But Have You Read the Label on That?

Our youngest son, Benjamin is in the Electrical Engineering program at McNeese State University in Lake Charles.  Between Covid restrictions and the dormitory where he was living being extensively damaged by Hurricanes Laura and Delta, the college experience has been sub-par.  When Benjamin's dorm did not re-open, Benjamin and a friend moved into an apartment.  Tricia has been very concerned about his eating.

She does not want him subsisting on fast food.  "Have you read the label on that?" is a common refrain.  "Just look at all that sugar!"  "I can't even pronounce this word.  What in the world is in this?  Chemicals?"  Tricia decided this afternoon that Benjamin needed some homemade breakfasts rather that the "heart attack in a sack" you get from local drive-thrus.  Homemade Breakfast Burritos!  Portable.  Delicious.  Healthy.

With the hens' egg production on an upward trajectory, Tricia has all the ingredients at her disposal.  She cracked 18 eggs, seasoned them up and began scrambling them.

Of course you need tortillas to make breakfast burritos, but have you read the label on that?  Filled with all sorts of crazy stuff.  For her boy? - only the best.  Momma won't have him eating enriched white flour tortillas made in New York City.  She whipped together some tortilla dough and began rolling them out.

She heated up the griddle and began making delicious tortillas, flipping them to cook on both sides and pulling them off by hand when they start to brown.

When it comes to filling the burritos, Tricia isn't stingy.  The tortilla is filled with seasoned scrambled eggs.  On most other occasions, she'd add chorizo and cheese, but today they were just egg burritos.

The burritos are rolled tight and packed into a container for safekeeping and storage.  By Tricia's calculation, this will keep Benjamin stocked up with healthy breakfasts until this weekend so that he can re-load his container with fresh supplies.

A quote ascribed to both Napoleon and Frederick the Great says that "an army marches on its belly."  Well, Tricia made darn well sure that Benjamin starts each day with his belly full of healthy food.  Mommas look out after their boys, don't they?

Here, Chick, Chick, Chick

Each morning we go out and open the nesting boxes in the hen house.  The chickens are clucking and scratching and waiting for us.  When you have an empty nest, like we do, I guess it is somewhat fulfilling knowing that someone is still depending on you to feed them.  The feed room in the barn contains all sorts of feeds and minerals.  We have sweet feed, alfalfa, rough rice, and hen scratch.  

We mix up a half a gallon of rough rice and a half a gallon of  hen scratch and mix it up nicely.  Walking outside, we call, "Here, chick, chick, chick."  The hens fall over themselves to come to us.  They can't wait.  We take cupfuls and scatter it out in the barnyard.  The barnyard is mostly mud now - just an absolute mess.  But the fat hens don't seem to mind scratching through the mud to uncover a morsel of cracked corn, a grain of milo, some oats, wheat and millet, and plenty of locally grown rice.

The hens aren't the only fowl attracted to this free feast festivity.  Wild birds have gotten to where they appreciate the free meal.  In the photo below on the right middle, you can see another bird that isn't a chicken partaking.

Here are six more of the same, sampling the hen scratch.  These are "Mexican Doves" or Inca doves.  They are protected and may not be harvested like the Mourning Doves, Ring-necked doves or White-winged doves that are prevalent in our state.  These Mexican doves weren't common when I was growing up.  It was mainly Mourning Doves that were around.  They are called Mourning doves due to the sad, mournful call that they give.

In high school we would hunt doves south of town in soybean fields.  We would shoot them with 12 gauge shotguns and bring home a bag full of them.  I can recall plucking them and cleaning them to cook.  Doves are a delicious meal.  I remember one time we had cleaned them all.  I had friends over and we had browned our doves and were making a roux to make a nice dove gumbo.

My great Aunt Myra was in from South Dakota visiting on that fateful day.  She walked into the house and exclaimed, "What is that wonderful smell?"  The hunters proudly exclaimed, "We're making a dove gumbo!  You want some?"  Aunt Myra burst into tears.  We had no idea why.  We learned that Aunt Myra was active in the South Dakota Save the Dove Foundation.  My Dad had the unenviable task of comforting Aunt Myra and letting her know that doves were plentiful, a nuisance really in our area, and harvesting a few for a gumbo was a noble undertaking.

Like A Good Neighbor...

 

Harry Truman's quote is right, I think.  It is important to have good neighbors.  It is more important to be a good neighbor.  It is truly an impossible task to ever be as good of a neighbor as ours are to us.  We don't have a fence separating our property.  We visit often.  When they mow their yard, they often mow way over on our side of the property line to help us out.  When we go out of town, they watch over the place for us and feed the animals and collect the eggs.

