A Christmas Tree In the Garden

I was standing out in the garden admiring the Christmas tree.  Well, not really.  It is really a tabasco pepper plant.  The peppers on it the run from bright red to atomic orange, to bright yellow to neon green makes it pretty close to what a string of lights on a Christmas tree looks like.  I think the plant is beautiful.  The three tabasco pepper plants I have growing grew up volunteer from the seeds of some plants that were given to us last year by the proprietors of the local feed store that we patronize. Who knows?  Maybe if these plants freeze and die over the winter, some of the seeds from these peppers will spring up from the soil, giving us yet another year of peppers without having to plant them.

I like to go out and pick the brilliant red-colored ones, snapping the peppers off of the green stems and leaving the orange, yellow and green ones to ripen for a while.

Once I get a nice bunch of them, I'll bring them inside and make homemade tabasco pepper sauce.  We posted about how we make it in THIS POST and others in previous years as well.  We really like the way the pepper sauce tastes and how it flavors beans and rice and other dishes.  It is so easy to make and absolutely delicious.

Right south of the row of tabasco peppers is a big trellis of various varieties of lima beans. We've harvested them throughout the year and it is time to harvest the last of them.  The freeze that we had the other day burned the leaves and knocked the plants back a bit, and I don't think they are going to make it much longer.  We picked a bucket of lima bean pods and shelled them, putting the assorted shelled lima beans in a bowl.  We threw the vines over the fence for the cows to eat and once they ate everything they wanted, I composted the remaining vines.  I think the variety of lima beans is beautiful.  Check out the bowl of limas in the photo below.  Like the tabasco peppers have different colors, the different varieties of limas make a nice collection of assorted sizes and shapes of beans. They taste great, too!

Some of the pods were green and thus weren't dried yet, so we shelled those and left them on the window sill to dry.  When these dry fully, we'll cook them up.

We enjoy growing and eating things from the garden that are not only pretty to look at but great to eat, too!

Mr. McGregor's Garden

Beatrix Potter wrote some children's books that we would read to the kids when they were toddlers. There was one particular story about Mr. McGregor's Garden I remember.  Mr. McGregor had a garden and was having problems keeping hungry rabbits from eating up all his produce.  He would try to catch the rabbits and would bake the rabbits in a pie and eat them.  I can't say that I ever ate rabbit pie, but if you are interested, British Broadcast Company has a rabbit pie recipe.  In reading that story to the kids, I always rooted for Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter Rabbit to escape from Mr. McGregor.

Last Saturday, I took a picture of some of the cauliflower and broccoli I have growing in my garden. I'm pleased with the way it looks so far with nice, big healthy leaves.

I love broccoli and cauliflower and like to eat it roasted with garlic in the oven. That's my favorite way to eat it.

We have a big problem with the broccoli and cauliflower crop this year, for despite it's beauty from afar, when you  look closely, you see that something is very much wrong.  Something ate the tender centers of the flowering heads from the broccoli and cauliflower completely off!

Oh, we'll get perhaps a few small florets off of some of the broccoli like you can see below, but we'll get absolutely nothing on the cauliflower.

So what critter is doing this?  I first thought maybe rats?  But I'm leaning more to believe that rabbits and/or squirrels are the culprits here.  Big Boy, our Great Pyrenees dog, caught a rabbit in the yard near the garden the other day and shook it in his mouth and killed it.  Russ went and wrestled the fresh-killed rabbit away from Big Boy, skinned it and cooked up the fresh, broccoli-fed rabbit. Although he didn't use the recipe posted above, he said it turned out delicious.  Suffice it to say, I no longer root for Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter!

I Love All Vegetables Except for One...

When I was a kid, I was kind of a picky eater.  I didn't like mustard greens, spinach, brussels sprouts, or any number of other vegetables.  I didn't venture out much from green beans, petit pois peas and carrots.  I know many young people are the same.  I don't know at what point my taste buds changed or my vegetable horizons broadened, but I absolutely love vegetables now - even semi-weird stuff like kale, chard, and bok choy.  Don't get me wrong, I love to eat meat, but I like to have a bunch of side dishes consisting of good homegrown vegetables.

There is one vegetable; however, that I just don't like.  Turnips.  Believe me, I have tried to like them. I've tried to cook them different ways - roasting it, boiling it, making a few different recipes with it. I've tried picking them when they are young and tender before they develop a strong taste.  I've tried to fool myself into thinking it is a potato, but it's to no avail.  I just don't like the taste.

