rushed in and greedily gobbled up what little they could find, running from one place to the next. By the time that the sun went down that night, what little rye grass there was, was eaten down to ground level by the hungry cows.

Where the Green Grass Grows...

I have never had much success growing rye grass, but I'm not going to give up.  I'll get a better spreader next year and mix the rye grass with some fertilizer and increase my seeding rate per acre to put more seed on the ground.  Maybe that would make a difference, I don't know.

Fortunately, they have plenty to eat with round bales of hay always at their disposal and some good bermuda square bales to eat as we milk them each morning and night.  With temperatures projected to be in the 70's this week, maybe the rye grass will grow.  In the meantime, I'll throw them some turnips and turnip greens that I planted just for those greedy girls.

A Great Meal with Bold Flavor!

On the most perfect Sunday afternoon, I walked out to the Swiss Chard row and was looking at the beautiful leaves with bright red stems.  Swiss Chard is delicious.  I was looking for another way to prepare it and stumbled across This Recipe for Coconut Curry Chicken that looked very interesting and we were anxious to try it out.  We like the bold flavor of curry and the flavor of coconut milk and we had fresh Swiss Chard and carrots growing in the garden.  After looking at the recipe, we decided to double it since we were all very hungry.

Swiss Chard in the Garden

So we assembled the ingredients that were called for in the link posted above, but doubled the recipe and made a couple slight alterations for items we didn't have on hand:

4 Tablespoons butter
2 large chicken breasts, cut up
2 medium carrots, diced
2 medium onions, sliced
3 teaspoons fresh ginger, minced
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons chili powder
2 cans coconut milk
2 Tablespoons curry powder
2 teaspoons salt
2 cans garbanzo beans
2 bunches Swiss Chard

All the ingredients assembled

The first thing I did was process all the ingredients, dicing the carrots, slicing the onions, mincing the garlic and ginger.  While I was doing that, Tricia was cooking the chicken.  We were trying to get this prepared before church so we were racing the clock.  We added the diced carrots to the chicken and cooked for about 2 minutes.

Cooking the chicken and carrots

Then we added the onion and ginger and after a couple of minutes of cooking, we added the garlic, curry, cumin and chili powder.  We stirred it all up and allowed the flavors to get friendly.  I wish I could adequately describe the wonderful aroma that filled the kitchen.  Russ and Benjamin came in and were impressed (so far) with the recipe based solely on the aroma filling the kitchen. 

Adding the spices

Then two cans of coconut milk were added to the pot.  We filled the cans with water and poured that into the pot as well.  The recipe called for this to simmer for 20 minutes.

Now adding coconut milk

While that was simmering, I had a little time to process the 2 bunches of Swiss Chard I had harvested.  I simply cut the stem out, leaving the broad leaves for the dish.  I roughly chopped the chard and stacked to the side of the cutting board.

Removing the stems from the Swiss Chard

Nothing, and I mean nothing, goes to waste around here.  I walked to the pasture fence and threw the bright red stems of the chard over the fence for Bully, our Jersey bull, to enjoy.  In no time he wolfed down every stem.

Yes, bulls ARE attracted to the color red

I added the chopped up chard and the salt.

Adding Swiss Chard

Then I added the garbanzo beans, stirred, and allowed to cook for an additional 15 minutes.

Adding chick peas

We put a pot of rice cooking on the stove and everything was done in time for us to run out the door to church. When we returned, we opened the door to the smell of coconut curry chicken, beckoning us to get our bowls.  We served some rice and generous serving spoonfuls of the wonderful concoction over the rice in our bowls. The recipe passed the smell test, but how did it taste?

Coconut Chicken Curry with Swiss Chard

We served our bowls, sat down, held hands, thanked God for our meal, and tasted the dish. Everyone said, "Mmmmmmm...."  Delicious!  It was outstandingly flavorful and everyone went back for seconds.  This recipe is a keeper!

Counting the Days

One of my favorite movies is Gladiator and yes, as the title suggests, it is chock full of violence as one might surmise by the title of the movie.  Gladiator is an epic drama about good versus evil, loyalty and betrayal, and one in which you are drawn to the character Maximus, who is played by Russell Crowe.

Maximus is a General for Marcus Aurelius and is a skilled military tactician and leader of men.  One of the things that is of great interest to me, though, is a glimpse into his personal life that takes place during a dialogue between him and Marcus Aurelius.

Image Credit

After an opening battle scene in which Maximus and his Roman army defeat the Germanic army in a hard fought campaign at the cost of many lives, the Caesar calls for his General.  He wants to talk to him.  The dialogue pulled back the curtain on what really drives men.  Man is more than his work and although he may do his duty day in and day out, there is more than performing your 9 to 5 job that drives you.  You may be wondering how in the world Gladiator has anything to do with farming, right?  Well, stick with me for a minute...

Here is the dialogue between the Marcus Aurelius and Maximus: Dialogue Credit  I've bolded and highlighted in red key parts (at least to me).

