Thinning Out the Seedlings

Before we get to the thinning, I wanted to show you a number of pepper seedlings that I just re-potted into some larger pots.  There is a wide diversity of pepper plants including: Emerald Green Peppers, Horizon peppers, Criolla Sella Peppers, Hot Jalapeno Peppers, Craig's Giant Jalapenos, Banana Peppers, and Cayenne Peppers.  They were planted on January 8th and are growing nicely under the fluorescent lights on top of the cabinet in the utility room.

Now to the thinning.  I plant two seeds to the seed pot, and that means that if I achieve 100% germination, I'll have 8 tomato plants of each variety.  The trouble with having two seedlings growing in each pot is that as they grow, they crowd each other out and get root-bound.  It is best if you thin them out to promote the growth of a healthy plant.  You can see that they are just starting to put on their second set of true leaves.  Once the second leaves are fully out, I'll mix up some fish emulsion at 1/2 strength dose and spray on the foliage to give them a boost.

They are all looking very healthy... except for the Valencia 749 Yellow Tomatoes. My germination percent on these was 0%.  These were some seeds I saved from 2012.  I guess it is time to throw those seeds away!

Here are eight Cherokee Purple Tomato seedlings that I need to thin.  Most publications will tell you to get some scissors and cut off the weakest of the two at soil level.  I always think, "Why destroy a perfectly fine tomato?"  I separate the roots of the two plants and transplant into another container so that I have eight seedlings each growing in its own seed pot.  I have assembled a highly specialized tool that enables me to separate the roots and transplant the seedlings without damaging them.  That tool is a plastic fork.

Pink Brandywine Tomato Seedlings

I simply press the fork straight down midway between the two seedlings and scoop upward while holding the other down.  It is easily lifted and transplanted.

A plastic seed transplanting fork

Then I fill the seed pots with some organic potting mix, give them a good sprinkling of water and put them back under the grow light.  They have a little "elbow room" now.

As I placed the plants back underneath the lights, something caught my eye!

Well, it's a ladybug hanging out with the peppers and tomatoes.  That's a good thing!

A Gallon of Carrots for the Freezer

First an update on the rogue chicken that was in the garden and we posted about. Yesterday afternoon Benjamin and I drove to the local hardware store and purchased a 50 foot roll of welded wire that is 36 inches high and has 2"x4" holes in it.  There are places in the hog wire fence in the back yard where the goats have stood on the fencing to help them reach the leaves of a willow tree.  The goats like to eat the leaves, but in so doing, they've stretched out the fence and that allows the trespassing chicken to squeeze through the enlarged holes in the fence and then quickly make her way to the garden.

We fastened the fencing over the stretched-out fence and called it a day, stepping back and nodding approval at out job.  Knowing that the holes in the picket fence had been (temporarily) patched and adding an additional 50 feet of fencing, I asked Tricia, "So do you think the hen will find her way out again?"  We both optimistically remarked that our efforts did the trick.

This evening I asked if the chicken had visited the garden.  Tricia answered in the affirmative and said she had to toss the hen out of the garden again and that she had eaten a little more of the remaining cabbages.  Arrgghh!  That fat hen is asking to be a contributor to our next chicken and sausage gumbo.

So on to the topic of the day.  Last week we harvested a nice bucket of carrots and that represented about 33% of our carrot production for the year.  We still have two more rows to harvest.

We've eaten some of them raw and cooked some with butter, but we need to blanch some so that we can freeze some to extend the harvest and we can enjoy carrots all year long.  Benjamin and I peeled all the carrots and cut the tops off, feeding the tops and peelings to the chickens.  We used a "As seen on TV" product that Tricia bought to chop all the carrots up uniformly.  It works pretty good.

I started a pot of water boiling and once it boiled, I put all the chopped up carrots in the water.  When it began to boil again, I set the timer for 5 minutes.

When they had boiled for five minutes, I spooned them out of the boiling water and immediately put them in iced water to immediately stop the cooking.  I let them continue to cool for ten minutes and took them out of the water and filled quart-sized freezer bags with the fresh blanched carrots.