They fish on the local bayous and routinely bring over fresh fish to us.  When hurricanes hit, they come over with a chain saw before the wind stops blowing and offer to assist.  When our power was out for weeks on end, they knocked on the door dragging a big extension cord and told us to plug in to their generator to power our freezer so we wouldn't lose our meat.  They have lemon, kumquat and satsuma trees and share all we can eat.

We didn't know our neighbors when we moved here.  We quickly learned to appreciate and love them.  I don't know if I could ever be one tenth the neighbor they are to us.  I thank God for our neighbors.

I submit that a little known survival technique in difficult times is to have good neighbors.  Why, just during the midst of this cold spell, we heard a knock at the door and our neighbors were there with a big rubbermaid container of homemade crab and shrimp gumbo.

We put some rice on and ladled big bowls of crab and shrimp gumbo.  Talk about warm your bones up!  Our family truly enjoyed the delicious gumbo and the kind neighborly gesture!

The cold didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell due to a warm bowl of gumbo and the warmth of neighborly love.

We Never Got Around to Getting a Gas Jet

One of the things that really helped us cope with the cold weather was our fireplace.  We stayed by our fire and set our thermostats to 66 degrees at the warmest.  The hurricanes gave us plenty of firewood and we burned a lot of it. In the days preceding the winter storm, we got lots of rain.  We brought the firewood under the patio and it dried out so that we could burn it.  The chickens were thankful that we picked up the wood and used the opportunity to scratch around for bugs and worms from where we had removed the wood.

When we built the house twenty years ago, we added an opening space for a pipe in the brick fireplace to run a natural gas line to help start firewood in the fireplace.  Our house, however, ended up being all electric.  I've tossed around the idea of adding natural gas or propane, but we've gotten around to it.  Part of the reason is that we really don't need natural gas or propane to start firewood.  We do it with lighter pine.  we have a stash of lighter pine that we have found and saved over the years.

In the photo below, you can see one of many lighter pine logs we have.  It is the one standing up vertically.  All we have to do to make kindling is to get the axe and slice slivers of kindling off the fat pine log.

I began to chop slices off the log and it opens up the resin drenched wood, full of sap.  It smells like a bottle of Pine-Sol.  The oil from the pine log burns easily, flames up, and quickly starts the other wood to begin burning.

I wish that this was a scratch and sniff photo so you could enjoy the scent!

It doesn't take removing a lot off of the log to make enough kindling to start fires for a week.  Where the log was dull and grey, once you open it up, the grains are red, yellow, and amber.

I fill a 5 gallon bucket with kindling and walk back toward the house and out of the mud and the muck.

It just took a little work with the axe in order to gather plenty of firestarters.

I generally take three pieces of kindling and put them on the bottom of the grate and then cover with five or six pieces of firewood.  I crumple a few pieces of newspaper under the kindling and scratch a match.  In no time, the newspaper has blazed up, caught the kindling on fire and before you know it, the rest of the firewood is ablaze.

The resulting fire is nice and warm and the heat was much-welcomed during the cold snap.

Un-Tarping the Garden

The freeze is past us.  At last!  Saturday morning, I quickly went out to the garden and began unfurling the big tarps off of the garden vegetables.  I was curious to see what we had remaining.  The lowest our temperatures got was 14 degrees, but it stayed well below freezing for a number of days.  In reading about plants' ability to survive in frozen temperatures, much mention was made not only of the low temperatures, but of the length of time that the frozen temperatures persisted.  Both variables do not stand in our favor.

I've already resigned myself to the fact that we may have lost everything.  In a "glass half full" perspective, this just means we'll have more room to plant the spring garden earlier.  I think we'll give the plants a few days under the sunshine and warmer temperatures to decide what to do.  Let's look at each row and the prognosis.

I harvested all of the turnips and radishes in the midst of the freeze.  The cows and goats enjoyed eating the greens and the roots.  I added some additional mulch atop the rows of those harvested crops.  Moving to the left, the swiss chard is hurt pretty bad.  After this photo was taken, we cut them down to the ground to see if fresh growth will come.  The Brussels sprouts look fairly unaffected.  Good news.

The carrots look green and relatively healthy.  The greenery is just flattened as the water/ice on top of the tarp mashed it down.  I'll give them a few days to see if the sunshine perks up the greens.  It is about time to harvest the carrots, blanch them and freeze them anyway.  Probably tomorrow I'll pull a carrot to ensure the root itself wasn't damaged by the freeze.

