This Time of year in the Garden

This time of year in the garden things are slow, but will be picking up soon.  This weekend, if, and that is a big "if," things dry up just a little bit, I will be planting all of my tomato seedlings into the garden rows.  Additionally, if things are dry enough, I will transplant all of my broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and cabbage seedlings as well.

We are still picking okra and some peppers everyday, along with some eggplant, but as soon as the heat lets up just a tad, the peppers' production will get better.  The sweet potato crop looks to be a bumper crop and we will be harvesting in another month, I figure.  Here is a colander of various bell peppers and okra, both the clemson spineless and burgundy varieties.  We have been eating LOTS of okra!

You can see some of the darned stink bugs on the peppers and okra.  They give us fits!

During the lull that the garden is in, I wanted to show you something we grow that you can't eat. Here is a trellis of luffa and birdhouse gourds:

As I pull back some of the large leaves so you can see the fruit, a brilliant ray of sun shines through. I have a bunch of seeds for both luffa gourds and bird house gourds.  If anyone is interested, I'll gladly share.  These things make copious amounts of seeds.

Here is a birdhouse gourd on the same trellis.  I liked the loooong neck of this one and thought it would make a nice bird house, but a marauding rat ate it before I could dry it.  I got vengeance on the rat and you can read about his demise HERE.  There is still time for other ones to mature for bird house making.

These luffas are about the right age to be converted into bath sponges.  They are about two feet long. If I get all the seedlings planted this weekend, I'll pick these and skin them so they can dry out. Luffas can actually be eaten when they are less than 4 inches long.  They are in the cucumber family.  I cannot vouch for how they taste as I've never tried them.  I will put that on my list of things to do!

Here is another bird house gourd.  Although it doesn't have the long, skinny neck like the other one did, it will make a fine bird house.

It is kind of boring in the garden right now due to being between seasons and with all the rain.  That will be changing soon and I look forward to it.

Rosie (Soon!)

Here is a nice picture of Rosie, our Jersey milk cow.  This was taken on a nice day. Today the weather (thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Harvey) is not so nice. Lots of mud and rainwater everywhere!

The weather has been pretty bad.  When I neared home this afternoon, there was a tornado that touched down about a mile from the house.  It didn't damage anything as it touched down in the middle of a field.  I changed clothes, put on my rubber boots and headed out to feed the wet chickens, wet goats and wet cows.  The cows didn't even come into the barn.  They were busy eating grass out in the pasture.

The cows tend to enjoy rainy weather as it drops the temperature so that they can partake in their favorite hobby in comfort - eating grass.  It began to rain harder and harder so I didn't walk out to see how the cows were doing.  Tricia asked me when I came inside to eat supper if I had inspected Rosie. "No," I told her, "they didn't come in and the weather was too nasty to go out and see her."  The reason she wanted me to check on her is that Back in this Post we told you about getting the cows palpated.

When our vet came over, he told us that Rosie was bred.  We calculated that she was bred on December 8th and that gives her a due date of September 8th.  Rosie is getting close to having a baby calf.  Wouldn't you know it the weather is miserable out there and tomorrow the weakened storm that has caused so many to the west of us so much misery will be passing directly over us.  I don't want her to calve in the middle of a storm!

Yesterday, I did check on Rosie and I could not see her bags swelling up or other signs like her vulva getting "floppy."  Benjamin doesn't have school tomorrow so I'll have him go check Rosie out.  We always want to be ready in the event that there is any trouble during calving.  Hopefully in just a few days we'll have a new baby on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  As always, were hoping we get a heifer!  We will keep you posted.

Rethinking the Chicken "Arrangement"

When we first got chickens, we had a a small flock of hens that lived in a chicken tractor out in the 3 acre pasture.  I would push the chicken tractor each day to a different spot so that the grass was 'fertilized' in equal fashion.  Of course fire ant mounds proved to be a formidable obstacle.  Sometimes I had to lift the tractor or push around the fire ant mounds.  The tractor had a door on the front of it.  Each morning I would let them out and they would roam on 3 acres.  At night, they would return to the tractor as there were roosts in the tractor and they would sleep on them each night. Sometimes I would close the door to keep them safe from predators, but most of the time I wouldn't.

