Two Weeks Until the Spuds Go in the Ground

Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the Lord blessed him.  Genesis 26:12

There are many verses in Scripture, particularly in the Gospels about the Parable of the Sower, in which the Lord talks about sowing and the multiplication of the seed, resulting in harvests of a hundredfold.  That's a great yield!  This year, we are going to track our harvest in our potato crop.  I've always enjoyed growing potatoes.  I can remember Irish Potatoes was the first thing my grandpa taught me to plant when I was a young boy.  Those are good memories about gardening that I still think about forty-something years later as I put in a garden each year.

I asked my wife to check out our local feed store for Seed Potatoes.  We generally plant the LaSoda variety.  The LaSoda is a red potato.  This variety was developed in 1948 by Louisiana State University Ag Experiment Station.  It is suited for our soils, climate and growing conditions.

Finally, Tricia texted me at work to let me know that seed potatoes were in.  You can see that we purchased 6 pounds of potatoes.  They were priced at $0.50 per pound or $3.00.  We have a whopping 10% sales tax in our parish, so after rendering to Ceasar what is Ceasar's, Tricia exited the feed store.  

I examined each potato for quality and all appeared to be good.  You can see right above my thumb in the photo below is one of the eyes of the potato.  My science teacher in high school, Stuart Buck, used to jokingly tell us that we should plant our potatoes wrapped in a newspaper so they'd have something to read while in the ground.  However, most newspapers today aren't worth wrapping fish in or lining a birdcage with , but that's neither here nor there and I digress.

Now you can plant the entire potato, OR you can cut the potato in pieces, ensuring that you have at least one eye in every potato chunk.  That's what I always do.  Each eye grows a nice potato plant.  I use a sharp knife to cut the potatoes up and then I turn them so that the cut side faces upward.  Then I place the potatoes inside in the warmest place I can find.  This will allow the cut part of the potato to 'scab' over.  I am told that if you immediately plant them without allowing them to scab, then the potatoes would rot in the ground.

I generally try to plant the spuds on or as close as possible to February 14th - Valentine's Day (since we love potatoes).  We'll see if the weather is cooperative.  They will mature in 110 to 120 days.  We know that we will put 6 pounds of potatoes in the ground.  A hundred-fold yield seems like a tall order!  We will track our harvest, though, and weigh it and report back our yield in early summer.

Preparing the Blueberry Bushes for the Spring

 As we continue to harvest fruit from our citrus trees, our attention turns to taking care of our other fruit-bearing bushes nearby - Blueberries!  The first thing we've begun to do is dump coffee grounds around the base of all of our blueberry bushes.  Blueberries love acidic soil.  We've read that coffee is acidic and adding the grounds around the bushes will make the blueberries happy.  I've been bringing a bunch of used coffee grounds home from work for this purpose.  We'll see if this experiment is successful.

Our oldest son, Russ, has a degree in Horticulture.  He knows the name of every plant anywhere around and how to care for them too.  So we count on him for assisting in and providing knowledge toward care for our plants.  When he was here last Sunday, we asked him if he would help us prune the blueberries.  He showed us how to remove parts of the bush with pruning shears.

He removed some of the older growth, growth that crosses over other branches, as well as branches that don't look healthy.  I've never been a confident pruner.  The result of pruning the blueberry bushes was a cleaner-looking plant which should result in bigger berries.  Again, we'll see how that experiment works as well.  The animals in the pasture enjoyed the pruning experiment and are already calling it a rousing success.

Finally, I have to show a neat photo from our kitchen window.  If you look due east, you see a (not so picturesque) view of our neighbor's shop.  It just so happens that if you look through both openings of their shop, the view of a big white horse across the road is framed nicely in the photo with a red barn as the backdrop.

Have a great weekend!  I'll talk to you more on Sunday night.

Another Idea for Our Bumper Crop of Spinach

The new variety of spinach we tried this year is Galilee Spinach.  It is from Israel and has been, by far, our best variety of spinach we've ever grown.  I am going to try to save some seeds from the plants for next year's crop.  The plants grow fast, have a pointy leaf, and are heat tolerant.  We have a nice little patch of them growing and have eaten them raw in salads, cooked down with butter, and tonight, we'll try another way.

