The Axe At The Root of The Tree

Sadly, we just finished off the last of our citrus.  The satsumas, grapefruit, navel oranges, and tangerines where fantastic this year.  The weather has been warming up into the 80's and that has sparked a lot of new green growth in the vegetation.  Russ took out his pruning shears and began to tidy up around the blueberry bushes, landscaping and citrus.

While he was at it, I asked him to come take a look at a citrus tree in the side yard.  It has really grown from when we planted it.  Why, it must be 10 feet tall.  There's only one problem.  It has NEVER produced fruit.  Last year I vowed that if it didn't make fruit, I would chop it down.  Russ pointed out its thorns - some of them 2 inches long.  I've gotten snagged by some of these while mowing around the tree.  Not fun!  The tree had grown out from beneath the graft.  This means that the tree was "wild" and growing from the root stock and therefore would never yield fruit.

Look at those thorns!

Time to make good on my vow.  Russ worked with his pruning shears and I worked with a pruning saw to tame this wild tree.  Later I got an axe and chopped it down to ground level so that we could mow over it.

The Citrus Stump (that soon got chopped down to ground level)

We chopped it up into little pieces and stacked it in the wagon and carted it into the backyard.  It was amazing that a fine looking tree was laid to waste in no time at all.  You see, that is the tragedy.  I love shade trees.  Shade trees are valued because of their beauty and the nice shade they provide on sunny days.  Fruit trees, on the other hand, are valued for their fruit.  If you are a fruit tree, by golly, you had better bear fruit - or else.

Note the new spring growth on the doomed tree.  

The tree that was putting on new spring growth suddenly found itself chopped down and thrown into a fire that we built in our fire pit.  Before the day was done, the tree would be converted into ashes.

Thrown into the Fire

A westerly wind arose, heightening the flames as they consumed the tree.  Branches, thorns and green growth fell victim to the insatiable appetite of the flames.

As I watched the fire, I thought about this verse in the Bible and the clear illustration it gave:

And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.  Luke 3:9

John the Baptist was calling on the Jews to turn from their sins and repent.  That same call of repentance echoes to us today.  Believe, turn to Him, bear good fruit!  If we don't change our ways, discipline and judgment is coming.   

Every Year The Carrot Crop Has Gotten Better and Better...

This year will prove to be the exception.  The crop was miserable.  Let me correct that - the weather was miserable and that translated into a poor harvest.  We had lower than normal temperatures that stayed below freezing for days and days.  Once it finally warmed up a little, the rains started.  And they didn't stop!  The ground has been muddy and saturated for weeks with no drying in sight.

I remembered the carrots and decided I would go and dig them up, if there were any left.  The first thing I noticed was there was no carrot greens.  Usually the carrot tops are lush and healthy and green.  The extended time that we were well under freezing temperatures killed off all of the greens.  That is okay, though.  The ground will preserve the carrots - if the ground is not wet and muddy.

Russ and Benjamin and I were joined by a neighbor kid and we began digging.  A carrot crop that looked so promising two months ago, sure disappointed.

Digging up the carrot rows

The carrots that were not rotten in the ground were small and stunted.  I would assume that without any carrot tops left, their growing days are over.  We just dug them all up, no matter how small.  Maybe I'll call them "fingerling carrots."

I threw them in a 5 gallon bucket filled with rainwater to wash them off.  Swirling the water around and swishing the carrots around in the bucket removes all the mud from the carrot roots.  I'll pour the water back in the garden as I don't want to remove any topsoil at all from the garden. 

I planted Danvers Carrots (normal orange), Cosmic Purple carrots, and Atomic Red carrots.  They all taste the same to me, but the colors are interesting.  The colors fade once cooked, but they look nice raw.

And this was it!  The entire 2017 carrot crop.  Sad isn't it?  I guess it could have been worse.  We could have harvested none.

We don't let crop failure get us down.  We will keep trying.  We will plant them again next year.  Sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate, but most of the time it does.  Come to think of it, I may even plant some this spring. 

I think we still have a couple of quarts of cut up carrots in the freezer from last year's crop.  Next year's crop will be better.