Then we got more chickens and that meant that we had to build a second tractor, which meant twice the work and twice the time in moving them.  Oh, and twice the fire ant mounds to dodge.  Well, then we got more chickens and we adopted more chickens that people no longer wanted.  (Who can refuse orphan chickens?) Suddenly, our nice plan didn't work.  Our flock no longer fit in the chicken tractors.

A friend donated a hen house that he was no longer using (you can see the hen house in the background of the photo below.  It is the smaller red building.) and the philosophy of our operation changed.  Rather than foraging for food out on 3 acres of pasture, the hens became dependent.  They lazily loafed by the barn waiting for rice and laying pellets we fed them at morning and night.  They roosted in the roosts in the hen house. They stand at the barn gates begging for food and the cows step on them when coming in the barn to get milk.  Some of the injured chickens die, and some, like Jacob, walk with a limp from their encownter.... ahem, encounter with a cow.

Oh, sure, they would venture out in the pasture and forage and eat bugs and worms and frogs, but their default position was hanging out by the barn.  Soon they had scratched all the grass around the barn to resemble a barren wasteland.  They created the same parched, grass-less 'chicken-run' area you see above that we were trying to avoid.  The lack of grass creates mud.  Young tender sprouts of grass have no chance with all the chickens.  There are no roots to hold the soil together and when rains come, a large mud flat looms.  Lots and lots of mud around the barn.  I want to reverse this and return to how things used to be.  It won't happen overnight, but we're making steps:

Step 1: We moved the new chicken tractor that we built out on the pasture.  This will be the hens' new home that will lure (at least some) of the chickens out of the hen house.  If you look closely, you can see a cardboard box leaning against it. What is that?  Well, the box contains is Step 2.

Step 2: We purchased some electric poultry netting from Premier 1 Supplies.  This netting hooks up nicely to my existing electric poly-wire fence by attaching a 'jump wire.'  This netting keeps the goats and cows out of the hen area.  The goats and cows are opportunists that like to eat the chickens feed. The goats are mischievous vandals that would destroy the chicken tractor in three shakes of a billy goat's tail. That means no time at all!  I will move the chicken tractor daily and will move the poultry netting several times a week to rotate the pasture the hens roam on.
 

Step 3:  More than keeping the goats and cows out.  The electrified poultry netting keeps the chickens IN and away from the area where grass is not growing.  I will plant rye grass seed mixed with wheat seed and bermuda or bahia grass seed in the 'grass-less' area.  With the chickens safely within the netting, the young grass will get a head start and perhaps be able to grow and I'll re-introduce grass and eliminate mud from an trouble spot around the barn.

That is the plan.  The chickens, as of this writing, have not bought in to the plan.  I lured the chickens into the netting with feed and got two thirds of them inside.  The next day more than a third of them had flown over or found other ways under, over or around the netting.  I don't give up easily, though. I will try to capture them all in the hen house and clip their wings, READ THE DIRECTIONS THIS TIME about setting up the netting and then set up the netting more securely and try again.  Once I have them all inside the netting, I'll purchase the seed and plant grass. Doing this is not easy, but it is the right thing to do and will eliminate erosion, mud, the health of the animals and soil fertility out on the pasture.

Remembering the Harvest

Sometimes with pressures of work weighing heavy, at lunch I take a drive away from the industrial area in which I work.  I'll put some bluegrass music on and head east on Highway 90.  It only takes about 8 minutes to get me out of the hustle and bustle of traffic and I find myself between the small towns of Scott and Duson.  I turn south and drive slowly down the road, overlooking ripening rice fields and acres of peace and contentment.  No phones ring here.  No emails beg for answers. A solitary water tower and cell phone tower looms in the distance - a reminder that civilization is out there, but at arms length.

At least here, for the time being, the soil has not yielded to a surveyors instrument and flag, marking out yet another subdivision with a pastoral-sounding name like Live Oak Estates while transforming verdant countryside into grey concrete expanses adorned with flattened fast food soft drink cups and Wal Mart bags blowing across the landscape.

