The Grapes (Muscadines) of Wrath

“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Tricia and I, in our late afternoon routine, hands and walk the property line, stopping each day to inhale deeply the fragrant new crisp white magnolia blossoms. If there is a fresher fragrance, I haven't found it.  We'll comment on the fruit on the trees and admire the bright pink blooms of the crepe myrtles.  We'll pass by the pasture and comment on the cows eating grass with their heads down and how nice and carefree it must be to be a MILK cow as opposed to a BEEF cow.

On the west side, we stop by the vineyard.  Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit.  We have a muscadine vine that is loaded down with grapes.  We'll pick about a pint of them each day as the ripen gradually in the summer sun.  The purple ones are the best.

There are plenty green ones right behind the ripe ones, ensuring that we'll enjoy muscadines for days, or maybe weeks, to come.

Each year the vine encompasses a larger portion of the cattle panel upon which they grow. The ground is not particularly rich in this area of the yard, but the muscadine doesn't seem to mind and ekes out its existence on the poor soil, providing us grapes to snack on each summer.  

We pick them each day so that the birds don't get to them first.  Sometimes we eat them right off the vine, their juice warm from the sun and buttery to the taste. They are full of seeds, though, and keep you spitting.  The skins can be a little tart at times, but we still enjoy them.  Everyone needs a muscadine vine.

Each year I keep thinking about making some muscadine jelly, but we always end up eating them all before the jelly-making commences.  Next year we make jelly!

Trying to Beat the Heat - Late July 2017 Edition

“I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it to be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade.” - Wendell Berry

I like our animals to be comfortable, too.  Especially in the hot, humid Louisiana summers that are oppressive, our animals struggle to have this "pleasant" life outdoors that Wendell Berry speaks of.  The animals aren't stupid; however, they seek out the shade under the trees to find a respite from the heat.

The chickens gather between the dairy barn and the goat barn beneath the shade of the water oak trees.  The dirt stays moist and cool in the ever-present shade here and they linger here during the hottest part of the day.

They do this thing with their wings that I show in the photo below.  When we get hot, we take off a jacket or sweater and dress appropriately.  Chickens can't do that so they do the next best thing - they hold their wings out to allow better airflow next to their bodies to cool them off.

The cows chase the shade across the pasture.  They know at certain points of the day where to position themselves to enjoy the shade.  They are as methodical in their routine as a Swiss watch.  Later in the day, they gather by the water trough and drink deeply of the cool water.  It is a peaceful, fulfilling time for them.

Rosie lifts her head when she's done and savors the cool, refreshing water while a few drops fall back into the trough.  This is no time for rushing - just a time to relax in the shade and drink water.

It is this time of the afternoon that Tricia and I walk around the perimeter of the property, taking in the sights and sounds of the end of a long, hot summer day.

Life has its bumps and gives us a fair share of heartache and trouble, but truth be told, we are blessed beyond comparison.  In the cool of the day, we find many blessings to count.

Fresh Baked Bread in the Oven

"Oh, but anyway, Toto, we're home – home! And this is my room – and you're all here – and I'm not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all! And... oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!"  - Dorothy in the last lines of The Wizard of Oz

Home is a haven, a safe refuge from a world gone mad.  There is safety at home. You are surrounded by ones you love and there is a feeling of acceptance and familiarity.  It is a place where you can be yourself and relax and unwind.

Have you ever noticed that every home has a particular fragrance?  When you open the back door and walk inside, it just smells like 'home.'  I tell you what, sometimes home smells extra nice.  For instance, when there is a fresh loaf of bread baking in the oven!

Some realtors will tell you that if you are looking to sell your home, it needs to smell inviting.  Fresh baked bread or chocolate chip cookies evokes a feeling of comfort that supposedly makes prospective buyers make an offer.  We're not trying to sell our home, but when I walk in and smell fresh baked bread, I'm definitely comfortable and happy!

Lovin' in the Oven

When you pull that bread out, everyone gathers round.  The "heel" of the bread, in my opinion, is the best part.  I'll fight you for it.

I like to get some butter and slather (I like the word slather) lots of it on top of the warm bread.  Then I like to pop the warm bread out of the loaf pan and slice it while still warm. Then I either put more butter on the warm bread or I get out the jar of Steen's pure cane syrup and pour a generous helping on the slice.