In a very short time, we had 4 quarts of carrots ready to put into the deep freeze for us to enjoy later.

For now, we'll continue to eat them freshly pulled out of the ground, fresher than you can get anywhere and speaking of pulling things from the ground, I think I'll pull the remaining cabbages from the garden tomorrow so that miserable hen doesn't eat them.  That's another good thing about carrots - they are a root crop and the hen can't get to those!

A Chicken in the Garden

Last weekend I showed you a nice picture (below) of a nice head of cabbage alongside some fresh-pulled carrots.  The cabbage was about the size of a bowling ball.  Okay, maybe I exaggerated a little, but it was a nice-sized cabbage.

This Saturday morning after the morning milking duties, I had my mind set on going out and harvesting that cabbage.  As I walked to the cabbage row, thinking about how to best eat the cabbage, something caught my eye and stopped me dead in my tracks.  If you follow the fence line upward in the photo below, right past where the 4x4 post is, you can make out the back end of a Barred Rock hen walking briskly away from me.  That's odd.  I don't allow chickens in my garden.  I read a lot of people who say they have success with putting chickens in the gardens to eat bugs, but everytime that I have allowed chickens in my garden, they have eaten tomatoes, broccoli, peppers...  You name it - they've eaten it.

This time was no different, even though I didn't allow the hen in the garden, she ate my cabbages.

And not just one.  She flat ate the heart out of this one.

This must be the one she was just starting on when I walked up.

At this point i was seething mad.  I mean, you patiently grow this thing for months and the very week that it is time to harvest them, something gets in and eats it before you can.  How did the hen get in the garden?  I have 4"x4" heavy gauge wire fencing around three sides of the garden and the other side is a picket fence.

After surveying the picket fence, I see where she was getting in.  Maintenance is so important and my picket fence has succumbed to rot.  One of the pickets has rotted and fallen off, creating a 'chicken-sized' hole that is the perfect opening for the Barred Rock hen to gain entry to the garden.

The gate also has an opening created by rot by which the hungry hen can enter the garden and eat up my produce.

I cooled down a bit and didn't butcher the hen.  I did, however, toss her over the fence in a manner that wouldn't be defined as gentle.  The cabbage-fattened hen suffered no ill effects as she trotted off to tell the other hens in the flock of her cabbage adventure.

I wasn't going to throw the cabbage away and waste it.  I used a sharp knife to cut away every bit of the cabbage that came into contact with the chicken's beak. Chickens are not sanitary creatures. They routinely peck through cow patties in search of grain or other tasty morsels.  I'm not too fond of that beak touching what I'm going to eat!  In the end, I was able to save about 3/4s of this head of cabbage.

Although I didn't have the time nor the materials to patch up the fence in a professional matter, I had to do something to keep that hen out.  I found just what I needed.

I used two pizza boxes and stapled them over the holes.  This will work until I have the time to do a proper repair job.  Until then, the cardboard fence patching kit will have to do the trick for the short term.  If it is unable to stop the hen, I may have to resort to other means.  That is a polite way of saying that if the hen gets in the garden one more time, Chicken and Sausage gumbo will be on the menu.

All Things Work Together for Good

I miss Paul Harvey.  Back when I was farming with my Dad, he would come pick me up on the tractor and tell me it was 'bean time.'  We would drive into town and go to the Texaco station on the corner of Main Street.  They had the best chicken fingers ever!  Gas station food is good stuff, I tell ya.  We would drive back to the farm and turn down Durio Cemetary Road and park underneath the shadows of the sprawling limbs of a giant live oak tree that shaded the tombstones of a family cemetery that contains the remains of soldiers that fought in the Civil War.

We'd roll down the windows, open up our white paper bags of chicken fingers and fries and open up the little packets of ketchup, squirting it on the bag to dip our chicken fingers in.  While we ate our chicken, we'd always listen to Paul Harvey's News & Commentary that came on a noon.  We especially liked a segment called "The Rest of the Story," where he'd tell an interesting story about someone or something that had an interesting twist at the end or you'd learn something that you didn't know.  Paul Harvey would close with..."And now you know - the rest of the story!"