I stop my car and roll down the window and breathe in the smell of ripening grain. It is hot, oppressively hot and humid.  The air is thick.  I am transported back in time to when I farmed. During harvest-time, mornings were spent greasing up the grease fittings on every moving part there was on the combines and tractors. Farming taught me to keep things maintained and to be observant of the condition of your equipment.  We looked over the equipment for now is the time to get parts if you need them.  It is time to fill up your water cooler with ice and make sure you have a good inventory of sunflower seeds to snack on.  The sandwiches and chips and cookies would have been packed the night before in the lunch box.  Around 11 am the dew burns off the rice and it is time to harvest!

The field below is silent, except for the sound that the cattle egret's wings make as he jumps up and takes flight.  Although it is silent now, at 11 am, the throttle of the combine would be moved from 'turtle' to 'rabbit' and the pick up reel begins welcoming the "amber waves of grain" into the throat of the combine.  The hopper begins filling with a river of rice that doesn't stop flowing until quitting time.

I ran the carts sometimes.  The tractor driver running the cart had to keep a close eye out for the combine.  When the unload auger of the combine moved outward, it was time to unload and the cart driver had to be there.  I also ran the trucks.  The truck driver had mostly a lazy job.  I sat under the shade of the bed of the truck and read Tom Clancy and John Grisham novels.  I did push-ups and sit-ups.  I cleaned my fingernails with my pocketknife and I thought (what I thought were) great thoughts, passing the time as I watched the heatwaves dance across the field.  When I heard the unload auger of the combine slow, I prepared myself, getting up and getting a shovel and climbing atop the truck, I would spread the rice so that none would fall out of the truck as I drove the old truck down pothole-filled dirt roads as great billows of dust sprang up behind me.

I would record the number of barrels of rice in each truck on a log that I kept to track crop yield in each field.  Then I would drive the truck to the bins, back the truck up to the pit and dump the rice into the pit where an auger would deliver the rice up and into the bins.  Of course first the pit had to be emptied of water that seeped into the pit along with the occasional frog or snake.  We used a scoop made with an antifreeze jug that had been cut in half with a pocketknife.  I remember the water in the pit smelled sour as the rice fermenting in the summer heat made a powerful aroma and whose smell it was hard to get out of your hands or clothes when you got the water on you.

At the end of the day, the work wasn't over.  The rice inside the bins made a cone that had to be leveled to ensure even drying.  We climbed into the super-heated bins with shovels and began spreading the bins.  The object was to make the cone flat, with an indentation in the middle.  We worked and worked, our backs glistening with sweat, our muscles aching, our eyes burning with dust. When we finally emerged from the bin, the 90+ degree heat outside seemed cool and comforting compared to the oven we had just come from.  We sat on top of the bins, exhausted, but proud of our work.  We blew black boogers out of our noses from all the dust we inhaled in the bins and tried not to think about what got into our lungs.

We climbed down the ladder.  Right behind the bins was a pond.  We would run and jump in the pond and cool off.  Perch nibbled at our toes and we would dive down and feel the cool clay mud.  It had been a long, hot day.  It was hard work, but it was honest work and you felt good about what you had achieved.

As I drive home and see the harvest taking place, all those memories come flooding back to me.  The sights, the smells, the sounds remind me of simpler times.  A big part of me is empty because I couldn't make it farming.  Although we do live on a working farm of sorts, I a big part of me is empty because my kids didn't get to have the same experiences of growing up like I did close to the land.

As a society, we devalued farming as an occupation and encouraged the best students to leave the farm for “better” jobs in the city. We emptied America’s rural counties in order to supply workers to urban factories. To put it bluntly, we now need to reverse course. We need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across America — not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a matter of national security.  –Excerpt from Farmer in Chief, written by Michael Pollan, published in the New York Times Magazine on October 12, 2008.