After the slice is gone, a critical decision must be made.  Should you have another slice? Or should you back away from the warm, fresh baked bread?  While it is still warm, it takes superhuman will power to stop after eating one slice.  Fresh bread is quite the temptress.  Get behind me Satan!

Blazing a Trail With my Machete

So he went with them; and when they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees.  II Kings 6:4

I watched from afar day after day as the darkness encroached.  Slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the forest crept closer and closer until one day, the forest was threatening to overtake the fence.  The fence is right on the southernmost property line.  To the right is our property, and to the left is property that is owned by folks we've never seen.  Quite often we'll let our cows quickly graze down the jungle that is contiguous to our property in order to destroy some of the tall grass that harbors mosquitoes.

I should have taken some before and after shots, but I was focused on the task at hand - cutting down trees.  Well, they aren't really trees.  Most of the jungle consists of privet. It was time for the privet to go.

With a sharpened blade humming through the air, I chopped privet, Chinese tallow, China berry, pecan, oak, ragweed, and briar with reckless abandon. My machete and I blazed a trail in that jungle 8 feet wide and cleared anything we could reach growing down.

I tossed some of the browse to Annie, the Nubian goat.  Annie is just finished with a 7 day cycle of injections of penicillin as she had a foot infection (foot rot) and a touch of mastitis after we quickly dried her up when Tricia was in the hospital. Annie was thrilled with the browse and ate to her heart's content.  She is feeling so much better now - much better than a week ago.

I tossed some browse to Annie's 3 kids - Buckwheat, Jane, and Darla.  They were not interested at first, but soon got up, stretched, and began eating all the leaves off of the plants.  If you look at the bottom of the photo, you'll see a vine growing.

That vine is honeysuckle and while honeysuckle looks great and smells even better, it is not a good thing to have growing on your fence.  Honeysuckle will wrap around the electric fence wire that runs along the perimeter fence.  You can see it if you look closely. If honeysuckle wraps around the wire, it can ground out the current and then the cows will enter paddocks that they aren't supposed to be in yet.

As I cut down the jungle, I threw some to the goats, but for the majority of the cuttings, I used the "chop and drop" practice.  All cuttings get thrown into a pile where they will decompose and become part of the forest soil.

The encroaching jungle is habitat for all sorts of critters that like to eat chickens.  I like to have a nice clearing between the fence and the woods so that I can better see the enemy. While hacking away, I could see their trails alongside the fence.  I have caught many a possum along this fence.  

Working with a machete is therapeutic and a great stress reliever!  It doesn't take long in the humid weather to completely wet your shirt with sweat.  I hacked down quite  few spider webs, twirling the huge banana spiders with my machete and tossing them to our chickens who were waiting patiently for  a spider snack. At last I was done.  I turned around to walk back, nursing a few blisters on my right hand and regretting that I didn't wear gloves during this undertaking.

This is immediate gratification.  Seeing the product of your labor and knowing that the work you put in paid dividends.  But the forest never stops trespassing and I know we'll do this exercise again next year.  In fact, as I slowly walked back toward the barn, I think I could see the privet growing...

Serving Lemon Balm Tea

A year or two ago I ordered some vegetable seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They frequently will send you a packet or two of free seeds with your order.  I always think this is a neat deal as it gives you the opportunity to grow something that you might not have ever planted.  Such is the case with the free package of Lemon Balm seeds that I got.  This year I planted them right next to a terra cotta pot of oregano on the back porch. The lemon balm is thriving.

Lemon balm is aptly named.  If you brush by the plant, it gives off a nice lemony fragrance.  If you look at the leaves, it might remind you of mint, and that's no coincidence for lemon balm is in the mint family.

So other than smelling lemon balm, what are other uses of it?  I read that you can add chopped lemon balm leaves at the very end of cooking either chicken or fish and it complements the dish well.  I also read (and I'm gonna try this because it sounds so good!) that you can soften butter and mix in 2 Tablespoons of minced lemon balm leaves and a little honey and then spread it on warm, homemade bread.

Today, though, I decided that I would make my wife and daughter a cup of lemon balm tea.  To do this, I cut a small bunch of lemon balm leaves and stems, washed them and put them in the bottom of a tea pot.  Then I boiled water and poured it over the lemon balm leaves and let it steep for 15 minutes.  At the end of the allotted time, I took the top off and inhaled deeply.  It smells real nice.