In the upper left hand corner, you can see the Galilee Spinach.  I had been allowing it to go to seed to save seed for next fall crop.  I will give it a few days, but I think I lost the seed!  Unfortunate, but c'est la vie.

The lettuce is a mess.  We pulled it all up and tossed it to the chickens.  They enjoyed the tossed salad.  We had our most productive lettuce crop ever.  All good things must come to an end, I assume.

The bull's blood beets' foliage are flat and freeze damaged.  Similar to the carrots, I'll give them a few days to see if they bounce back or if I need to harvest the beet roots.

The dinosaur kale (lacinato kale) looks fairly unaffected.  The cabbage is damaged, however, and we'll have to see if they survive.  You can see they have a yellow, sickly tinge to them.  The broccoli is still standing.  We'll see if they continue to produce little florets that we have been enjoying.

I was very worried about our onion crop.  They were looking SO good!  The onion tops are flattened somewhat and there is leaf damage.  A few days will be needed to see if they are resilient and bounce back.  Boy, I sure hope so!

Finally, the mustard green row had some leaf damage, but they'll make it.  I picked off some of the damaged leaves and the cows and goats were appreciative.

All in all, it could have been a lot worse.  We'll report the verdict for those crops that the jury is still out on in a few days.  Meanwhile, our goal is to get our potato crop in the ground this week.  We're about a week late right now, but who's counting?

How We Used to Watch TV

I can remember growing up we had TV trays.  Whatever happened to them?  I distinctly remember going to my grandmother Bumby's house as a kid and we'd get the TV trays out in front of the TV.  For some reason, I remember breakfast the best.  Bumby would bring us a big bowl of Rice Krispies and a sugar bowl with a teaspoon in it.  We would sprinkle sugar over our Rice Krispies and listen to Snap, Krackle and Pop.  Meanwhile she was in the kitchen.  Bumby made the best Cinnamon Toast ever!  She had a toaster oven and would put butter, cinnamon and sugar on the toast.  It would come out hot and so delicious.  She would put it right on our TV tray while we watched whatever we were watching.  It was fun until one time I remember my brother had this shiny racing jacket that he was very proud of.  My grandmother had a space heater glowing bright red in the den.  My brother got a little too close and melted his favorite jacket.  (Crazy things you remember!)

At my other grandmother (Myrtle Lee's) house, she had TV trays too.  We would park ourselves in front of the TV and eat rice and gravy and sausage.  Our cola was set down on the tv tray for us in aluminum cups that were FREEZING cold.  We'd watch Gunsmoke, Barnaby Jones, Hawaii 5-0, The Rockford Files and then we'd eat my grandpa's favorite ice cream - Ozark Black Walnut ice cream.  We would visit, for sure, but the TV tray allowed us to park in front of the TV, visit, and eat.  Multi-tasking at ist best.  Then we'd clean up the dishes and play solitaire.   The tv trays had legs that would fold out and you could put a chair down and pull it in front of you.  Whatever happened to them?  Today, we always eat at the table. 

Image Credit

I guess the reason I was thinking about TV trays tonight is because for the past few days with the freezing weather, we've brought a modern version of the TV tray into existence:

Tonight we had homemade beef and vegetable soup and a bowl of salad in front of the fireplace.  While we didn't have a TV tray, we had the next best thing.  We set our bowls down on the hearth, said grace, and gazed into the warm fire while eating and visiting.  So relaxing!

Once done, we cleared dishes away and pulled up our chairs to the fireplace .  Our improvised TV trays are much more sturdy than the old ones, allowing us to kick up our feet and warm our toes. 

TV trays, while great, were not that sturdy.

It's a Winter Wonderland!

It was 16 degrees this morning!  Goodness gracious.  It was nice to have you join me yesterday morning.  If you're not otherwise occupied, come along today as well.  We'll go exploring and sightseeing.  It's like a whole new world out there.  As we walk through the garden path to the barn, Ol' Rosie is waiting on us. She wants some hay.  The round bale in the hay ring is frozen solid.  I'm glad I put the tarp on the two round bales I have remaining.  We'll roll another out this weekend.  Oh, check out the icicles hanging from the barn roof!

I'll climb up into the hayloft and toss three bales down to you.  By my count, we have 33 bales left.  I estimate we'll make it until the spring grass starts coming in with that.  I will, however, have to get another 8 round bales of hay from my hay provider.  To me, hay reminds me of the "Ant and the Grasshopper" fable.  During the summer, it is blazing hot.  There are other things to be doing than gathering hay and loading it up into the loft.  Besides, there's plenty of grass for the animals to eat.  Why not kick back, stay cool, and enjoy yourself and leave the hard work for later?