Raising Chickens (And Children)

Well, just the other day our Rhode Island Red pullets in the chicken tractor began laying their first eggs.  The first eggs that the pullets lay are small.  We call them pullet bullets.  They quickly get larger though.  We generally keep the pullets confined in the chicken tractor until they lay their first eggs and then we set them free.  The reason we do that is for their protection.  While they are small, they are especially vulnerable to predators.  We try to be good stewards and protect them from harm.

Pullet Bullet

My practice is to get into the chicken tractor, catch them one by one, and clip their wings.  The birds get VERY nervous when I get in the tractor with them.  They start running around the inside of the tractor like... well, chickens with their heads cut off.  Chickens aren't the smartest of creatures and in their panic they do crazy things like this one did:  She flew up and got her head caught between the wire fencing and the 2x4 frame.  She just hung there, probably embarrassed at her predicament.

And then there is this one who was so freaked out, she somehow got her wing caught on the ceiling of the chicken tractor.  She hung there like a wind chime, swinging in the breeze.  I had to climb in the tractor and rescue both of them.

They were happy about me getting them out of their awkward positions, but I had other plans in store for them before I released them.  Armed with a pair of clippers, I clipped one of their wings.  With one wing clipped, they are off balance and cannot fly very well.  Chickens aren't adept fliers anyway, but doing this really keeps them grounded and discourages even 3 foot high flights that could take them over the fence and into harm's way with dogs and raccoons and possums.

Tonight at Wednesday night services at our church, the message came from Colossians 3:21:

Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.

The teaching point was that as parents, we are to provide our kids with love, with limits, and with leadership.  We must be a positive example to them and not be so negative that our kids give up and stop trying.  I was thinking about the second point about setting limits and how it was similar to clipping the wings of the chicken.

You see, chickens don't like to have their wings clipped.  It is uncomfortable.  I don't much like to do it because of all the drama, squawking, and protesting of the the birds.  However, I'm doing it for the chickens' own good.  The chicken with unclipped wings will fly over the perimeter fence and become a meal for a dog, raccoon, or possum.  I am trying to prevent that and protect them.

It is sort of a paradox, if you think about it.  They are getting their freedom.  They'll be out of the chicken tractor and can roam all over the 3 acre pasture.  Freedom comes with some limits, though. They cannot fly over the fence and I'm setting limits to discourage that or make it harder for them to do so.  While they don't see it, it is for their own good.

Clipped wings for a child can be a curfew, limitations on where they can go or what they are allowed to do.  It isn't fun for a parent to set limits, especially when "all the other kids get to do it."  However, by setting limits and providing leadership, we show that we truly do love our kids.

While the hen in the photo above is squawking and fighting me, she'll live a happy life, protected and healthy.  The hen that got away from me before I could clip her wings flew over the fence.  It took me 30 minutes to catch her and throw her back over the fence and to safety.  Her stubborn ways could have cost her her very life. So it is with child-raising, too.

Parenting is the hardest thing I've ever done and I'm afraid that I have made mistakes in being too harsh at some times and too easy in others.  It is a fine line you walk down, providing a balance of encouragement and discipline, freedom with limits, and unconditional love.  In raising chickens or raising children, it is important to set limits to protect those under our watchcare.

Seed Starts for the Fall Garden

Last year I got the fall garden off to a late start.  This year, while still a little late, I'm earlier than last year so that is a plus.  The eight different varieties of heirloom tomatoes were all planted by seed on July 27th.  We've taken good care of them and even brought them on vacation with us.  Here are the seedlings enjoying the balcony overlooking the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

And here are some of them a few weeks later.  Since the photo above, I've re-potted them in coffee cups and they've grown by leaps and bounds.  I was going to transplant them into the ground this weekend, but in listening to weather reports, they are predicting > 20 inches of rainfall for our area due to Tropical Storm Harvey.  I don't think it is a good idea to put the tomatoes in the ground yet.

• In checking my vegetable planting guide, I noticed it was time to get my cole crops planted.  I filled some seed pots with seed started mix and planted several different types of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and brussels sprouts.  I'll let them grow out for a bit on the back patio and then transplant them into larger containers before putting them in the ground.