I poured the freshly-steeped lemon balm tea into teacups and brought them to my wife.

She really enjoyed it and said it was nice and relaxing.  I took a sip, too.  It seems like this would also be refreshing by serving it cold as iced tea.  We have a couple of months of summer left, so I'll try this for sure.  Lemon Balm tea.  Soothing and delicious.

Ringing the Dinner Bell For the Cows

Psalm 104:14 King James Version (KJV)

14 He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;

In the late afternoons around 7 or 7:30, I like to walk out in the pasture and watch the sinking sun.  The cattle egrets lazily fly back to their roosting places. Upon seeing me in the pasture, the cows all look at me approvingly.  While not smart creatures, they know what is about to occur.  I am  about to pick up the reel and roll up the electric fence in order to open up a brand new paddock of fresh grass that has not been eaten in a week.  As I start cranking the reel, it makes a noise.  To the cows, that noise is like Pavlov's bell that triggers a response.
 

At that sound, the cows come walking and sometimes trotting to the fresh paddock of grass of which they will be dining on tonight.  Of course Daisy, the herd matriarch is first in line.  She's the boss and by-golly, she'll have her pick of the most tender grass she can find.  The other cows follow her lead.

The bull, Chuck comes next, followed by Luna, Clarabelle and Rosie brionging up the rear.  If you look closely, you might notice that Rosie's girth is a little wide. While I know that is never a polite thing to say to a lady, I know for a fact that Rosie is pregnant and will calve in 3-4 months.

Rosie is eating for two and I watch her as she selects the organic, non-GMO, no antibiotic, hormone free, locally grown grass for her supper.  

New grass must be tender and sweet and delicious, because the cows that were previously wondering what I was up to walking out in the pasture to observe them, now pay me no mind.  I was a tool, a pawn, in their quest for a tasty meal.  Now they all have their heads down.  I wish I could show you an audio of the loud, "Crunch, crunch, crunch...." as they reach out their long tongues, grab a bunch of grass and pull in a bite of bahai / bermudagrass mix for their entree.

I could stand out here until nightfall watching them eat, soaking in the sights and sounds, but you know what?  Like Pavlov's dogs, I hear MY dinner bell ringing.

Antibiotics For Annie

With milkmaid Tricia being in the hospital, we figured it would be too much to try to keep milking Daisy, our Jersey cow, and Annie, our Nubian goat.  Daisy was making about a gallon of milk a day and very late in lactation, so we stopped milking her and her bag quickly went down.

Annie proved to be another story.  She was late in lactation as well.  I read that in order to dry off a goat, the best thing to do was to cut the feed ration down and then just quit cold turkey.  Well, a couple days afterward, Annie's teats seemed engorged. They weren't hard or hot, but she was having some difficulty walking and just seemed lethargic.  She laid around a lot. Could this be the beginning of mastitis? We're not sure.  To further complicate matters, she had a foot problem that just wouldn't clear up.

We use antibiotics very, very sparingly, but with everything going on, we figured we would just give Annie a dose of penicillin and hopefully it would clear up her problem.  For a 125 pound goat, we were to give her 2 cc's once a day for seven days.

So that is exactly what we are doing.  We draw a little more than 2 cc's out of the jar and then inject it back in the bottle to eliminate air bubbles.

This photo isn't good at all, but what you want to do is give the shot beneath the skin.  To do this you simply pull the skin up on the neck, making a "tent."

Then you inject the antibiotic directly into the "tent" you've made with her skin.  She didn't seem to be bothered by it all all.

We are on day 3 now, so we have 4 more days to go with shots.  Hopefully, Annie will get back to normal quickly with the antibiotics she's on.

Get Well, Annie.

Why We Were Silent Last Week (Part III)

So this is the third and final installment in this series.  If you haven't joined us for the last two postings, CLICK HERE for Part I and CLICK RIGHT HERE for Part II.

Let's end this series by talking about what we learned.  Life is a big learning opportunity and our experiences can be a classroom, if we listen to the instructor and learn.  There are certainly exams in life and I want to pass the exams instead of fail them.