Maximus: You sent for me, Caesar?

Marcus Aurelius: Tell me again, Maximus, why are we here?

Maximus: For the glory of the empire, sire.

Marcus Aurelius: Ah, yes. Ah, yes, I remember. Do you see that map, Maximus? That is the world which I created. For 25 years, I have conquered, spilt blood, expanded the empire. Since I became Caesar, I have known four years without war, four years of peace in twenty. And for what? I brought the sword. Nothing more.

Maximus: Caesar, your life...

Marcus Aurelius: Please. Please, don't call me that. Please, come sit. Let us talk together now, very simply, as men. Maximus, talk.

Maximus: Five thousand of my men are out there in the freezing mud. Three thousand of them are bloodied and cleaved. Two thousand will never leave this place. I will not believe that they fought and died for nothing.

Marcus Aurelius: And what would you believe?

Maximus: They fought for you and for Rome.

Marcus Aurelius: And what is Rome, Maximus?

Maximus: I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, Rome is the light.

Marcus Aurelius: Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end... he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher? The warrior? The tyrant...? Or will I be the emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter. Maximus, let us whisper now, together, you and l. You have a son. Tell me about your home.

Maximus: My house is in the hills above Trujillo. A very simple place. Pinkstones that warm in the sun. A kitchen garden that smells of herbs in the day, jasmine in the evening. Through the gate is a giant poplar. Figs, apples, pears. The soil, Marcus- black. Black like my wife's hair. Grapes on the south slopes, olives on the north. Wild ponies play near my house. They tease my son. He wants to be one of them.

Marcus Aurelius: Remember the last time you were home?

Maximus: Two years, 264 days, and this morning.

Marcus Aurelius: I envy you, Maximus. It's a good home. Worth fighting for. There is one more duty that I ask of you before you go home.

That really touched me for several reasons. First, despite conquering the world and re-writing the map, Marcus Aurelius was concerned about his legacy. The Caesar knew that he was dying and was was wondering whether or not his life had purpose.  He changed the world and yet he was worried about whether or not he accomplished anything meaningful.

He turned to his loyal servant, Maximus and wanted to hear about his General's personal life. Maximus' answer was poetic,descriptive, emanating his love for his family and his land.  He spoke of his home, his wife, his son.  He was not a warrior at heart.  He was a FARMER!  He described the soil like only a farmer would, comparing it to his wife's hair, for crying out loud!

Did he love his home?  Yes, in fact he was counting the days that he had been away, down to the very hour.  That is very meaningful to me.  He had a job to do that came with great cost and sacrifice and he did his job well.  But he longed for his home and his family and he loved his farm.  In fact when leading his troops into battle, he spoke the following: (I think Fratres means 'brothers'):  Dialogue Credit

[addressing his troops]
Maximus: Fratres!
[cavalry addresses Maximus]
Maximus: Three weeks from now, I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be, and it will be so. Hold the line! Stay with me! If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!
[cavalry laughs]
Maximus: Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity. 

In what could have been his last act, he envisioned doing what he loved - farming and being with his family.  He was looking forward to the harvest as any farmer does.  Then he spoke the profound phrase : "Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity."  

And it is true, what we do in life really does echo in eternity.  Decisions, actions, choices that we make in our relatively short lives affect our eternity.  And those same decisions, actions, and choices have the potential of affecting others around us as well.  Our days are indeed numbered and we must ensure that as we count the days, we make our days count. 

Time for the Livestock Shows

Mid to late January always marks the time at which the Parish Livestock Shows are held and it requires some preparation.  The animals are all halter-broken, gentle and tame (except for Bully, but that's another story).  We get out the clippers and shave their winter coats off and groom them as best as we can.  Then we brush up on the showing techniques that the judges are looking for.

Dairy showing is relatively easy.  You simply walk them around in a circle in the show ring, maintaining eye contact with the judge, hold the animal's head upright, and when the judge motions for you to stop, you stop.  The only tricky part is setting up the back legs.  If it is a dairy heifer that you are showing, the back leg on the side facing the judge should be positioned farther back.  If it is a dairy cow (one who has calved), the back leg facing the judge should be positioned forward.

This takes a little practice, so the weekend before the show, we got in the backyard and went through the exercise to refresh everyone's memory.  Here's Benjamin with Amy, his dairy heifer walking her and getting some practice before the livestock show.

Amy and Benjamin

Tricia was providing expert instruction to our showman.

"When you walk, keep eye contact with the judge."

Benjamin walked in more circles with Amy than he would have liked, but perfect practice makes perfect.  In no time he had Amy responding favorably to his commands and was able to set her up with ease.  When the animals get in a strange show barn with other animals though, sometimes things aren't so serene.  We've had animals lay down in the ring before.  The exacerbate their discomfort, you don't milk them prior to the show as you want their bag to "bloom."  That means be filled with milk.  So that doesn't exactly make them docile.