I want to tell a similar story today that I read on the website Mentalfloss.  It involves a tragic story about actress/entertainer Jayne Mansfield.  In the summer of 1967 Jayne Mansfield, her driver and her lawyer and three of her children were traveling from Biloxi, Mississippi at 2:30 a.m. en route to New Orleans for a television interview the next morning. They were driving the Buick Electra 225 fast and came upon an 18 wheeler.  It was shrouded by mosquito fog from another truck and they never saw it.  They drove right up underneath the back of the big rig, shearing off the cab and killing the 3 adults instantly. Amazingly, the 3 kids sleeping in the back seat all survived with minor injuries.  If you watch the television program, Law and Order, you'll know one of Jayne Mansfield's kids, Mariska Hargitay, who plays a detective in the crime series.  She was 3 years old at the time and survived the accident and still has a scar from it.

The tragic fatal accident led the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to mandate that all 18 wheeler trailers to be fitted with "Mansfield Bars" to keep cars from running up underneath the back of the trailers.  I'm sure you've seen them on the Interstate.  There is a photo of them below:

Image Credit

While it was too late to save Jayne Mansfield and the adult occupants of her vehicle, the "Mansfield Bars" have saved countless lives.  Something good came from something very bad.  If man can take a horrible thing and make something good out of that tragic situation, how much more can God?  It reminds me of Romans 8:28 " And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

All things means good things AND bad things.  If you love God and are called according to His purpose, He will cause all things - both the good and the bad - to work together for good.  This serves as a good reminder to me when I'm going through rough times.  God is working.  I may not understand it, and it may not be in my timing, but I need to be patient and trust Him.  He's working it all together for good.

And now you know the rest of the story...

A Pretty Cool Trophy

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Benjamin giving Clarabelle a haircut. Clarabelle is our Jersey Heifer.  She is really tame and has a very gentle disposition. He clipped her in preparation for the Jefferson Davis Parish Livestock Show in Jennings.  He showed her last week and the old boy did really well with her.  In fact, the judge selected Clarabelle as the best Jersey heifer at the show.  Then to top it off, Benjamin won Champion Senior Dairy Showman!  He was invited to an Awards Banquet where the livestock exhibitors were honored and received their awards.  We ate a complimentary meal of chicken and sausage jambalaya and then State Representative Johnny Guinn shook hands with Benjamin and presented him with his award.

Then he posed with the other Dairy Exhibitors present at the Awards Banquet.  The Dairy Club is a close-knit group of young people that work hard and enjoy themselves during the livestock shows.

I wanted to post a close-up of Benjamin's award - a cool belt buckle!  Benjamin is very excited.  It is the first belt buckle that he's won and he was really hoping he would win one.

I was telling him that any trophy that I ever won is collecting dust.  His trophy is one that he'll get to wear for years to come.  Not to mention the fact that it is silver and looks awesome.  We're proud of Benjamin and he's proud of himself.

First Harvest of the Carrots - January 2017

Sunday afternoon was a stellar day with brilliant sunshine, blue skies and a westerly breeze.  It felt good to be alive.  I pulled down some of the trellises that the butterbeans and sugar snap peas were growing on in order to prepare for spring planting.  It'll be here before we know it.  I looked over at one of the three rows of carrots I have growing and the foliage was lush and green - just beautiful.

But it's what is beneath the surface that tells the tale.  A quick tug and the earth yielded a nice big fat carrot!

I have a bucket full of rainwater that I washed the carrots off in and the brightness of the orange carrot shines through.  On this particular row I would say roughly half are ripe and ready to be pulled.  Time to get busy.

With all the rainfall we've had lately, I need to start pulling them quickly.  The ground is saturated and when root crops sit in water-logged soil, they rot!  It is not a total loss, though.  I'll cut off the bottom part and we can still use the top.

I thought this was a nice picture featuring a nice bounty of carrots with carrot tops right next to a fat cabbage.  This will make for a nice meal or two for sure.