Here's what I learned:

1. God is God and I am not.  He is in control and He is So Good and Faithful.  He helps us to walk through difficult times and is there to carry us when we can't muster the strength to walk.  I realize that it is easy to say this now, but even if this had not turned out like it did, God would have seen us through this and would have given us what we need to survive.

2. Family and Friends are more important than silver or gold.  During this ordeal our family and our friends mobilized on our behalf, sending cards, money, flowers, texts, emails, feeding our animals, making meals for us, coming to visit us in the ICU waiting room even when we couldn't see them.  They cried with us, they shared our burden, they were there for us during the storm.  When the storm passed, they praised God with us.

3. There is Power in Prayer. This dovetails with #2.  Our family and friends are prayer warriors.  When Tricia needed it the most, people prayed.  These precious saints called other people to pray.  People across the nation and (thanks to the Internet) across the world prayed.

4. Miracles still occur.  I am a big skeptic.  Things like this  always happen to 'other people.'  This time it happened to me.  Right before my eyes.  The doctors still don't know what caused this.  They sent her home on no medicine.  I think they realize that perhaps all the medicine they threw at her didn't heal her.  God is still in the miracle business.

5. I love my wife even more than I thought I did.  We have been married for 26 years,  8 months, and 28 days, or looked at another way, for 9,768 days.  The thought of losing her shook me, scared me, and made me realize that I love her much more than I even thought I did and I already knew I loved this woman.

6. Cherish life - take nothing for granted - say what needs to be said. Things happen fast.  It seemed that things went from bad to worse and before I knew it, Tricia was on a ventilator, sedated and unresponsive, unable to communicate.  I realized that I didn't have time to communicate things that I wanted to say in the time that I needed to say them. Don't let that ever catch you by surprise.

7. Plan - and communicate your plans.  We are planning people.  Every Sunday after lunch, we have a family tradition we've been doing for years in which we put coffee on, get out some good chocolate and our whole family sits in the "parlor" with a calendar and goes over everything that is going on in the upcoming week.  I realized that we haven't exactly planned appropriately.  Although this is morbid talk, I didn't know where Tricia wants to be buried, what songs she wants sung at her funeral, where the passwords are to all the accounts and websites.

8. It is So important to be a member of a loving church.  We sing a song at church that says, "I'm so glad, I'm a part of the Family of God..."  Our little country church is small in number, but big on love and giving and praying.

9. Pass On the Love.  2 Corinthians 1:4 says, "who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God."  We  aspire to be to others as those people were to us during our time of need.

I was going to end this list with 10, but I began thinking about #9 more and I think I ought to stop there.  Besides, in Scripture, the number 9 is the number of finality.  I think that is a good way to end this three part series - with finality.  We'll be back tomorrow with a new topic.

Why We Were Silent Last Week (Part II)

Yesterday I gave the first installment of a series explaining our absence from "the Blogosphere" last week.  Today is Part II, but you can Click Here to read the first installment of the series.

In the photo below, my wife's face is blue.  Although she was definitely feeling blue, she told me that she wanted absolutely no hospital photos in the blog.  I cheated a bit by coloring in her face.  I hope she doesn't mind.

So to pick up where we left off yesterday...  As the hours passed in the ICU, and despite numerous antibiotics and antifungals, Tricia's condition wasn't improving. They put in a PICC line to give her meds.  One of our ICU nurses told us she had never seen someone pumped with so many antibiotics.  They even pulled out the "big gun," amphotericin, an antibiotic nicknamed ampho-terrible because of its side effects. Her lung xrays were getting worse and they scheduled a bronchial lavage in which they went into her lungs with a scope and took a fluid sample to send for testing.  What was causing this infection?

Numerous tests were run on her blood.  Every test (to this date) has come back negative. They tested all bacteria that she could have picked up from cows, goats, chickens.  They tested for leukemia, autoimmune disease, and rare infections that the infectious disease unit brainstormed.  Due to all the fluids pushed on her, Tricia began to swell.

Over night, she became very restless.  She was struggling to breathe and it was making her heart rate increase, and her pulse oximeter decrease.  Her blood pressure began to fall and they started giving her albumin.  Finally, in the morning, they asked me to leave the room and they intubated her.  They put her on a ventilator so that her breathing wasn't labored.  The machine was doing the breathing for her.  They put in a feeding tube to give her nutrition.