It doesn't take long in these tropical conditions for the seeds in the moistened medium to sprout.

I leave them under the patio as I don't want them to dry out and die in the summer sun.  I have to move them day by day as they get long and leggy reaching for the sun.

Over the next month, we'll really kick things into gear getting the fall garden worked up and in shape. One change is this: we won't be planting a fall crop of potatoes as our spring crop was such a bumper crop, we still have a large inventory of potatoes put away.  We'll be harvesting sweet potatoes in the next month or so, and if the vines are any indication of the success of the crop beneath the soil, we'll have a nice inventory of sweet potatoes as well.  We'll keep posting on the fall garden progress.

An Epitath For A Rat

One of the reasons that I gave up on having an above-ground compost pile and resorted to trench composting is the rat problem.  We live in the country and are surrounded by woods and fields and so they are everywhere.  I don't want to put out poison as I don't want our chickens getting into it by mistake.  Our two rat-killers (cats) are still too young to put a dent in the rat population, but I see that changing soon.

Aside from just being nasty critters, carrying disease and whatnot, rats are beginning to cause problems in our garden.  We didn't get a single cantaloupe this year.  The rats devoured them all!  You can see below how they ate up this butternut squash before I could harvest it.  Of all things - eating our butternut squash!  Of course you know, this means war...

Although we don't eat the birdhouse gourds, they also fell prey to rats as well.  This birdhouse gourd won't be converted into a birdhouse thanks to those pesky rats. Okay, so enough of this!

I set out 3 predator cage traps of all different sizes in the garden baited with the leftovers of our catfish courtbouillion supper, but caught nothing.  I figured the 'fishy' smell would attract them.  It did not.  I don't give up that easily, however. The next night I baited the traps with some Ol' Roy dog food.  Bingo!  Got Em!  The dog food that Sam Walton fed to his dog, Roy, proved to be the rat's un-doing.

He (or she) looked up at me with begging eyes, hoping that I would show some sympathy or compassion.  Not a chance.  This guy, or some of his family members, have wreaked havoc in the garden this year.  For that crime, he'll pay with his life.

It is hard to get perspective, but this is a big old rat.  He measured 16 inches long from nose to end of tail.

To the victor goes the spoils.  This time, I was the victor and the spoils were that the rat became compost material that is buried beneath the okra rows.  Hopefully, I'll catch many more, eradicating the rat population and giving me free organic fertilizer.  I took off my boutonniere and tossed it in the hole.

I was so moved by the burial of the rat, I wrote a eulogy for him:

Here lies the rat that came out of the woods to eat our butternut squash,

He didn't expect a varmint trap that gave him the kibosh,

I call him 'he,' but I'm not sure if 'he' was a girl or a boy,

His final meal was a delectable treat of dog food named 'Ol Roy.

I'll bait the traps again and again until I catch them all.

For we have more produce coming in from our garden for the fall.

Ashes to ashes, Dust to Dust - the rat gets buried in the ground,

The same fate waits for all the other rats that choose to come around.

What Does the Beach Have to Teach?

A couple of weekends ago, we got away for a quick beach vacation two states over from us.  We didn't do anything fancy or luxurious.  We mainly relaxed and enjoyed ourselves away from responsibilities of work as well as life's normal routines. Everyone needs to get away and recharge the batteries for a bit.

Simplicity.  We talk a lot about it back on our little farm, and we talked about it on vacation. Relaxation doesn't have to come with a huge price tag or an agenda full of activities.  To the contrary, all we needed was sand, sounds of the surf, shade from the sun, and a book or two.  The waves continually move forward, swelling...

And then they break, crashing on the shore with a resounding crash that can be heard all the way up to the balcony of our lodging.  Powerful, yet peaceful.

We walked along the beach and picked up a few seashells that were washed up.

Mostly, however, the power of the forces of the waves is displayed by the bits of pulverized shell that accumulate on the beach.