I picked 20 ounces of spinach and brought it in and washed it in the vegetable sink.

Tonight we'll be making Creamed Spinach.  The recipe is from DELISH.  Salt your water in a large pot and bring to a boil.  Then drop your spinach in the boiling water and allow to cook for 30 Seconds.  Not long, I know.  Dump it in a colander.

Soak in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process.  Then squeeze out all the water that you possibly can from the spinach.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter and 1/2 of a medium onion, finely chopped (I should have chopped it even finer) and cook for 5 minutes.  Add 2 cloves garlic, minced, and cook for a minute more.  Add 1/2 cup milk, 1/4 cup heavy cream, and 4 ounces cream cheese and simmer until melted.  Add salt, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne. 

Add the spinach to the Dutch oven along with 1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Mix it all together and it is ready to eat.

First off, the photo of the final dish is not that appealing.  But I'll say this - It was delicious and incredible.  Two learning lessons.  You must use the ingredients called for in order for this dish to be at its best.  We used half and half instead of heavy cream. and used colby jack instead of grated parmesan.  We also did not mince the onion as much as we should have.

Despite those alterations, the creamed spinach was very, very good.  We'll definitely add this to our vegetable repertoire. 

A Couple of Startling Events in the Pullet Tractor

In late August in what my wife would tell you was the WORST possible time, we added to the number of our egg-layers by ordering 30 day-old chicks from Ideal Poultry.  They came in the mail and we put them in the chicken tractor outside.  A week later we were pummeled by the first of two hurricanes.  We pushed the chicken tractor in the garage, and they weathered the storm beautifully.  If it had been cold outside at that time, we would have lost all of them as we lost power for weeks.  With no heat lamp, they would have died.

The birds thrived despite our hardship.  They stunk up the garage in spectacular fashion.  We moved them outside and over the resulting weeks they have grown and grown.  They are pushed to fresh grass almost daily.  We have three types of pullets - Rhode Island Reds - they are the most prolific brown-egg layers.  Next, we have Barred Rocks - another productive brown-egg layer.  Finally, we have Easter-Eggers.  These are a breed that lay blue, green, and pink eggs.  According to publications, these pullets begin laying eggs between weeks 18 - 24.  Well, Saturday we found a green egg and again today.  The first eggs that pullets lay are small.  They are 'working the kinks out.'  But it won't take long until the rest are laying and the sizes will get normal.  The photo below shows the two Easter Egger green eggs.  I placed an adult laying hen's brown egg beside them for comparative purposes to show the size.

The photo below shows the different breeds a little better.  The dark gray and white (salt and pepper) bird you see in the foreground is the Barred Rock.  The reddish brown bird is the Rhode Island Red.  The other oddly colored (but beautiful) birds are the Easter Eggers.  Do you notice something strange about one of the "pullets" in the photo below?

In the event you didn't pick it out, they aren't all pullets - one is a cockrel!  Can you see him below?  He is the one in the far right corner with the big, beautiful comb.  His size was the first giveaway, but then he began crowing!  Hens don't crow.

Someone at the chicken hatchery made an honest mistake.  You can order a 'straight run' which means as-hatched.  They'll generally be 50-50 hens and roosters.  You can pay a little more and get pullets, which is what we did.  The chick sexers separate the day old hens from roosters.  There is a science to it.  I am not 100% sure how they do it, but they are usually perfect - Except for this time!  One rooster slipped through.  That's okay.  We actually need another rooster on the flock.

2020 Rainfall - By the Numbers

On Thursday night's post last week we looked at egg production.  Tonight we'll look at rainfall.  We have a rain gauge out on a fencepost by the water trough.  Every day we check the gauge and record any rainfall on a paper log inside.  Each month we tally up the totals and at the end of the year, record all data onto a spreadsheet.  We've been tracking rainfall for about eight years now.  There's no particular reason we do it - it is just interesting to us.  I guess over years, it is good to look at trends.  When are the driest months?  When are the wettest months?  Let's take a look:

First off, you'll notice that we accumulated 59.85 inches of rainfall for the year, with the heaviest rainfall occurring in January and the lowest in March.  As I look at the daily rainfall logs over 2020, I notice that in the entire year of 2020, it did not rain on the 9th, 16th, or 30th day of the month for the entire year!  Furthermore, looking at last year's records, it did not rain at all on the 9th day of any month in 2019 either.  What does that tell you?  Nothing, really, except maybe in 2021, if you were planning an outdoor wedding or a picnic, or a fishing trip, the 9th might be a good day to plan it.  