Although she could no longer talk, she would motion for a pen and would communicate to me on a napkin.  We like to pray the Psalms, so she requested the following and I read them to her:

The doctors kept coming in and out of the room and I could see the concern on their faces. The doctor told me, "I hate fighting an enemy that I don't know."  Things were not going well and for the first time, I began to think about things that I didn't want to address.  Our daughter was on a mission trip in South Africa and that was a full 2 day flight to get back home.  Finally, I walked out of the room and asked the nurse to shoot straight with me.  "Do I need to call my daughter back home?"  She paused and said, "You are asking me a hard question.  Right at this moment, I would say that it is not a life or death situation, but a lot can change in two days.  I can't predict where we might be in 2 days."  I called my daughter and she arranged to come home as quickly as possible.  Things looked bleak.

The ICU waiting room was full of family, friends, and church members all praying. I went to the waiting room and we all knelt, held hands and prayed.  Prayer Warrior friends were fervently lifting Tricia up to our LORD.

Late that night I would hold her hand and pray with her and tell her I loved her.  I read Psalm 27 to her.  The last verse in that Psalm, verse 14 says,

Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.

I told her, "That's what we're going to do.  We are going to wait on Him."  The next morning the team of doctors met with us and looked at a curious rash on her stomach and thighs.  They took pictures of the rash.  In hopes of providing clues, they asked the ICU nurse to give her a shot of morphine and they would be back in a couple of hours to take a biopsy.  They showed back up, lifted Tricia's gown... And the rash was gone!

They looked all over and the rash that was there was all gone.  The doctors were dumbfounded!  He looked at me and said, "Someone in this room is going to have to pay for this biopsy tray, because I already opened it!"  Tricia's breathing was a little better and they were able to move her ventilator to 40%.  The doctor said, "Girl, you are getting better. It is going to take a while, but you are going to get better!"  Tricia smiled with her eyes that were filled with tears - tears of joy and relief this time.

The doctors left the room saying, "I don't know what just happened there."  I looked at her and said, "I do. God just happened!"  We prayed, thanking Him for His Goodness.  I said, "Tricia, you are going to make it.  We're going to be able to walk around the yard and smell the magnolia blossoms again.  We're going to be able to have coffee in the rocking chairs on the front porch again!"  She motioned for the pen and wrote the following:

Tricia loves fresh-squeezed tangerine juice from our fruit trees!  I was getting my wife back!  The change in one day was unimaginable!  In a couple days, she was released from the ICU and a couple days later, she was discharged from the hospital.  She still has a fever (on Wednesday, it will mark 3 weeks straight that she has had a fever every day) and has lost a lot of weight and is very weak, but she is getting better every day and I know she will recover.  The doctors still don't know what caused this.  There are lots of mysteries about this illness, but there is one thing I do know.  Our God is an awesome God.  God is our Healer and I KNOW he answers prayers and is still in the miracle business.  I witnessed it with my own eyes.

Why We Were Silent Last Week... (Part I)

I want to tell a story to testify as to God's Goodness to us.  I'll likely get to that in Part II tomorrow.  It all started two Wednesdays ago when my bride had a fever and felt miserable.  Tricia is not one to take medicine.  She always feels like the body can heal itself and that fever is a mechanism that the body uses to fight infection.  The problem that we ran into was that her fever persisted Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  On Sunday afternoon, I took my wife to our local ER where they ran tests.  The tests all came out negative and they informed us that it was likely a virus and it should be at the tail end of the illness.

Well, by Wednesday, things weren't better.  Still running fever.  Still feeling lousy. She went to our local doctor Wednesday at noon and he promptly admitted her to the local hospital.  Many tests were run.  One thing that was concerning was a rash, coupled with high fever, coupled with some odd cells being produced by Tricia's bone marrow.  Our doctor ran a test to check for leukemia.

On Friday at noon, the fever was still there and suddenly, she was having difficulty breathing and a chest x-ray showed a build-up of inflammation in here lungs.  Our doctor told us that this new development necessitated the transport of Tricia to the ICU of a hospital in Lake Charles within the hour since the hospital had a pulmonologist and an infectious disease department. 

