Let's take a look at the north part of the garden. On the left (below) there is a trellis with some pole beans growing skyward along with some Malabar spinach. On the right is an absolute jungle of cucumbers. I have four different varieties planted and I picked the first one last night - a Japanese long cucumber. Between those two is what we'll talk about today. I have fourteen hills of four different varieties of summer squash. The plants are healthy looking and the hay has done a great job of crowding out any weed growth.
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| Welcome to the Jungle |
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| Squash Blossoms |
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| Baby Crookneck Squash |
The first day I went out without a bucket and picked five nice squash. With no bucket, I simply put them in my shirt and pulled the bottom up to make a makeshift container. Every day since, I've brought a bucket as my shirt wouldn't hold the bounty.
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| Straight neck Squash |
The first and easiest thing we've done with them is simply stir fry them with some rendered beef tallow that we told you about Here. Squash with some onions is a perfect, healthy side dish for any meal, adding great flavor and color.
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| Skillet fried squash in beef tallow |
The very next night, Tricia took a couple of our pastured eggs from our benevolent hens and made an egg bath. She cut the squash into disks, put them in the eggs, and rolled them in flour.
Then using the beef tallow that we rendered that you can see in the bowl on the top right of the photo below, she fried them in the skillet. We enjoyed the bountiful harvest immensely. Local Food at its best.
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| Fried yellow squash |
While those recipes are delicious, we haven't eaten my all-time favorite squash recipe - YET:
Black-eyed Pea's Baked Squash Casserole Click on that link and give it a try. It is really a side dish, but I could make a meal of it. Zucchini, both the black beauty and the grey varieties, will be coming in shortly. Can't wait.
We have really enjoyed your blog. We are in MS so not too far from you guys. Your garden looks great! Do you have any tried and true natural methods of controlling squash vine borers? We have lost almost all our squash plants the last 4 years to them. Thanks!!
ReplyDeleteHi Granberrys,
DeleteThanks for the kind words! We were in your beautiful state this past weekend. In Gulfport, MS, at Harrison Central High School to be specific. Benjamin had a track meet there. We have been very fortunate so far to not experience the wrath of the squash borer. We try to use soapy water spray on the pests we do have (stink bugs), but it is hit or miss. I looked up Gardens Alive as we had some success using a product of theirs called Bullseye. Turns out they have some ideas to combat the squash vine borer. Here is the link: http://www.gardensalive.com/product/squash-vine-borer-control/you_bet_your_garden
I hope you are able to find something to kill the borers so you can enjoy some squash. Take Care!
Thanks for the advice! We are in Central MS, south of Jackson, in Florence. I will check out that website. Squash is one of our favorite summer veggies so we are hoping to find something to work.
DeleteWe also got our first milk cow, a Jersey, last November. She calved in January and had a beautiful Jersey/Hereford bull calf. After much deliberation we did steer him about 2 weeks ago and plan to raise him for beef. This bring me to another question for you... Horseflies?? We are combating regular flies too, but the horseflies are biting her so bad on her teats and udder, even making them crack/bleed (which is probably made worse because we haven't weaned him yet...trying to figure out how to do that with the least amount of distress for all involved ;) ) Any ideas how to combat the flies/horseflies that won't be a contamination issue for the milk? My natural fly sprays are not making a difference.
Thanks again for the advice!!
Congrats on the little bull!
DeleteYeah, Our Jerseys just don't like summer time at all. In addition to the heat that they don't like, summer brings all the biting insects that annoy our cows to no end. They give their tails quite a workout during this time of year. For regular flies, I normally buy a couple of those plastic bags with the smelly compound that you break inside and add water. I hang it from a tree around the barn and I'm always amazed by how many flies fill that thing up. It reduces the population greatly.
Our main pest around here is deer flies and some smaller biting flies. We also have the occasional horse fly that bothers them. We have about 85 hens and they try to help. I've watched our chickens follow our 3 cows around and catch those big horse flies mid flight and chow down on them. We'll go stand by them and slap them to try to give them some relief.
We haven't tried any of the products at the feed store that contain chemicals. We always want to try every natural product, before we'll even consider using that stuff. Like you, we don't want any of that to contaminate the milk. We have tried Texas Cedar Oil: http://ourmakersacresfamilyfarm.blogspot.com/2013/05/fly-control-experiment.html. It gives temporary relief from all the flies. The downsides are that it is expensive and lasts maybe a day. It smells great, though, and is effective in keeping flies off of the animals, especially during milking time. Tricia also adds some Citronella oil to the recipe in the link I pasted above and that adds some additional repelling power. One other thing we do is we have big box fans that blow on the cows in the barn while we milk them and that gives them a respite from all the insects. That doesn't help once they're back out on the pasture though. If you find a natural product that works, please let us know. Any information you can share would be greatly appreciated.
We've used several different types of 'bag balms' and 'udder butters' to try to combat the cracking teats with varying levels of success. You can tell the cows are so uncomfortable Sometimes those little calves can be so rough on them!
We have the fly traps with the water and stinky stuff and they are working pretty well. We also have 21 chickens. So maybe they are helping too! I have heard from others in our area that don't have any livestock that the horse flies are really bad for them as well, so apparently just a bad year for them. I am going to try some of the bag balm or maybe make one and maybe the cedar oil too! Thanks again!!
ReplyDeleteOne additional thing I wanted to tell you about the cracking teats on the milk cows that I had forgotten. As our bull calf got around the age that yours is, the same thing happened to Daisy's teats. One thing we did that really worked after learning from someone who had experienced the same thing is we changed our process of allowing the calf to nurse.
DeleteThe calf was really aggressive nursing on Daisy and very rough. His teeth and aggressiveness were hurting her. So we kept them separated during the day, only allowing him to suckle for 15 minutes and then removing him. We found that limiting all the "free choice" suckling during the day and limiting him to only 15 minutes of nursing in the evening to get the milk he needed, gave Daisy much needed relief. Her teats quickly healed and all returned to normal quickly. Hope that helps!