Now let's compare to the eight year accumulated data:

Over the 8 year data collection period, we've averaged almost 67 inches of rain each year or about 5 1/2 feet of rain each year.  The wettest month on average over the 8 year trend is August; however, the wettest month in 2020 was January.  The driest month on average over the 8 year trend is March.  The driest month in 2020 was March as well.  Over the eight year period, we've accumulated 44 1/5 feet of water.  That's a lot of precipitation!  At Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, we wish you and your family showers of blessing in 2021.

2020 Egg Production - By The Numbers

Usually in January each year, we compile all of our data that we've recorded daily for the previous year and post it.  Tonight we'll look at egg production and on other days we'll look at rainfall data as well as milk production.  We are a very small homestead farm, operating on a five acre tract of land with 3-4 acres agricultural as opposed to residential.  We aren't making money doing any of this.  Our primary goal is to produce healthy, nutritious food.  It is a fulfilling thing to sit down at the table to eat meals that were produced right off your land.  It is definitely labor, but it is a labor of love.  If I could make a living doing this, this is what I'd be doing.

So, eggs...  First, before we look at the numbers, I'll preface by saying that our flock is OLD.  In years past, we had a practice of raising 25 pullets each year from day-old chicks to replace the ones that died during the previous year - either by predators or old age.  We haven't done that for the last two years.  Our flock has dwindled to less than half of what we had in the past.  We have 45 hens at year end.  Here is the chart of 2020 Egg Production by Month:

As you can see, springtime is the best time for eggs.  Comfortable weather, lengthening days, lots of fresh forage in the pasture result in beaucoup egg production, even for our small flock.  As the days get hotter and the grass less nutritious, and the days shorter, egg production falls off considerably.

A hen on our flock lays about 130 eggs per year, roughly an egg every 3 days.  As a whole we pick up, on average almost a dozen and a half eggs each day.  This allows us to NEVER have to purchase eggs at the store.  We also are able to bless friends and family with eggs and also sell some.  This helps to offset some of the feed cost.  Two bags of hen scratch will last 10 days or so. A bag of feed costs $11.

The hens do a good job of spreading out cow poop to fertilize the pasture.  As soon as the cows lift their tails to poop, the hens are there faster than, well, a chicken on a June Bug and they scratch through it in search of tasty morsels.  In so doing, they spread out the poop.  Consequently, that fertilizes the grass.  And the cycle continues.  Chicken poop fertilizes the pasture as well, but they also poop beneath the roosts in the henhouse.  I'll let that compost and then will use that as fertilizer in the garden.

We've keep records since 2013, so we have production totals below for 8 years:

Over the 8 year period, April is, on average, the best month for eggs.  In 2020, March was actually the best.  Over the 8 year period and in 2020, December was the worst month.  It is interesting to note that in 8 years, our birds have laid 70,266 eggs or 5,856 dozen.  That's a lot of omelets!

That's the end of our "egg-siting" year of egg production.  

A Peek at the Garden in Mid-January

We got the onion crop planted last week, and I've asked Tricia to be looking for seed potatoes at the local feed store.  We're about a month away from time to be planting them.  In the meantime, we have plenty of items that we're harvesting right now like mustard greens, swiss chard, and kale.  I'll show a few of the other items in a brief post.  Here are the Sugar Snap Peas, full of tender, sweet pods:

The Waltham Broccoli is making nice heads.  I like the way the dew sparkles on the leaves and head in the morning sunlight.

We pick the big heads, but the broccoli continues making smaller florets for quite a while if you are patient in harvesting them every other day.