Normally I plant Berlicum Carrots, Cosmic Purple Carrots and Atomic Red Carrots, except this year my inventory was short.  All I had was some Danvers Carrots (normal orange ones) and a little packet of organic carrot seed blend that came free in a box of Kashi cereal.  I planted them and here is what came up:  Some really strange looking white carrots!  I've never grown white carrots.  They are pretty cool. Tricia asked if they are parsnips, but I don't think they are.

There was at least one Cosmic Purple seed in that blend.  When you pull them and wash them, they really shine!

After I cleaned them up, I put them on the patio table to let them dry before bringing them in.  This first harvest filled a 2 1/2 gallon bucket and we've got plenty to go as I staggered the planting to ensure a continued harvest until spring.  We'll eat a lot of these raw, cook some, and blanch and freeze the rest to allow us to eat carrots all year long.

I'll leave with a photo showing a diverse carrot harvest.

They sure look pretty and I know we'll enjoy eating them, too.  If it continues to rain, I'll have to pull the rest of them even if they are on the small side to keep them from rotting in the ground.  I need to move some more topsoil into the garden to raise up the ground level.  That is a good project for this spring when the ground dries up.

The Early Bird (Sometimes) Gets the Worms

Our flock of laying hens are mis-named, because they are definitely NOT laying. Yes, they are molting and yes, the daylight hours are shorter, and yes, there is not a plethora of bugs and clover out in the pasture for them to eat.  But they should be laying some eggs.  Tricia was doing some research and found that there is a possibility that our birds could have picked up some parasites.

Although we try to almost NEVER use medications, when the need arises, we'll do what we have to in order to restore health to our animals.  A veterinarian friend of ours told us what we needed to do and sold us some wormer for the birds.  Here comes the tricky part - each bird must be administered about 1 cc per pound.  So we had to weigh the birds, but first, we had to catch them.  This is easier said than done.  I had a plan.  We called them into the barn while throwing some "chicken scratch" on the ground in the barn until every last one of the birds was inside.

As the birds were busy eating with their heads down, I quickly shut the gate, capturing them inside.

We weighed the first bird and squirted 4 cc's on a torn up piece of Evangeline Maid white bread.  I picked up a hen and gave her the bread.  A strange thing happened, though.  She didn't want to eat it.  I grabbed another bird, but this one wouldn't eat it either.

Time to move to Plan B.  I picked up each bird, weighed her, pried open her beak, and Tricia squirted 4.5 cc's down the hen's throat.  We repeated this process a number of times over the next 2 hours.

After Tricia administered the wormer to each bird, I would place her outside and grab the next "patient."  Tricia put a tick mark on a scratch piece of paper to count the birds.  We have always thought that we had 65 - 70 birds roaming around on the pasture.

While we might be good census takers, we are horrible at estimating crowd size. Our estimate of 65-70 birds was way, way, way off...

Instead of having 65 birds, we actually had 119 birds, including 111 hens, 6 roosters and 2 guinea fowl. Our little flock is a lot bigger than we had anticipated.  So after 2 hours had passed, we had de-wormed our entire flock except for 14 that we ran out of medicine for.  We tagged the leg of each of those and we'll worm them later.

Hopefully after worming the old gals, they'll begin to lay eggs for us.  If not, I may be forced to try a trick and old-timer told me.  He said, "Get a hatchet and go out to the hen house and grab the first hen you can catch.  Chop off her head and butcher her right there in front of the others.  The other hens will be frightened and will start to lay eggs so as not to meet the same fate as her old headless friend." With an accurate count of birds, this also helps us determine that we are feeding them the correct amount of feed of 1/4 pounds of feed per day per bird.  We'll keep you posted to follow up on our parasite prevention protocol.  Stay tuned.                                                                                                                                    

Fricasseed Frogs and Eel Pie

Image Credit

Eel Pie!  That looks great doesn't it?

When the kids were young, I read them every single one of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series of seven novels.  We loved them all!  A favorite character of ours is named Puddleglum.  Puddleglum is a Marsh-wiggle.  He is tall and skinny.  His fingers and hands are webbed like a frog's hands.  His hair is greenish-gray and he wears a pointed hat with a wide brim.  When the protagonists of the story in "The Silver Chair" find Puddleglum, he is out fishing for eels - his favorite meal. Puddleglum is an eternal pessimist and doesn't expect to catch any, but ends up catching about a dozen.  Puddleglum decides to join Eustace and Jill on their adventure because "the other Marsh-wiggles said that he is too flighty and that he needs to learn that there is more to life than fricasseed frogs and eel pie."