It is hard to look at the expanse of the sea and continuous wave action and ignore the indisputable fact that this bears the signature of the Creator.  In addition to relaxation, the beach has a lot to teach us if we take time to listen.  As Benjamin and I walked along the beach, viewing the waves rushing up on the beach before retreating back, I thought of the following verse:

Job 38:11  New King James Version (NKJV)

When I said, ‘This far you may come, but no farther,

And here your proud waves must stop!’

It also brought to mind a favorite song of mine by Nicole C. Mullen, entitled, "I Know My Redeemer Lives."  Here are the lyrics to that song:

Who taught the sun where to stand in the morning?

And who told the ocean you can only come this far?

And who showed the moon where to hide 'til evening?

Whose words alone can catch a falling star?

Well, I know my Redeemer lives

I know my Redeemer lives

All of creation testifies

This life within me cries

I know my Redeemer lives, yeah

The very same God that spins things in orbit

Runs to the weary, the worn and the weak

And the same gentle hands that hold me when I'm broken

They conquered death to bring me victory

Now I know my Redeemer lives

I know my Redeemer lives

Let all creation testify

Let this life within me cry

I know my Redeemer, He lives

To take away my shame

And He lives forever, I'll proclaim

That the payment for my sin

Was the precious life He gave

But now He's alive and there's an empty grave

Relaxing, slowing down the pace, observing nature, gives us an opportunity to see His handiwork and reflect on verses of Scripture like Romans 1:20 that seem to come alive before our very eyes:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

I hope you had a great Lord's Day.

Storing up

35 And let them gather all the food of those good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities.

36 And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine.  -Genesis 41

There is such wisdom in God's Word.  I was reading tonight about Pharaoh having a dream and he called Joseph to interpret it.  Joseph told him that a great famine was coming in the land and he told him to prepare for it.  He didn't only tell him to prepare for it, he told him HOW to prepare for it.

We don't watch a lot of TV so I'm not sure it is still popular, but in the past there were preppers who were storing food and supplies for any of a number of apocalyptic scenarios.  We don't consider ourselves preppers and we don't live in fear of doomsday-like events, but it is wise to have food preserved in your pantry. We live on the Gulf coast and hurricanes and bad weather comes frequently, knocking out power.  It is good to have your harvest stored should you ever need it.

Our humble pantry couldn't sustain us for long.  We don't have anywhere near the provisions that Joseph advised Pharaoh to store.  It would feed us for a week or two, perhaps.  As I look at it, it is a colorful reminder of past harvests.  Some years our tomato crop fails and we put up none.  Other years we have stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, and salsa.  After crop failure, the pantry can be a confidence builder. "We had success before, and we'll have it again next year!"

It is good to take Joseph's wise advice for livestock, too.  There are dry summers in which the grass doesn't grow.  Because we don't feed our milk cows grain, heat stressed pasture results in milk cows with ribs showing!  For that reason we have a "pantry" full of hay stored away as insurance should the grass not grow.

Like canned vegetables, the hay will keep for a while and can be rolled out to the cows as they need it.

Preparing for tomorrow often involves more than saving up things.  Wendell Berry says it best:

“All we can do to prepare rightly for tomorrow is to do the right thing today.”
— Wendell Berry

Gentle On My Mind

I was saddened to learn of the passing of Glen Campbell after a battle with Alzheimer's. What a country music giant. He had such a pure voice and amazing guitar skills and listening to his music brings me back to my childhood.  One of the last, if not the last, song he recorded was, "I'm Not Gonna Miss You."  It is about Alzheimer's and is extremely touching.  You can click the arrow and watch the video below and if you don't tear up, you are a lot tougher man than I:

In case you can't watch the video, here are the lyrics:

I'm still here, but yet I'm gone

I don't play guitar or sing my songs

They never defined who I am

The man that loves you 'til the end

You're the last person I will love

You're the last face I will recall

And best of all, I'm not gonna miss you

Not gonna miss you

I'm never gonna hold you like I did

Or say I love you to the kids

You're never gonna see it in my eyes

It's not gonna hurt me when you cry

I'm never gonna know what you go through

All the things I say or do

All the hurt and all the pain

One thing selfishly remains

I'm not gonna miss you

I'm not gonna miss you

What a beautiful, but absolutely heart-breaking song.  I can't stay there.  Let me change the subject...