I still grow the doggone things though.  I have a full row of them planted. Additionally, the other day while harvesting the sweet potatoes, there were a few turnips that had come up volunteer.  I pulled the big turnip root out of the loose soil and admired the turnip greens.  Now, I can eat the turnip greens, but not the roots.

Even though I can't eat them, there's someone (or a few someones) than can eat the roots, though! Those ol cows of ours...  They love both the roots and the greens.

I stood at the garden fence and pulled our three or four mature turnips and fed them the greens.  I then took the big old turnip roots and cut them up with my pocketknife and fed chunks of turnip to those girls.

They loved them.  To show their appreciation, they belched.  It was a nasty smelling turnip belch that stunk up the place with the foulest of odors and made me stop feeding them turnips and shoo them away.  They need to learn some manners. Goodness gracious!

As I mentioned I have a full row of turnips planted primarily for the cows.  They should mature in late January and the cows will look forward to me picking turnips and feeding them that.  I'll likely thin out the row now and then by pulling and eating the tender turnip greens.  I don't know, I might even try eating some young turnips to see if my taste buds have changed this year.

Making Your Own Supplements

Tricia has been doing some research on taking supplements of garlic, cayenne pepper as well as other herbs to treat different health issues.  She found that taking supplements of these items can really help certain infirmities.

Webmd.com states that "Garlic is used for many conditions related to the heart and blood system. These conditions include high blood pressure, low blood pressure, high cholesterol, inherited high cholesterol, coronary heart disease, heart attack, reduced blood flow due to narrowed arteries, and "hardening of the arteries" (atherosclerosis)."

It states that Cayenne Pepper or "Capsicum is used for various problems with digestion including upset stomach, intestinal gas, stomach pain, diarrhea, and cramps. It is also used for conditions of the heart and blood vessels including poor circulation, excessive blood clotting, high cholesterol, and preventing heart disease."

She found that in order to take these supplements, you can either buy the supplements in capsule form, OR you can make the capsules yourself.  She chose the latter and found "The Capsule Machine" and paid about $15 bucks for this contraption that converts some things that you already have in your spice cabinet into supplement capsules.

You also have to purchase the capsules as well.  You can see some of them below. You simply open the empty capsules up...

And put each empty piece in each side of the capsule machine.  You can make 24 capsules at a time.

Then you simply pour the contents of the desired supplement ingredient into the capsule on half of the Capsule Machine.  In this case, she's making Garlic capsules.

You sweep back and forth to ensure that each capsule half is filled to capacity.

Then there is an attachment with pegs on one side the correspond to each hole.  You press the pegs down into the holes and it packs the contents of the supplement down tightly.

Once that is done, you place the other side of the capsule machine that has the other half of the empty capsules in it on top of the other side, pressing it down.  This couples the capsules together.

Then you simply push the capsules out, yielding 24 Garlic capsules!  We made a few batches and stored them in containers to keep them air-tight and dry.

So I was thinking that in addition to using the garlic and cayenne capsules for health benefits, perhaps it would be a good idea to use them for seasoning.  We haven't tried it yet, but my idea is to stab holes in beef roasts and insert the capsule that we made deep into the roasts.  During cooking, the gelatin or vegetable based capsules would release the garlic and red pepper to provide good seasoning.

The Onion Crop is IN!

I ordered my onions to plant this year in the garden from Dixondale Farms, the same place I mail-ordered them from last year.  You can click on the link underlined below to go to their very helpful website and learn all about planting, growing and harvesting onions.  There is a map on the website that helps you to select the perfect variety or varieties for your growing area.  In Louisiana, you want to select Short-day varieties, so this year I chose a bunch of Red Creole Onions and a bunch of 1015Y Texas Super Sweet Onions.

I received them by mail as they arrived in a box with planting instructions.  Two bunches were inside - just as I ordered.  Now a bunch has between 50-75 plants in it, so if all goes well, we'll have plenty of onions in 2017.  That will be just fine with me as we LOVE onions.  Smothered Onions on top of some hamburger patties cooking in a cast iron skillet is doggone hard to beat!

Red Creole Onions

Our onion crop last year left a lot to be desired.  The ones that we did harvest were small.  I take full responsibility for that and I learned from my mistakes.  Last year I planted the onions in a new area of the garden.  That new area contained topsoil, but it was not improved land like the other parts of the garden.  There was no organic material or compost worked in and the soil was compacted.  It just wasn't a good growing medium for onions.