In order to make eel pie, you have to find the perfect eel habitat, which just so happens to be right behind our house in a low-lying swamp area that holds water and is in a shady, cool area.  I almost expected to see Puddleglum sitting back here smoking his pipe.

The perfect eel habitat

It just so happens Benjamin has some crawfish traps in these murky waters.  This reminds me so much of me when I was his age.  I always had some sort of camp or fort back in the woods with traps for critters.  I watched as Benjamin lifted his trap.

Benjamin hit the jackpot in his first trap.  A nice, fat eel was writhing around inside the trap.  It was a fine eel - one that is the perfect eating size.  If they get much larger, they are tough and too chewy.

Benjamin dumped him out on the ground and the eel tried to wiggle away and return to his muddy abode in the soft mud of the swampy area.  But I wasn't about to let him get away.

I picked him up, but it was next to impossible to hold him.  The eel was so slimy that he kept squishing through my fingers, leaving my hand with a thick coating of eel slime.  An eel, despite looking like a snake, is actually a fish.

It is hard to see in this picture, because it is blurry, but it looks like he has little arms, but they are actually pectoral fins.  We were having a Gospel Quartet at church tonight with finger foods following the music in the fellowship hall.  Perhaps we could bring eel pie to church for our finger food offering. Eel pie isn't exactly 'finger food,' though.  Besides, it would be very hard to hold an eel in your fingers.

Unfortunately, Benjamin only caught one eel.  According to Tricia's recipe, you need 13 eels to make a nice eel pie.  With only one, we figured we'd let him go so that he could grow.  We watched as he disappeared in the mud.

With our lone eel released, I was left empty-handed.  Well, except for the mucous-slime that coated my hand.  I tried to wipe it off on some tree bark, but it stuck to me like glue.

I didn't want to wipe the slime on my clothes, so I finally just licked it off.  It tasted salty.

Okay, I have to confess.  I did not lick the slime off my hands and I had no intention of ever eating the eel.  About the only truth in today's post was that we caught that interesting critter in the backyard and he was pretty doggone cool.  I'll leave eating eel pie to Puddleglum.

Tomatoes Have Sprouted and are Growing!

So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. - 1 Corinthians 3:7

On Saturday, January 7th I planted tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.  I try as best as I can to start my seeds early and get a jump on the pests like stink bug that wreak havoc on my tomatoes each year. Most of the nine varieties of tomatoes that I planted have leaped up out of the soil starting mix and have a long spindly stalk with two leaves.  They aren't the first true leaves, though.  Those will be coming pretty soon.

As far as germination is concerned, we achieved 99% germination on 8 of the nine varieties.  My Valencia 749 Yellow tomatoes' germination rate was 0%.  These were seeds that I saved from the 2012 crop.  They were beautiful yellow tomatoes, but the seeds are old now and I'll likely just plant the rest of them this fall to see if ANY will come up.

I planted two seeds in each seed pot, so far most varieties I have 8 seedlings.  They look healthy so far. Once they sprout I move the flats under a grow light - it is nothing fancy.  It is a 4 foot shop light with two fluorescent bulbs in it.

I have the tomato plants growing under the grow light on top of the cabinets in the utility room.  I find that because hot air rises, it is a nice warm spot during the winter that is also out of the way.  Parenthetically, it is not crucial right now that the tomatoes are in a warm spot being that it is late January and it was in the upper 70's yesterday.

My peppers and eggplant have not sprouted yet with an exception of the giant jalapenos on the far right.  I'm not worried about it, though, as peppers and eggplants sprout a bit later than tomatoes.  Once these sprout, I'll move them under the light with the tomato seedlings.  Obviously seeds that haven't sprouted yet don't require sunlight.

We will nurture the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant until they are ready to transplant into the garden. One other thing to look forward to is that we're a little less than a month away from purchasing seed potatoes and getting them planted in the garden.