"Never let success go to your head.  Never let failure go to your heart."  - Anonymous

An Experiment in Killing/Controlling Fire Ants

I despise fire ants.  Their mounds pop up everywhere.  When it rains, they seek high ground and float to new locations.  They decide to make their home in a round bale of hay and when you attempt to move it, they suddenly are all over you, biting/stinging or whatever it is they do.  I'm constantly searching for ways to kill them.  I've used gasoline as well as boiling water and innumerable chemicals on their mounds and take delight in seeing their dead carcasses atop the mound.

There are times, however, that you can't pull out the big guns to kill them.  The crafty buggers decide to move into the garden.  I don't want to use chemicals in the garden as they will end up in my family's food supply.  Boiling water would kill the plants in the garden.  We tried grits.  It didn't work.  We tried coffee grounds.  It works, but only causes them to MOVE and not die.  What else can I do?

Well, I found out that there is a recipe for fire ant killer that uses citrus oil.  I read that d-limonene is a substance that is in the citrus oil that resides in citrus rinds.  Here's something that we can try!  We had tons of citrus, so we didn't throw any of the rinds away.  We froze them, so we can use them as we need them.  Let's make a batch.  We half-way filled a 2 gallon bucket with citrus rinds.

Then we filled the bucket with water.

I added a tablespoon of dishwashing liquid.

Then we put the bucket aside for a week and let things happen.  After a week it is kind of nasty...  I'm assuming it is ready.

I strain out the rinds and here is our super-dooper, orange rind infused, fire ant citrus cocktail.

I walked out to the garden and just as I suspected, a colony of fire ants has taken up residence underneath the canopy of our Irish potatoes. 

They think they are being sneaky, but I have found them.  I kick the top of the mound off to make them good and mad.  It is time.

I poured the entire concoction on top of the mound of enraged ants.  Then I pour the orange rinds on for good measure.  "Orange" you sad you moved into the Irish Potato row, fire ants?

The next day I wanted to check in on the ants.  I moved the orange rinds out of the way to inspect the fire ant mound beneath them.  The tunnels are empty.  There is not a single ant in site.  Nothing is moving. 

So does this mean it worked?  I'm going to be honest.  I'm not sure.  The thing that concerns me is that I don't see any dead ants.  I wanted to see a bunch of dead ants underneath the orange peels.  Maybe they just moved?  The positive thing is that they are not there any more.  I am thawing out another bag of orange peels to make another batch.  I'm pleased the ants are gone, but I need the results of another experiment before I am ready to say it works. 

Mount Jeff Davis

“You’re off to Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting,

So… get on your way!”

― Dr. Seuss

On the drive home yesterday, I looked off to the north and grabbed my phone so that I wouldn't miss it.  I wanted to capture the grandeur of the majestic peaks of Mount Jeff Davis, the highest elevation in Jefferson Davis Parish.  It has warmed up in the past few days, so the snow-capped peaks have melted.  Admittedly Mount Jeff Davis may not be granite nor as tall as those mountains you'd find in Rocky Mountain National Park.  Mount Jeff Davis is a recent geological phenomenon and can't compare with the age of the Great Smoky Mountains.  We love our mountain, though, don't we folks?

Our mountain is actually the Jeff Davis Parish landfill.  If you drive closer, you can see heavy machinery working, digging, covering all day long.  You can also see flocks of seagulls scavenging food from the tons of garbage delivered each day.  Sometimes I wonder how we are able to manage all of the garbage we as a society create.  Do you ever think about that?  We live in a rural area.  Our town's population is 12,000 yet we create mountains of trash, literally.

We're living in a disposable age.  If it doesn't work, throw it away and buy another.  It is cheaper to buy a new gadget than fix it.  I can remember being a kid and going with my Dad to the dump.  There was always a guy at the dump who kind of supervised.  He had an "office" that was surrounded by treasures he'd discovered amidst the rubble - things that people had thrown out that still had some use.  I guess folks like that still exist, but with a Dollar Store on every corner, it is often cheaper and easier to just buy a new widget and use it until it breaks and then let its plastic, Made in China parts become a component of Mt. Jeff Davis.

In the past, things were built to last.  There was quality construction and people passed along things to the next generation.  Things weren't quite as disposable back then.  Hand-me-downs were more common.  I consider myself a conservationist and try to reduce, reuse and recycle as best as I can.  We are, after all, called to be stewards of God's creation.  We can't control the litter that people throw out of their car windows, but we can sure do our part in keeping "our neck of the woods" clean.