Well, because winter months are coming.  In a few months, there will be no grass.  The weather will be frigid and nasty, and the animals will be hungry.  The cows and goats are hoping that you were an "Ant" and not a "grasshopper" back in the summer.  Fortunately, we were ants.  Your welcome, cows & goats.

The icicles hanging precariously from the hen house are quite a sight to see.  They sparkle in the morning sun.  They seem sharp as a ten penny nail.  

I call this guy the "Regal Rooster."  He was given to us by a friend who purchased a few hens from Tractor Supply.  These "hens" were to provide their family eggs in town.  The "hens" grew and matured.  However, this one "hen" began to crow.  That is a big no-no in town, and thus, we inherited a fine rooster.  This is not a hen identifying as a rooster.  She is not gender confused.  This is a bona-fide rooster.  A man.  The cock of the walk.  In fact, he has challenged one of our other existing roosters for dominance and the pecking order has now changed.  This is the new king.  It's good to be the king.  He struts around and exudes his superiority over the others.  He proudly poses in front of the woodpile in the snow.  I think he knows that I will let you all know that he a a bad dude.  I should probably let him know to enjoy it while it lasts.  As is always the case, there is always someone out there somewhere bigger and badder.  

Belle is mighty camouflaged in the snow.  She runs and slides and has the best time!  The cold doesn't bother her in the least bit.  She was born for this.  Her coat is thick and furry.  She chases the many birds that come to eat the hen scratch that we toss to the chickens.  Belle is a good dog.  We think she is coming into her own now and understands that the chickens, the cows, and the goats are her charge.  They are for her to guard and take care of.  She is starting to take that responsibility seriously (whereas she once ATE the chickens.)

Speaking of birds, here is a fat robin sitting on the fence.  Can you see him?  Randy Travis sang a song called "Deeper than the Holler."  A verse in there says, "... Honest as a robin on a springtime windowsill, and longer than the song of a whippoorwill."  I like that song.  I can't say I've ever given much thought, though, about whether a robin is honest or deceitful.  This robin is on an extension of fence I put up so our nosy goats don't eat the vegetables in the garden.  It's not springtime, Mr. Robin, but it'll be here before you know it!

When I came back inside Tricia said, "Come look out the kitchen window!"  There was a male Cardinal (red bird) and his wife in the shrubs.  Look below.  I know you can see the male.  His brilliant red color contrasts strongly against the white snow.  The female is harder to see.  Can you find her?  God's infinite wisdom designed her that way.  The male is intended to be flashy, showy, a distraction.  While the female is camouflaged so that she can sit on the nest, hidden and raise her babies in obscurity and safety.  These two are no doubt scoping out home locations for the nest they'll be building this spring.  They are optimistic that mortgage rates are at all time lows and there are incentives for first-time home buyers.  Their McMansion awaits... 

While there is great hope and expectation with some, the day brings great sadness and despair.  A gecko that has made his home outside our side door, eating mosquitoes that fly to the window has succumbed to the frigid temperatures.  He has assumed room temperature.  Unfortunately, the room is 16 degrees.  Not a good temp for a cold-blooded creature.

Let's leave on a good note, why don't we.  I walked out to check the mail and as I walk back, Old Glory still flies.  There is a stiff north wind, and it is cold and gloomy, but she flies on.

God Bless the USA!  Thanks for joining me again.  There's always something interesting to see.  Nice to share it with you.

Mais, It's Cold, Cher!

Hey, do you have a minute?  I'd like for you to take a walk with me this morning.  Look, grab a cup of coffee to take with you.  I made it extra strong today.  Better put on a cap and your heavy coat, it's cold outside!  It snowed last night.  We aren't used to that, and our animals aren't either.  We have to go take care of them.  I'll show you the morning routine.  First, we'll bring some food out to the pullets in the chicken tractor.  They are just starting to lay.  The eggs are small.  The tractor is in the back yard and they are demolishing the St. Augustine grass - just scratching it up to bits.  Let's put some feed in the gutter we use as a feed trough.  I thought we'd have to break the ice off the water in the water bowl, but the heat lamps we turned on last night kept the occupants of the tractor warm and toasty and the water didn't freeze.

The twin bridges that lead into the pasture and the garden were frozen over.  It looked very pastoral and wintry, wouldn't you say?  Don't slip when you pass over now.

Yesterday we frantically put blue tarps over the entire garden except for the radishes that are almost done and the turnips.  The snow blankets the blue tarps, but you can still see the blue of the tarp underneath.  Beneath the snowpack and tarp are beets, carrots, kale, chard, spinach lettuce, onions, kohlrabi, broccoli and cauliflower.  By Friday when things thaw out, we'll fold up the tarps and see if we have live plants underneath.  If not, we'll quickly harvest all the carrots and beets and anything salvageable.