Prior to temperatures falling below freezing the other night, we picked a basket of the last of the squash crop before the plants died.  The basket includes zucchini, spaghetti squash, cushaw squash, and Tahitian melon squash.

Here is a nice photo showing nice color.  It has many varieties of lettuce in the foreground contrasted against the bull's blood beets and carrots (and cows and chickens in the background).

And speaking of lettuce, here is one row of three rows of carrots that I have growing.  They'll be maturing in another month.

Here are some eggplant right before the freeze.  The eggplant succumbed to the freeze.

Here is a shot of Galilee Spinach in the foreground looking south toward the barn:

And a better shot of the spinach.  It is thick and healthy.

I'm preparing for the Spring garden as well.  Here is the tomatoes that have come up and are growing.  Actually, they are getting a little too "leggy" under the grow lights.  I will replant them a little later.  The peppers are all starting to germinate, but the eggplant have not sprouted yet.

As we harvest, we plant.  We look forward to what the spring garden brings.

Cajun Engineering - A Titillating Tale of Redneck Fabrication

This weekend was a gorgeous day.  We went outdoors with a ladder and began harvesting tangerines and navel oranges off of our trees.  The old folks say that after you get a frost or freeze, the sugars intensify in the fruit and yield a sweeter product.  I haven't been able to get a firm answer on if this is true or not.  Temperatures dipped below freezing for two days last week, so if this was true, our fruit would be super sweet.  

We went outside an picked several baskets of fruit.  We encountered one small problem - our trees are growing each year and this year was the first year that we could not reach the fruit on the top of the tree.  Even utilizing a ladder proved ineffective.  The trees were just to doggone tall.  What to do?  You can see one of the tangerines WAAAAAYYYYY up there in the photo below, bordering the upper atmosphere.

I went inside and looked up Lehman's "For a Simpler Life" Hardware on the Internet.  I enjoy looking at their goods.  They are hand-crafted Amish products that help enhance your life.  I located a Fruit Harvester tool under the Apple Harvest tab.  It was $29.95.  Not a bad price at all, but due to Covid and other factors, shipping & processing is delayed.  I don't have time to wait.

A running joke in rural areas is that if you give a man a roll of duct tape and baling twine, he can fix most anything.  I began to think that I could build my own fruit harvester tool with a little Cajun ingenuity and it would cost me exactly $0.  So I built my own Fruit Harvester tool that is capable of reaching fruit that grows up in heights on top of the trees where the air is thin.  I rooted around in the garage and in the back of the house, found some odds and ends, grabbed some duct tape and fabricated what I call, "Kyle's Deluxe Citrus Snatcher."  (Patent Pending)  You can view the prototype lying beneath the ladder below in a photo captured by a corporate spy.

Let's take a closer look below.  I had an old garden hand tool whose handle had broken.  I cut off the broken end of the handle and jammed it into a piece of 3/4 inch PVC pipe.  I used duct tape to firmly fasten the garden tool on the PVC pipe.  The tool does not telescope, per se, but it does somewhat telescope by fitting a second joint of PVC into the other for those really high, hard to get tangerines.

You can see an example of what it looks like in action below in a simulated example (but on the ground - not an aerial shot).  You reach up and get the prongs behind the fruit and firmly pull downward.  The fruit promptly snaps off the branch and tumbles to the ground below.

Beautiful fruit that was once unobtainable is now within your grasp!

But wait!  There's more.  If you act now, you can own your own Deluxe Citrus Snatcher...

Sorry, my factory is not built yet.  You'll have to build your own.  

Growing a New Variety - Galilee Spinach

I remember watching "Popeye the Sailorman" cartoons growing up.  Things would go bad and then Popeye would get mad, grab a can of spinach, squeeze the can, causing the spinach to go into the air then down into his pipe.  He would immediately grow huge muscles and take care of whatever business he needed to take care of.

Moms everywhere used this as an enticement to make you "eat your vegetables."  Mine did.  "Eat some spinach and you'll grow muscles like Popeye's."  Except eating spinach from a can was not good (to me).  At all.  Not to mention, if I managed to force down a forkful of spinach, my muscles did not grow.  There was really no incentive at all to eat spinach.  EXCEPT...