I don't know if you ever do this, but I'll pull up You tube and go down a "rabbit hole."  I'll pull up an old song and play it and then similar songs appear on the right side of the screen.  I'll click one of those and listen to it and then another and another and before you know it, I'm looking at the clock and it is after midnight and I have work in the morning!

In doing so with Glen Campbell songs, it is like getting into a time machine.  Playing "Gentle on my Mind," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Southern Nights," "Country Boy," brings me way back.  When I play "Rhinestone Cowboy," it reminds me of family vacations in the back of the station wagon with the whole family singing every single word to the top of our lungs as we barreled down the highway.  I can remember singing "You Light Up My Life," by Debbie Boone too.  Wow, that must have sounded bad!!

So as I think of that old music, it reminds me of HOW we used to listen to music, too.  My parents had an old console stereo, pretty similar to the one below. The top would slide back and forth and I can remember getting my fingers smashed in those sliding doors.

If you opened it, it had a stereo and a record player in it that played the big 78 RPM vinyl records.  It looked sort of like the one below on the inside, except for the fact that the area on the right was for storing all the 78 vinyl records.  If I recall, Mom and Dad had Burt Bacharach, Barbara Streisand, Herb Alpert, and the Tijuana Brass Band, The Soundtrack to "The Graduate," etc.

Whoa!  Would you look at that.  It is 11:49 pm and I have work in the morning.  I gotta sign off...  Music, and life, seemed much more pure back then.  In many ways I know it wasn't, but the memories are truly Gentle on My Mind.  RIP Glen.

Jambalaya, Crawfish Pie, File' Gumbo

I drove home after work and into the driveway to a downpour of rain.  More rain. Unbearably muggy and mosquitoes swarming like nothing you've ever seen.  Mud knee deep by the barn.  Gardening or working outside with the animals is out today. Bummer!

As I opened the back door and entered the house, a pleasing aroma lifted my spirits a bit. Tricia was humming, "Jambalaya, Crawfish Pie, File' Gumbo..."  Yep, you guessed it.  She made Crawfish Pie with the crawfish tail meat leftover from our crawfish boil that I blogged about BACK IN THIS POST.l

At the end of Russ' Crawfish Boil, we peeled the remaining crawfish tail meat that we couldn't eat and froze it.  Tricia made a delicious crawfish pie with a homemade crust. The recipe she used didn't call for a top crust, but she added it, knowing my preference.

Normally, I like to get in and change out of my work clothes, put on some comfortable "play" clothes and head out to do chores and garden or whatever else I find to do prior to coming in to eat supper.  Today, however, we ate early!  I couldn't wait to serve a plate (and then another and another!)

Here is a zoomed in photo where you can make out some of the crawfish tails if you look closely.  It was seasoned to perfection and the crust was flaky and delicious.

Normally, I complain a bit when I get rained out.  Not today.  Not with a hot crawfish pie coming out of the oven!

Beaches or Mountains?

For family vacations we usually choose between beaches and mountains.  We love them both.  There's no mountains anywhere near here and our beaches are, well, pretty much mud.  After several mountain vacations full of hiking and sightseeing, this year we chose a beach vacation.

We brought food from home, namely fresh eggs that our girls lay, and Tricia started our day with a delicious omelet stuffed with tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and peppers!  My goodness, what a way to start a day off!  Look at how dark yellow those eggs are.  That tells you that the hens that laid them are out in the grass and not locked up in a cage.  It also tells you that the eggs are tasty AND healthy.

After a big breakfast, we set up the tent in the sugar white sand, put on sunscreen and relaxed.  All Day Long!  Oh every once in a while I would get up and wade out a hundred yards and float in the surf, dive for sand dollars, and ride waves.  I also read a couple of books.  It was relaxing and rejuvenating, to be sure.

Despite forecasts of rain, the rainfall stayed offshore and didn't really threaten us at all. While swimming out in the deep water, Benjamin and I saw a dolphin jump out of the water right near us.  Pretty cool.