Image Credit

Upper 70's Today Means Spring is on the Way

The weather has changed on us the past several days with temperatures climbing into the upper 70's.  After transplanting all of the tomatoes and peppers into individual containers, I got the itch to pull the cold frame out of the attic.  I set it up on the back patio and began to move all the plants that had spent the last 45 or so days of their lives under a grow light.  Now they'll spend time under the best grow light - the Sun!

Nothing under the grow light...

Our cold frame is made from some old wooden-framed windows that someone was throwing away to make way for some double-paned, energy efficient ones.  A friend rescued them for me and gave me five of them.  I transformed them into a cold-frame that protects our young plants from the cold and wind while I "harden them off" and transition them to the outdoors.

I purchased four medium sized hinges to connect two windows together and then did the same for the other two.  That way it folds up neatly and can be stacked in the corner when finished using.  One window fits on top.  The hinge allows you to open it from any angle to water the plants.

Here are all of the tomatoes and peppers packed into the cold frame.  You couldn't fit many more plants in there! 

I'll continue to water them and look after them daily and check the weather reports.  Some day a few weeks from now, I'll work up some rows and move them into the garden soil.  Tomorrow I'll probably spray them with some fish emulsion to make them 'green up.'  They have a little yellow tinge to them.  Spring is on its way...

The Thunder from Down Under

The livestock shows are over and it looks like spring is on its way.  We have three cows that are "open," meaning that they are not pregnant and ready to be re-bred.  For Benjamin's senior year of livestock showing, it is important that Clarabelle has calved in advance of the shows next year.  A cow's gestation is roughly the same as a human's - 9 months.

We figured it was time to look around for a registered Jersey bull that would be willing to make a conjugal visit.  I talked to a good friend of ours and he happened to have a new registered Jersey bull all the way from Australia that has a real good bloodline.  Our friend doesn't need the bull for his herd for about 3 months, so he told us he would come drop off the Australian bull...

No rules...  Just right.

The bull at first did not want to leave the trailer.  He was on new turf and seemed a little shy.

But as soon as the bull saw the cows, he boomeranged (get it?  ha ha) himself out of the trailer and began courting immediately.  Daisy, Rosie, and especially Clarabelle seemed apprehensive and not particularly thrilled with his exuberance.  He was like a bull in a china shop.

Sorry, this next pic is a little explicit.  The Aussie bull, in less than 8 minutes after leaving the trailer had already consummated his relationship with Rosie.  The young bulls were unsure of what to make of this lewd and public display of affection. 

Hopefully, Rosie is bred.  One down, two to go.  Somehow, I don't think this bull has to worry about his vitality or virility.  We'll keep him for 2 or 3 months to make sure the cows don't come back in heat, but I think the old boy will get the job done.

Keeping an Eye on Annie

We've kept Annie in her labor and delivery birthing suite (i.e. the barn) for over a week now as we have wanted to keep her out of the miserable weather.  Her due date is somewhere around February 20th.  She's been warm and dry in the barn.  Yesterday Tricia and I wanted to check on her progress.  She seems to be very swollen in her back end and her teats are swollen as well.  She's getting close.  In fact, Tricia and I listened as she sat and moaned.  We were thinking that she was going into labor, but as of this morning, no kids.

While we are talking about goats, I wanted to show you something that is truly interesting about goats - their eyes!  Check out this close-up of Annie's pupils.  They are rectangular!

In the animal kingdom, sheep, goats, and some other animals, have rectangular pupils.  Goats are seen as prey (as opposed to predators).  They are herbivores.  Predators (cats, snakes, alligators) have vertical slits for pupils .  The goats' rectangular pupils allow them to see 280 degrees around them, and that allows them to see predators coming and keeps them safe.  However, they don't have much vision vertically.

Annie will undoubtedly make use of her ability to see 280 degrees around her when she has given birth and has to keep track of at least one more baby.  We'll keep you posted as she progresses in pregnancy.  We have our eyes on her and she's got her eyes on us.

If You Break It, You Buy It

"If you break it, you buy it," was a quote I often heard as a boy.  I think it probably originated from shopkeepers who tired of young boys going in their shops, rough-housing and breaking the merchandise.  They wisely instituted a rule that made the parents have to buy the items that kids broke.