Follow me out to the barn.  We've got to feed and hay the cows and goats.  Look at Belle waiting inside the barn.  The cows are coming round the corner.  The fake owl is doing its job on the roof chasing off hawks that like to steal our hens.  A few chickens are out scratching looking for something.  Let's get a bucket of hen scratch and scatter it around for them.

The rest of the hens are in the hen house.  It is nice and warm in there.  Would you mind opening the lids to the nesting boxes?  We close those up at night or the hens would roost on them and poop in the hay.  Then the eggs would be all full of poop the next day.

And here's Belle.  Look at that girl, would you?  She spent the night in the barn.  She is indigenous to the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France.  She has a heavy coat and would have been fine outside, but we wanted to make sure she was warm and dry.  She repaid the favor by digging a big hole in the barn.  I'll have to cover it all up.

There was no stick nearby to break the ice in the trough, so I used my boot.  It was an untimely day to discover that my boots have a hole in them.  My sock is wet and my feet are cold now.  We have to break the ice, though, so the cows and goats can drink fresh water.  We never have to fill this trough.  It sits under the drip line of the barn and catches rainwater.  

We'll throw a few gallon scoops of sweet feed and alfalfa to the cows and let them eat.  Then, I'll put a square bale of some good bermuda hay for them to munch on.

I read one time that in northern states, farmers supplemented their livestock's diets with root crops in the winter.  I've been doing that for several years.  If you look below, I have a thick bed of turnips that are growing.  I began pulling turnips, cutting up the turnip roots and feeding the greens and roots to the cows.

Some of the roots are the size of a baseball.  Others are small.  It doesn't matter.  The cows can't distinguish.  They eat them all quickly and beg for more.

The cows can eat in peace for the time being as the goats haven't picked up on the fact that I'm tossing turnips to the cows.  Otherwise, they'd be between the cows causing trouble.  The cows will inevitably toss them to the side with their big heads and necks and the goats go flying.  Seems like they'd learn, but no.

I appreciate you joining me today.  Maybe tomorrow if you're not doing anything, I could show you some other sights in this strange, alien winter wonderland?

Preparing for the Cold Weather

 “Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north.” 

                       Job 37:9

I believe with my whole heart that the Bible is inerrant, factual, and inspired by God.  I found a tidbit of truth this morning I put above.  Isn't that true?  In the last six months, we've had TWO whirlwinds (Hurricanes Laura and Delta) from out of the south and now we have icy cold coming out of the north.  Being southerners, we're prepared for hurricanes.  Winter ice storms?  Not so much.

We started preparing the best we know how, wrapping pipes, putting animals in the barn, installing heat lamps for the chickens, bringing potted plants indoors, and piling lots of firewood on the back patio.  This is one benefit I can think of of the hurricanes.  We now have more firewood than we can shake a stick at.  We'll burn it!

The next thing we began to do is harvesting the remainder of the oranges off of the navel orange tree.  Once we finished, we had about two 5 gallon buckets full.  We'll bring it inside and either eat it or make fresh squeezed orange juice.

One thing that concerns me is what the photo shows below.  Our orange trees were just about to bloom.  Temperatures could be down close to ten degrees.  We are not only worried about losing the blooms and thus, fruit for next year, but we're concerned about losing the trees!

We also picked the last grapefruit off the tree.  Our tree is young and only made 3 grapefruit this year.  We were rationing them and this is the last one.  We'll enjoy it, for sure.

Here are the blueberry bushes.  You'll notice the blooms are about to open on them.  Hmmm...  I pray we still have blueberries this spring!

Another good thing about hurricanes is that we have tarps.  Lots of blue tarps!!  I stretched them out over the plants (carrots, beets, brussel sprouts, spinach, lettuce, kale, kohlrabi, chard).  It may not save them, but it's the best we could do.

On this side, I covered the cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and onions.

Looking back toward the front of the garden, you can get an idea of just how much of the garden we were able to cover.  I hope it saves the vegetables.

After thinking about it, I made another last ditch effort to save some fruit trees by piling mulch deeply around the base of the plants.  I also put a couple of trash cans over the limbs of the grapefruit tree.

It will likely stay frozen from Sunday night through Wednesday.  Precipitation (sleet, ice, snow) is forecast for early this morning.  We rarely have weather as cold as this for this long.  We'll report back how we fared.  On the bright side, I DON'T HAVE TO DRIVE IN TO WORK TOMORROW!