The surf crashing on the shore is a very peaceful sound in my opinion.  We woke to the noise of the waves and could hear it all night long from our balcony.  The waves keep coming and coming...

On the morning of our last day there, Benjamin and I walked way down the beach as we dodged the encroaching waves.  I may post a few thoughts about this later on. Brown pelicans flew over us, seagulls ran to and fro and little crabs skittered across the sand.  It was quiet and beautiful.

And soon, it was time to go home.  The beach and our little farm couldn't be more different.  From looking at sand and not a blade of grass to looking at dirt and fields of grass.  Both are beautiful and peaceful in their own way.  As much as I love getting away, I always love coming back home!

Sonnier's Shed of Snakes

Here is the feed room in our barn. The brown plastic bins on the right contain, beginning with the first one, Dairy Ration for the cows and goats.  The middle bin has Laying Pellets for the hens and the last bin contains rice for the chickens.  The black bin in the back left contains Alfalfa "mulch" for the cows and the yellow bins in front of it contain extra storage for Laying Pellets.  The feed room is not really neat and orderly and needs to be cleaned up and organized.  Of course that will take place when it is about 30 degrees cooler.

Yesterday as I was pouring Laying pellets into the yellow bins, I moved the top one out of the way to begin pouring into the bottom one.  As I moved them, I was surprised by an unwelcome guest.

It was a long chicken snake.  The official name is Rat Snake. They aren't really dangerous, but they get so cotton-pickin' big, they scare you.  I have a buddy who will not kill them. He says they are "heat-seeking missiles" that destroy rats in his barn.  That may be the case in his barn, but in mine, the chicken snakes are lazy. Rather than seeking out and destroying rats, they would much rather destroy our eggs, since eggs don't move!

Because of their penchant for egg-eating, our rat snakes must go.  We had seen a reduction in our egg production and now I know why!  Doggone snakes! Fortunately I had a stick that I was able to beat the snake with until he was dead.  I killed him and threw him outside the door of the feed room on the barn floor.  The old boy was caught red-handed. Can you see TWO EGGS in his belly?  See the bulges right by my foot?

Remember back in high school biology class when you had to dissect worms or fetal pigs? Let's dissect this snake and retrieve the eggs!  I went back into the feed room to get a knife to perform the surgery with and wouldn't you know it, I got into a skirmish with a second snake!  This one put up quite a fight, striking at me, but he finally got the business-end of my stick and was incapacitated.  This one didn't have any "egg-bulges" in him, but he would have if he had gotten the opportunity.

The rat snakes laid side by side are roughly the same size.  Perhaps they were a husband and wife pair.  I'll keep a sharp eye out for their offspring!

It is clear that there are two chicken eggs in the snake's stomach.  What they will do is crawl through a small space, rubbing their side and burst the eggs inside them so that they can digest the contents of the egg.  I tried stomping on the bulges, but the eggs would not burst.  I think I know what is going on here!

To prove my suspicion, we must make an incision in the snake's belly to retrieve the stolen eggs.

Once the snake's belly has been cut in half, I use my foot to squeeze the egg out, revealing an egg that proves my suspicion - A Fake Egg!  It is not real, but ceramic. See the black line around the egg?  That is how I mark the nest eggs so we don't pick them up when gathering eggs.

I squeezed out the second egg and it was another fake egg.  This one is made of wood and is another nest egg.  What are nest eggs?  Well, for us they serve two purposes: We put them in the nesting boxes to encourage the hens to lay.  If they see an "egg" in the box, they'll lay their eggs with the nest egg and not out on the ground or in weird, hard-to-find places.  The second reason is to kill snakes.  If a snake eats the nest eggs, like this one did, he will have a case of constipation that no amount of Raisin Bran can cure and will die. When he finally dies and decomposes, we'll find his carcass and retrieve our fake eggs - only this time, we didn't have to wait for that to happen.  We got our eggs back fast!

With the egg thieves executed, the chickens joined me in dancing around the perpetrators, happy that justice had been served.

My wife was also happy that Sonnier's Shed of Snakes is now snake-less. Hopefully...