Onions like loose, crumbly soil and that's just what I gave them this year.  I planted the onions in the soil that I had just turned over after harvesting our sweet potato crop.  There was lots of decaying leaves mixed in the soil and it was black-colored and rich looking.  You can see evidence of that below:

Good Onion Growing Soil

I worked up 3 rows in the old sweet potato patch.  I did leave about a five foot section out on the east side as there was some nice Black Seeded Simpson lettuce growing there that I didn't want to disturb. I planted all of the onion plants following the planting instructions and gently watered them in.  I'll keep them weeded and add some chicken litter to the soil according to the directions given in the growing guide.

I planted these on December 17th, and the Onion Growing Guide says that you can count on 110 days to maturity.  That means on April 7th, 2017, I can count on harvesting some nice onions.  As the harvest date gets closer, I'll do some research on curing and storing them.  We'll probably dice some and freeze them in Ziploc bags as that makes it real convenient when making gumbos and other tasty dishes that use lots of onions.

Diggin' And Pickin'

Nope, I'm not talking about my nose.

This weekend I figured it would be a good time to dig up the rest of the sweet potatoes.  We started harvesting the sweet potatoes back in this post on October 10th but the sweet potatoes weren't big enough yet.  We decided to let them grow for a couple more months after digging up 1/3 of the sweet potato patch.

This weekend we tried digging them up again and our patience was rewarded by a nice crop of good looking sweet potatoes.  Some of them were from the Golden Wonder Heirloom Sweet Potatoes that we got from Tennessee that we described back in this post from March.  Some of them were from some sweet potatoes from LSU.  After a very wet growing season, the ground finally dried up and the sweet potatoes did quite well.

We aren't the only beneficiaries of a good sweet potato crop - the cows are too.  They position themselves on the eastern side of the garden fence and munch on the tender, sweet vines that we throw over the fence.  I'm telling you, these girls look forward to the sweet potato harvest each year almost more than we do.  They eat the leaves first and then they'll go back and chew on the vines.  Even the next morning they are still picking over the vines.  They will chew on their cud all night and we always joke that the milk tomorrow will be 'sweet potato flavored milk.'

When the last shovelful of dirt is turned over and the dirt picked through, we had a garden wagon full of nice-sized tubers.  If you look closely in the wagon below, you'll see that some of the sweet potatoes were cut in half by the shovel.  It is hared to see them and sometimes while digging, I slice right through a nice one.  That's okay - the cut ones get separated into a pile that we will eat first.

As far as the others, I hang them in onion sacks from the canoe that hangs from the ceiling of the garage.  I allow them to cure in the cool, dry weather for about a month and then I'll bring them inside.

From the front of the canoe, I had another sack of sweet potatoes.  I usually weight them just to keep records of the harvest, but I was too tired out from digging them up to go inside and bring out the bathroom scale.  I'll bring out a scale when I pull them down to weigh and record the final harvest weight.

We bake the sweet potatoes whole, we make sweet potato fries, and we boil and mash them.  But our favorite thing to do with them is to make sweet potato latkes. Do yourself a favor and make some.  We posted the recipe and showed how to make them way back in this post four years ago.

Even though when we dig up the soil and pick through it, we're never able to find every single sweet potato - much to our dismay.  Those sweet potatoes lay dormant in the spring and then the slips pop up out of the ground on their own - giving us yet another year of "free" sweet potatoes.

This Little Piggie Went to Market; This Little Piggie Stayed Home

Wild hogs are a big problem around these parts.  They get in rice fields and cause major crop damage. They root up people's yards.  They cause erosion problems and some carry disease.  When landowners have had enough, they set up traps and catch them in order to eradicate them from their property.

Saturday morning we got a call that some wild hogs had been captured in a trap and needed to be killed.  My boys jumped at the chance.  They got their .22 rifles and we loaded up and made the 10 minute drive to where the wild hogs were trapped.  The trap consists of an automatic feeder that throws out corn in order to attract them.  The trap itself is made of livestock panels wired together in a circle and reinforced with t-posts.  There is a gate that can be dropped once the hogs are inside the trap.

Little pigs running around in the trap

The sow and all 10 of her little piglets were running around in the trap when they saw us coming. The first thing you want to do is put the momma pig down.  The boys took aim with their .22 rifles and brought her down with a hit between the eyes.  Then the little pigs were killed.

The other white meat

It may seem cruel to some to kill these hogs, but the wild hog population is out of control.  In fact, in Louisiana, according to THIS PUBLICATION, feral hogs are considered unregulated quadrapeds and may be taken year-round during legal daylight shooting hours.  You can shoot them at night under certain conditions.