We got settled in at the ICU and the doctors interviewed Tricia and I, trying to get down to the bottom of the fever.  They ran test after test.   They began treating Tricia with IVs of a number of different antibiotics; however, the fever never went away and actually things began to worsen.  I began getting "the look" from doctors & nurses that my wife was a "very sick lady."

Tomorrow I'll pick back up where I left off today.  By the way, the story gets better.  Tune in tomorrow.

We'll Be Back Again Next Week

I have quite a story to tell...

The Poison Apple?

From the Smithsonian magazine article entitled "Why the Tomato was feared in Europe for 200 Years:

In the late 1700s, a large percentage of Europeans feared the tomato.
A nickname for the fruit was the “poison apple” because it was thought that aristocrats got sick and died after eating them, but the truth of the matter was that wealthy Europeans used pewter plates, which were high in lead content. Because tomatoes are so high in acidity, when placed on this particular tableware, the fruit would leach lead from the plate, resulting in many deaths from lead poisoning. No one made this connection between plate and poison at the time; the tomato was picked as the culprit. 

Okay, I don't think tomaotes are poisonous.  We grow a bunch of them.  This year we had a really nice crop of various varieties of heirloom tomatoes.  We made all sorts of stuff with them and have them preserved in several different ways.

But, this year is another year that I tried to eat a raw sliced fresh homegrown tomato with salt and pepper... and I just can't do it.  I don't like raw tomatoes.  I have tried every single year to develop a taste for them, but I can't.  It is a sacrilege, I know.

I can eat them cooked, in pico de gallo, salsa, ketchup, but just now raw tomatoes by themselves.  This past week we made BLTs.  Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwiches with a little homemade herbed chevre (goat cheese) on top.  Wow! Delicious.

But in all fairness, it is not REALLY a raw tomato I'm eating.  It is a raw tomato disguised with flavors of bacon, swiss cheese, lettuce, and goat cheese.

If you notice, I'm not eating off of a pewter plate, so I wasn't poisoned by the tomatoes. Anyway, I'll mark 2017 off the list.  I'll try to eat plain raw tomatoes by themselves in 2018.  Perhaps I will develop a taste for them next year.

Hard Soil

In my childhood, my Dad planted soybeans.  I can remember cultivating the soybeans before they "shaded out" to keep weeds out of them.  On the rich land behind the old homeplace, the soybeans would grow tall.  Taller than I was at the time and I remembered running down the rows.  It was like a maze.  Once the soybeans shaded out, and provided that army worms didn't infest the crop, soybeans were an easy crop to grow.  Much easier than rice.

In the month of May, when the soil moisture was just right, you would hook up the drill to the John Deere 4630, inoculate the soybeans and begin planting, following close behind the vibre shank and packer that was preparing a perfect seedbed. From daylight to dark you would plant and then pull out of the beautiful field proud of the work you had done.

Immediately, we'd move into the field with the old John Deere 4020 with a ditcher or the power ditcher.  It is very important to ditch out the field.  Soybeans are fickle. When thunderclouds roll in and the rains begin to fall on the freshly planted soybeans that were just beginning to grow, well...

Image Credit

The crop needed rain, but this was too much of a good thing.  Puddles of water is what you have on your crop.  It is imperative to get the water off.  If the sun comes out and your soybeans are standing in water, they will scald, turn yellow and die. No one wants to re-plant soybeans. There is one thing you can do to save them. We called it "puddling." Puddling was not a pleasant job.  You would get dropped off on one end of a field that ranged between 20 and 120 acres.  Your job was to walk the entire field with a shovel and dig long ditches that connected puddles to the nearest ditch made earlier with the ditching tractor, thereby draining the puddles into the ditches where it would flow out of the field and your soybeans would be saved.  As bad as the job was, I learned several things:

1. Persevere to the end.  The water you'd see ahead of you was no mirage.  It was water that needed to come off the land and it was up to you and your shovel.  You kept digging until the job was done.

2. It was doggone hot.  You had better be prepared and be hydrated before you started, because it was going to be a while before you got to the end of the field where a cold Dr. Pepper would be waiting for you.

3. Keep your eyes open.  There were always treasures to be found in the field like old porcelain marbles and antique bottles that were unearthed by the plows.