I hadn't thought about that in a long time until just recently.  At my last place of employment, I had a company car.  I figured since I was driving a company vehicle, I had no reason to keep the old "beater" that I was driving, even though it was paid for to save paying insurance on a car I wasn't driving.  So I let it go.  It seemed like a wise move until my employment came to an end after a year and I suddenly found myself shopping for a vehicle.

We scoured the Internet looking for a dependable used car and found it right in our home town.  On a recent Saturday morning, Tricia and I poured ourselves big mugs of coffee (this will be an important part of the story later on) and drove approximately 4 1/2 miles into town to the used car dealer.  And there she was: A pearl white 2017 Hyundai Sonata with only 31,500 miles on it and reasonably priced.  It was a rental vehicle like our existing car.  They must turn them in after 31,000 miles as that was the same amount of mileage that our existing car had.

We were pretty certain if we could get the price down by $400 or so, we'd make the purchase.  I sat in the driver's seat and turned on the ignition.  I heard Tricia open the back door on the driver's seat and lean over.  She may have said, "uh oh."  Or she may have said, "Doggonit!"  I'm not sure, but when I turned around, she had a funny look on her face and said, "I spilled my coffee on the backseat!" 

She went and told the car salesman what she had done.  He said, "That's okay.  We'll get it out."  I told him, "If we break it, we have to buy it?"  We laughed.  A few days later we went back and closed the deal.  Tricia's coffee stain still graces the back seat reminding us that it okay to laugh at ourselves.

No one else probably notices it, but we do.  Everyone always says after you buy a new car, that sooner or later you get that first 'ding' in the door that initiates a vehicle's rapid depreciation.  Our first 'ding' or coffee stain actually happened before we officially purchased it!

Last Year's Hay

It is the middle of February and a week ago the cows ate all of the remaining inventory of hay.  I called the gentleman that sells us round bales and delivers it, but he happened to be offshore working.  He works 14 days out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.  We supplemented with the square bales of bermuda hay that we keep up in the loft.  When our hay man hit the beach, he called me with some bad news, "I'm completely out of the hay from this year that I have been selling you, Kyle."

He did have some good news, though.  He told me that he had started feeding his cows last year's hay.  Last year was a very good year for hay and he had some still stacked up in the back.  He said his cows were eating it and he'd sell it to me at a discount.  I asked him to bring me 8 round bales and he delivered them to the house and put one in the pasture.  With all the rain, I immediately covered the 7 bales with a billboard sign that we use as a tarpaulin.

The hay looked kind of "iffy," but once the weathered outer layer was removed, the inside of the bale was fresh and looked like it was baled yesterday.  The cows loved it and absolutely devoured the bale that was out in the pasture.  All's well that ends well.  There is only one little problem.  Since the round bales are last year's hay, they've settled and aren't round any more.  They are flat on the bottom and as a result, they won't roll.  I had Russ and Benjamin help me and we couldn't budge them.

But we're not quitters.  Though we can't roll the bale, we can unroll it and bring armfuls of hay to the cows.  That's exactly what we did.  Obviously this wouldn't work with a herd any bigger than ours, but with our little animal family, this will work.

They hay ring is only about 60 feet from where the hay is stacked, so we don't have far to carry it easily to them.  The cows are happy.  We are happy.

Daisy, Luna, and Rosie are thankful to have the all you can eat hay buffet open.  Clarabelle and the little bulls are still in the barn, but they'll all be here soon.

These 8 round (flattened) bales will last about 40 days.  We will purchase some square bales that a buddy has stored up to use after that to tide things over until the spring grasses come in. 

A Little Room To Stretch Out

Winter time is a time where we eat a lot of gumbo with white rice.  It is warming and soothing.  And filling.  It is usually too wet and muddy and nasty to get outside and do any gardening or manual labor that I normally do for the sheer love of it.  Working outside provides another benefit - it keeps me in shape.  In winter, though, the weather isn't conducive to that and as a result, I eat too much gumbo and do too little work and thus, come early February, I always notice that my Wrangler jeans have shrunk for some reason.  It is the oddest occurrence.  Because as soon as the weather gets nicer, my jeans expand and are comfortable again.  Go figure.

I say all that because that is what I thought about when looking at our tomatoes.  They are growing and running out of room to grow in their seed pots.  Their roots have filled every centimeter of space.  Many simply clip the smaller plant and let the dominant one survive, but I look at that as a waste.  These tomato plants - all of them - are going to produce fruit.  I'm not thinning out a single one.