When the shooting stopped, Russ and Benjamin had killed one sow and 10 piglets. It doesn't take long to realize why the feral hog population is growing exponentially. Look at the 10 pigs below. Let's say half of them were female.  The females reach sexual maturity at 6 months of age and have 2 litters per year of up to 10 piglets per litter.  Wow!  So if five of the pigs below were female and each have two litters of 10 piglets, after 1 year those five piglets could have produced 100 piglets that are now producing!  Most all of them survive since there are virtually no natural predators. Yikes!!

We did our part by reducing the population of hogs in our area and the boys had a good time doing it. The trouble is, there are a lot more hogs out there.  As hogs are hunted, stalked by dogs, and trapped, many of them become very wise and are reluctant to go near traps.  They are smart animals and some are next to impossible to catch and kill.

At least we got these shown in the photo above and Benjamin's 'trophy' shot below. This made Benjamin's day!

We estimated the sow Benjamin killed to weigh around 130 pounds.  The meat was given away and likely made a nice batch of sausage.

Hay for the Day

The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.  - Freeman Dyson

I read that quote in James Wesley, Rawles' book, "Founders" and began thinking about it deeper.  That is because we have just started to feed our cows strictly hay. We'll feed round bales of bahia all throughout the winter and will shortly supplement with square bales of a higher quality Bermuda hay. The grass in the pasture is mostly eaten and that remaining is void of nutrition.  Ruminants need something to eat over the winter and hay fits the bill. Our animals are going through a round bale in about 6 days.  They certainly let us know when the bale is gone by mooing... loudly!

The quote above the picture is interesting.  According to the hay theory, the invention of hay allowed civilization to progress.  I guess I can see that, and I am not nearly as learned as the physicist who was quoted above, but I have several questions about his assertion regarding the invention of hay:

First, even if hay wasn't invented, couldn't people have stored grains or root crops over the winter when grass was unavailable in order to move society to Northern and Western Europe?

Next, the statement about the invention of hay taking place during the Dark Ages has me scratching my head.  Cato the Elder (234-139 BCE), PRIOR TO THE DARK AGES - mentions hay in 'De Agri Cultura', LIII:

"Cut hay in season, and be careful not to wait too long. Harvest before the seed ripens, and store the best hay by itself for the oxen to eat during the spring ploughing, before you feed clover."

Finally, the Holy Bible mentions hay often.  In fact, in a very timely example, the Virgin Mary gave birth to our Saviour, Jesus Christ, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger as there was no room for them in the inn.  What is a manger?  It is a feed trough - and most nativity scenes you see will show the Baby Jesus lying in a manger filled with...hay!

Maybe there's some context to the hay theory that I'm missing?  Regardless of the timing of hay coming on the scene, our cows are certainly happy that it exists at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm!

Lighting the Way for Papa Noel's Sleigh

Following up on our story from yesterday about our get-away, I wanted to show you an interesting tradition that folks that live on the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge have done for generations.  As we were driving along River Road, up on the tops of the levees we spotted some pyramid-like construction going on.  Can you spot it?

Made with willow logs and positioned about 150 feet apart from each other, we saw numerous things like this in various stages of construction.

So what are these things?  Well, the people of St. James Parish, specifically around Lutcher and Paulina have been building these Christmas bonfires for generations. Families build them as a social event.  We saw many pickup trucks with family and friends busy at work constructing the bonfire. They had barbecue pits and campfires going as they worked and seemed to be having a great time.

Here is one that is almost complete that Tricia is standing beside.  You can see that there is a pole in the center with four poles forming a pyramid.  Logs are stacked along the edges and then cut up logs are thrown in the middle.

The weekend we were at the Bed and Breakfast in Paulina, they were having The Festival of the Bonfires in Lutcher.  We climbed up to the top of the levee as they had set one of the bonfires ablaze and talked to some friendly guys who explained the tradition.  Beau told us that they had been building these each year since they were two feet tall.  So did their daddies.  And their daddies' daddies.  These guys were pretty happy as they had just returned from the Superdome in New Orleans watching the Lutcher football team win the 3A State Football Championship two times in a row.

Families build the bonfires and on Christmas Eve they light them up, enjoying the warmth and the warmth of each others' company and then they walk along the top of the levee to church at midnight. They say the bonfires help light the way for Papa Noel and his sleigh to find where all the good boys and girls live on the bayou.