Setting up Amy

On the night before the show, we put Amy and Rosie in the cattle trailer, transported them to the Jeff Davis Parish Fair Barn and unloaded them.  We got them all settled and put hay in their hay socks and then took them to the washing stalls and scrubbed them with brushes and soapy water until they were spic and span.  You clean the wax out of their ears and they don't much like that.  Of course they were shivering in the cold, but we dried them off and then took out the clippers and fine tuned their haircuts.

The next morning was show time.  Benjamin and Tricia arrived in the barn and got the girls presentable for the show.  Sometimes overnight they'll lay down in their poop and will need to be touched up.  Fortunately, they were discerning in the spot that they slept and just required a quick brushing to remove some wood shavings from their bellies.  Now, you just sit and wait until your class is called over the loud-speaker.

Sitting with Amy

Before you know it, it was time for the show.  The cows were a little skittish, but Benjamin kept calm and managed his animals well.  The practice paid off as he did a great job.  The judge was very helpful and always gives the showman good tips and constructive criticism to make you a better showman.  4-H teaches good manners and behavior in showing and at the end of the show, all the exhibitors go shake hands with the judge.  I like that the formation of good character is reinforced.

In the ring

Between the shows, Benjamin is able to run around and visit with his 4-H buddies. I remember doing the same thing when I was his age.  Although we don't eat much fast food, we've started a tradition that Benjamin looks forward to.  At the end of the show, we go to Popeye's Fried Chicken and get a box of spicy chicken to chow down on as a reward for doing a good job.

And he did do a good job.  He got three nice ribbons, including two rosettes that he'll add to his bedroom display.  

Benjamin's ribbons

Now that the Parish show is over, the Southwest Louisiana District Livestock Show will be coming up in a week and a half in Lake Charles, Louisiana and we'll start preparing for that.  Good Job, Benjamin, with Daisy and Rosie!

Cracking Pecans - the 2014 Crop

Sunday afternoon was one of those days that the weather was so spectacular there was no way that staying indoors was an option.  After church, we enjoyed some coffee and chicory and nice raspberry truffles and then I was out the door.  I knew exactly what I was going to do for a couple of hours.  We have 3 1/2 onion sacks full of pecans that Tricia and Benjamin picked from our pecan trees that needed cracking.

I poured a 5 gallon bucket full of pecans from one of the sacks and walked around in the backyard to find the perfect spot.  I wanted a spot that was not too shady since it was a little cool, but not in the full sun.  I found a nice place under the tangerine tree and I quickly set up my assembly line.  It involved the bucket of pecans to my right:

The raw product

On a picnic table bench, I fastened down the 'Reed's Rocket,' a pecan cracker that belonged to Bumby & Poppy (my grandparents), with a ratchet strap and a zip tie.  I positioned it an an angle since I'm right-handed, so that it would be ergonomically pleasing.

The tool of the trade

To my left, I positioned the bucket in which I'll toss the cracked pecans one by one as the process gets underway.  Then I got busy.  The bucket quickly began to fill up, but I wasn't in a rush.  It was so nice outside, I was just enjoying the day.  The cows came up to the fence in a curious manner. Anytime you have a bucket, that is going to spark their interest.  Once they became aware that there was no feed in the blue bucket, they meandered off.  Then I watched a hawk circling high overhead and looked out at the hens running for cover into the chicken tractor.

Pecans are cracked and ready for shelling

Last year I posted about the Reed's Rocket Here, but I'll explain how this contraption works again.  It has a threaded cradle on the end that can be adjusted to fit the size of your pecans.  You place the pecan in the cradle...

Ready to crack

And you push the 'piston' type mechanism forward with a lever against the cradle holding the pecan. You hear a sharp crack and will see that the shell has basically exploded. 

Craaaaaaacccccckkkkk!

Most of the time they will come out perfectly whole, but sometimes you have some breakage.  In that case, I'll adjust the threaded end of the Reed's Rocket so that it is backed off a little bit.  That will keep the next one from breaking.  Broken pecans eat just fine, though.  Once you get in a rhythm, you can get really fast, almost like a machine.  Crack, Crack, Crack.  It is mindless work that allows your mind to drift as you sit outside and enjoy Creation.

Fresh shelled pecans

Cracking the pecans isn't the end of the work.  Once the blue bucket is full, I'll bring it inside by the fireplace and at night, Benjamin and I will sit by the fireplace and shell pecans.  With two people shelling, it doesn't take long to knock a bunch of work out.  We've found that in just a short period of time we can shell about 10 cups of pecans each night.  That ain't too shabby!

An 8 cup measuring container overflowing with pecans

We'll eat on them and will also pack them into gallon freezer bags and put them in the freezer for storage until Tricia makes some good old pecan pies with Steen's Cane syrup.  After two night's work, our blue bucket is almost empty.  That means this weekend we can set up our assembly line and get the Reed's Rocket back cracking, if the weather allows.