4. Appreciate progress.  Later, people frustrated at the back-breaking labor involved in "puddling", invented steel wheels to be put on four-wheelers or tractors where you'd simply drive through the puddles and all the water would sink into the tracks made by the steel wheels and the tracks would lead the water to the ditches.  This made puddling a MUCH easier job.  As they say, "Necessity is the mother of invention."

There was another issue with soybeans.  If it rained on soybeans that hadn't broken the ground (sprouted) yet, and the sun came out, you had big problems.  The soil would make a hard crust on it and the soybeans would not be able to penetrate the soil.  Many sprouts would break off.

Image Credit

There was an implement called a Rotary Hoe that we'd hook up behind the tractor. I found a photo of one below:

Image Credit

The rotary hoe chipped off the top layer of soil so that the soybeans could pop right up. Yes, you sacrificed some of the crop by using this implement as some soybeans would inevitably be killed, but you would be able to save most of the crop.  It was always a joy to see the soybeans "marking the rows," knowing that you had a stand of soybeans and wouldn't have to replant.

My youngest son is about to start working at my Dad's farm.  I want him to understand hard work and the feeling of gratification for putting in an honest day's work and seeing that your labor meant something.  Farming is hard work,indeed, but working together toward a common goal is a beautiful thing.  It reminds me of some lyrics to a folk song by Nanci Griffith called Trouble in The Fields:

You'll be the mule I'll be the plow

Come harvest time we'll work it out

There's still a lot of love, here in these troubled fields

Memories of Childhood Doctor Visits

I can remember a couple of things about early visits to the doctor.  First, I hated going because of the allergy shots that I would receive there.  They hurt.  That and the doctor's office had a strong medicinal smell.  I didn't like going there.  Not at all.

There was one thing I remember, though, that I sort of liked.  Every doctor's office seemed to have a subscription to Highlights Magazine.  I would quickly thumb through the magazine until I found my favorite part - Goofus and Gallant.

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Even though my parents did their best to teach us right from wrong, the Goofus and Gallant cartoon panel provided additional reinforcement to the idea that it was a good thing to behave yourself.  As the example above illustrates, Goofus is breaking bottles against trees while Gallant is disposing his waste in a trash can. Undoubtedly, some innocent kid came along and cut his foot open on Goofus' broken glass.  It seems like a simple concept, but Goofus never got it.  He was always doing the wrong thing.  Goofus' Dad needed to give him a good spanking, but of course that is not looked upon favorably these days.

I get the idea that Goofus is probably serving hard time in a federal penitentiary somewhere and Gallant is a quiet, successful businessman that serves on the city council. Gallant will be flying the flag tomorrow and celebrating Independence Day. Goofus has squandered his freedom and is a slave to his rebellious nature that constantly gets him in trouble.

In the doctor's office, you could always check into the latest Highlights to see what Goofus and Gallant were up to and, more importantly, to see if you were behaving more like Goofus or more like Gallant.  Gallant was polite, caring, giving, compassionate, and courteous.  No one is perfect.  We all have a little "Goofus" in us from time to time. Looking back, I think what I learned from Highlights Magazine is that there are a lot of jerks like Goofus running around these days, (in fact, at times it seems that the Goofus' outnumber the Gallants) but regardless, it is always best to try to act like Gallant.  That was the Highlight of painful trips to the doctor.

Making Fermented Pickles

Like long, green, coiled snakes, our Soyu Long Cucumbers fill our garden bucket. Many get eaten fresh.  Some get turned into tzatziki.  We make pickles with others. Tricia does not like pickles.  Except for fermented pickles made like I'm about to show you.  She loves these and today, we are going to make a 1/2 gallon container of them.  Of course you need fresh cucumbers.  Today we'll use the Soyu Long ones, but we also use Boston Pickling Cucumbers as well.

When we make cheese or kefir, we have whey left over.  We keep whey in the fridge and it's a good thing as the recipe calls for 8 Tablespoons whey and 2 Tablespoons salt.  We add those ingredients to the jar.

Then we slice up the cucumbers and add enough to the jar to fill it up.  You can add some fresh or dried dill, if you wish.

Then, you simply add purified water to fill the jar.

Let this sit at room temperature in the "brine" for 24 hours and then move it into the refrigerator.  They are tangy and crisp.

As I stated Tricia loves them.  Since making this jar, it is already gone and I made up another batch for her today.  Not only are these good tasting, but the lacto-fermented pickles are good for you.