Running out of room to grow

This weekend, in a job that took a couple of hours, I carefully and tediously, used a plastic knife and spoon to dig the root ball of the tomato seedlings out of the seed pot.  Then I painstakingly separated the conjoined plants and placed them in their very own cup where they have room to stretch out and grow. 

I used some of the soil that we made IN THIS BLOG POST to put in the very bottom of the cup.  The composted chicken manure that makes up 1/3 of the mix ought to give the tomatoes some 'get up and go' and make them turn a healthy green.  They had run out of nutrients and had an unhealthy color to them.  I re-potted them in Community Coffee cups.  Perhaps there's some residual caffeine in the cup that will wake them up and rejuvenate them as well.

This is just one of our varieties of heirloom tomatoes called Black from Tula.  They formerly occupied a little four-pack and were root bound.  Now they have room to grow.  It's almost as if they loosened their belts a notch after eating too much gumbo and now can expand freely.

Here is the finished product after separating all the tomatoes and putting them back underneath the grow light.

This weekend I'll need to do the same with the pepper plants.

Annie's Time Is Coming Soon

Annie is our Nubian Goat that gave birth to triplets back in early March 2016.  We named the little trouble-makers Buckwheat, Darla, and Jane.  They are fun to watch, but like we always say, they are like having some bad little kids around.  They are always getting into trouble.  The little family of four has entertained us time and time again.

Tricia let me know that she noticed that Annie is "bagging up."  This means that Annie is pregnant and will be kidding again within the next few weeks.  During all this rain, we've kept her in the barn where it is warm and dry and there is plenty of dry hay to serve as bedding.  She's really not fat at all, so I don't think she's having triplets again.

The expectant Annie giving you "the eye"

But here's the proof of the pregnancy and soon delivery of at least one kid:

Goats are different from cows in their lactation equipment.  A cow has 1 udder with 4 quarters.  There is a teat for each quarter.  If you watch a calf nursing on his momma, it will go from teat to teat until all are empty.  A goat also has four quarters, but has only 2 teats.  1 teat drains 2 quarters as there is an opening in each quarter that empties into the teat.

Regardless how many teats Annie has, they are filling with milk and we'll have another little one on the farm soon!  We will keep you posted.

I Need To Get Busy This Weekend

Our Spring crop of tomatoes and peppers that I planted in early January are still under the grow lights in the utility room.  This weekend I will have to stop putting off transplanting them into larger containers.  As you can see, they are growing tall and are touching the fluorescent bulbs. 

There are two seedlings in each container that will have to be separated and placed in their own pot.  It is going to be a little tricky to separate them as their roots have grown together.  I usually use a plastic fork to help untangle as much as I can.  Some roots will be broken, but the plant will be okay as long as most of the roots are fine. 

The other thing I need to do is to begin watering them with a diluted solution of fish emulsion to give them some "get up and go."  Some of the tomato leaves are turning an unhealthy color and that means that they need some nutrients.  Fish emulsion, which is simply ground up fish that is dried and pulverized into a powder is just the ticket.  It doesn't smell good, but once that fish powder is mixed with water and poured on the young plants, they really like it!  They turn a healthy green and by the time they are ready to go into the garden, they are strong and vigorous.

I have a number of different tomato and pepper heirloom varieties planted.  Peppers take longer to germinate, so they are smaller than the tomatoes, but I'll put them in individual pots so they don't get root bound.

We still have several weeks (maybe a month) until we reach our average last frost date, so we still have a ways to go before the plants will be transplanted into the garden.  They'll need to be hardened off on the back patio to acclimate them to the cold and wind.  But, I'm wondering if we'll ever dry up enough to plant this spring.  Tricia remarked as she slogged through the mud out to the barn that it is the wettest, nastiest, muddiest that it has ever been.  Hopefully, we can keep these guys growing indoors healthy until the weather gets right outside.

These are farther along than they were last year.  However, my eggplant seed did not germinate, so we'll be buying eggplant from the nursery this year versus growing them from seed.  It is supposed to rain for the next several days, but I can get gardening done on the back patio where the rain won't bother me or the plants.  This weekend will be a busy weekend transplanting a bunch of seedlings into individual containers.  Then they'll go back under the grow light until conditions are right outside.