A Honeymoon Weekend only 2 Hours from Home

Our son Russ, who is a senior in college, surprised us and booked a night at a Bed and Breakfast called Auberge du Chene Vert.  Russ told us not to worry about the animals as he would take care of milking the cows and goat and handle all other farm chores.  Well, the words were hardly out of his mouth and we both had huge grins on our faces!  Thank you, Russ!!

In English Auberge du Chene Vert means "Live Oak Inn."  It is aptly named as it is nestled under big live oak trees.  It is located within spitting distance of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in a small town called Paulina.  Paulina is between Lutcher and Convent.  Check in time was 4 o'clock, so we had a little time to take in the sights along River Road.  On the opposite side of the river, we saw Laura Plantation, a Creole Plantation.

We jumped out of the car and snapped a selfie on the side of another very famous plantation home that I bet you'll guess the name of after viewing the picture right below this one.

Yep, you guessed it.  Oak Alley!  Wow, what an absolutely beautiful homeplace, framed perfectly by live oak trees.  It is quite a sight to behold.

Since it was about 3:45 at that point, we jumped in the car and drove back across the river and to our Bed and Breakfast.  Auberge du Chene Vert was built in the 1940's and is just a fantastic place.  It was old family land and the innkeeper and her husband purchased the home and turned it into a Bed and Breakfast.

The original owner's name was Christophe Roussel and he grew perique tobacco, which is only grown in St. James Parish. The home is elegantly furnished and the innkeeper, Mary, made us feel welcome and answered all of our many questions. She was such a gracious hostess, with a great big smile and a penchant for providing Southern Hospitality at its finest.  The home was comfortable, filled with antiques and the smell of wood floors that transports you immediately to a slower-paced, stress-free time.  Ahhhhh....
 

Here is my bride sitting in our bedroom.  Behind the curtains are french doors with screens that open to the spacious front porch.  The furniture was nice and the mattress very, very comfortable.  The bathroom has a HUGE shower.  With the mighty Mississippi River right outside, if you listened closely, you could hear the river traffic as ships from all over the world filled their holds with goods produced in Louisiana.

Scarlett???

In the front yard, you can see the levee.  Now I don't know when this levee was constructed, but it wasn't yesterday.  I read that the first levee was built around New Orleans in 1718.  Today there are over 3,600 miles of levees in the Mississippi River basin.

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, I drove my Chevy to the levee and the levee was dry. Actually we walked across the road instead of driving.  While the levee itself was dry, the innkeepers' cows were grazing up on the levee.  We walked just a short bit and peered through the willows at Old Man River.

Shadows of My Honey and I on the Levee

When perique tobacco was being raised on the property, these barns were used to hang the tobacco from the rafters, drying the leaves.  Although perique tobacco is no longer grown here, the barn doesn't sit idle.  It is now River Road Distillery where local sugarcane is transformed into Kicking Mule Rum: Kicking Mule Rum

We walked around the property, looking at their bee boxes, fruit trees and Boston Ferns growing beneath the huge live oak trees.  Mary told us to be sure to take in the sunset from the table and chairs located on the front porch, right outside our bedroom.  We certainly weren't going to miss it.  The sun was on time and the sunset was nice.  Perfect weather.  Perfect surroundings.

"Quittin' Time!  I'm the foreman, I'z the one who sez when it's quittin' time."

Coffee was set out in the dining room at 8:00 am.  Good, strong, hot coffee.  Yes, we slept late!!  We were awakened to the sounds of breakfast being prepared.  As we walked into the dining room, Louis Armstrong softly serenaded us, setting a perfect mood for a breakfast prepared with many offerings produced right there on the grounds at Auberge du Chene Vert.  There were cut up grapefruit and satsumas, garnished with mint leaves, fresh-squeezed orange juice, bacon and Pain Perdu (lost bread). It was called such because as bread goes stale or gets hard, it gets 'lost' pretty quick.  Poor french families found that soaking the stale bread in milk and eggs before frying, rescued the "lost bread." You might call this French Toast. Whatever you call it, Mary did a good job with breakfast - Fantastic!

The table was set for three as we ate with another guest at the Inn - a lady from Germany who was touring the South.  She could speak English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian.  We stretched out breakfast for about two hours, enjoying good food and conversation.

Before checking out at 11 am and taking a leisurely drive down River Road to our home two hours north and west, we took the opportunity to soak in a few more minutes of a beautiful morning at a beautiful inn.

Farewell, Auberge du Chene Vert!  Unfortunately, reality calls.  We'll be back.  We highly recommend this place.  If you are in the area, check it out!  Oh, and stay tuned.  Tomorrow I want to share a neat tradition that occurs right around this spot.  I can't wait to tell you about it.