As an adult gardener, I tried it again.  And I liked it!!  I've tried growing several varieties and I've settled on one that we really like.  It is an heirloom called Galilee Spinach.  It is from Israel.  It is suited for warmer climates.  It grows well in our area.  The leaves are pointed.  They are lush and grow quickly.

A few weeks ago we picked a bunch and made a Cream of Spinach Soup.  Spinach is great just raw in salads, too.

We tried some sautéed in butter.  While not the most aesthetic-looking dish, it was certainly delicious.

I see that we have a few beginning to put some seed heads on.  I'll try to save the seeds off of some of these for next year's crop.  Popeye would be proud of me!

Putting in the 2021 Onion Crop

Every year we order our onions from a company called Dixondale Farms in Carizzo Springs, Texas.  We love onions and plant a bunch of them - actually 3 bunches.  Each 'bunch' contains between 50-75 onions and they deliver around January 1st.  They come shipped in the mail and as soon as you get them you open them up.

Directions state to open the box and spread them out until ready to plant.  We ordered 1 bunch of Texas 1015 Sweet Onions and 2 bunches of Short Day Samplers.  The short day samplers contain Texas 1015 Sweet onions, white onions, and Creole onions.  The package contains a pamphlet called "Onion & Leek Planting Guide" and is full of good information on caring for your crop.  Additionally, throughout the growing seasons Bruce "The Onion Man" Frasier, sends out emails to assist you in growing a great crop.  I highly recommend Dixondale Farm Onions.  Click HERE for the Dixondale Farms website.

Saturday proved to be a nice day to get the onions in the ground.  I tied a string from fencerow to fencerow to make a straight row.

We use the "Back to Eden" gardening method so our soil is covered with four inches of wood chip mulch.  I rake back the mulch under the string with a rock rake to expose the soil.  Then we hoe up a narrow strip for planting and add chicken litter and biochar that has been inoculated with composted cow manure.

I use an old screwdriver as a planting tool.  I poke the screwdriver in the soil and plant an onion plant in the resulting hole, being very careful to only plant the onion plant 1 inch deep.  Any deeper and you run the risk of the plant not bulbing.

The onions are planted 4 inches apart.  In no time at all, the onions were all planted!  Five rows of beautiful onions.  

We will keep them watered and weeded and will nurture them until harvest time.  Can't wait!  Nothing like French Onion Soup,  Or caramelized onions!

Rendering Tallow for Soap-making and Cooking

Last night we posted about bring home meat from the slaughterhouse.  We not only bring home meat, but fat and bones. The first thing we elected to do to free up some in the freezer is to render the fat.  It doesn't sound like a pleasant experience, but it's not too bad.  What it does is turn a 'waste product' into something useful - valuable even.  As we expressed earlier, when you bring an animal to slaughter, it is yours.  You can keep everything except the "moo."

Here's how we do it.  We open the bag of fat.  It is not particularly nice to look at.   

We begin by filling the biggest pot we have on the stovetop with pieces of fat, turning the stove on to heat it up.  At first the stove is set to high and then later to low. As it heats, the fat liquifies.  It takes a couple of hours, tops.

While hot the clear fat is poured through a cloth lined sieve and into casserole glass dishes.  This separates out the meat (beef cracklins) from the fat.  

Here is a photo of those 'beef cracklins' left over after the fat is rendered.  A little this goes to Belle (our dog).

Once the tallow has cooled, it turns a creamy white color.

We put the tallow in the fridge to make it cold.  We find it cuts better that way.  Then we begin cutting it into squares.  

We bag up those squares into gallon-size freezer bags, label them, date them, and put them in the freezer for storage.

As we need them, we remove and use.  Use the tallow as a cooking oil, similar to what you'd use hog lard for.  We also use it in soap-making. 

Although we didn't get the step by step picks, during the fat-rendering process, we also are boiling the bones to make beef broth.  We add carrot tops, onions and peppers and cook on the stovetop for two to two and a half days.  In the end, the result is rich beef broth which we can in a pressure cooker for later use.

This will be used as a base for soups and gravies.  Using this in place of water when cooking rice is a game-changer.