Bumby's Beet Salad

We had a bumper crop of beets from the fall garden this past year.  The variety we plant is called "Bull's Blood" because even the leaves of the plant have dark red leaves, similar to the color of bull's blood, I suppose. This past week we harvested our last one.  We have been slicing them and roasting them in the oven on most nights.  So good!  We love beets, and they are supposed to be really good for you.

We have also pickled the beets, made beet kvaas, and borscht, but we were looking for other recipes to use up our bumper crop of beets. Tricia was talking to my Mom on the phone and got a recipe for a beet salad.  This beet salad brought back a lot of memories for us and we thought we'd share.  My maternal grandmother (we affectionately called her Bumby) always made this salad.  She was big on different types of salads: cucumber salad, plates with olives, pickled okra, pickled beets, peppers, etc. Her beet salad was one of my favorites.

We will call them "Bumby Beet Salad".

Peel, cut up, and boil beets with salt and pepper.  Drain them.  Then cover beets with white vinegar and boil again - add more pepper, if needed. 

Then set aside to cool.  This essentially pickles the beets quickly.  Tear up some lettuce in a bowl.

Add thinly sliced red or white onion and add cut up slices or chunks of beets.

Put it all in a bowl.

Mix with 1 or 2 Tablespoons of mayonnaise (blechhh! - I don't like mayo at all, but this salad is still good - I just don't think about the fact that I know it's in there!).

Stir it up and add additional seasoning, if needed.

The tangy pickled beets stand in contrast with the crunchy flavorful onions and crisp lettuce and provide a really nice side salad for any meal.  We have made several of these and have really enjoyed them.  Reminds me of Sunday meals after church at Bumby's house and puts a nostalgic smile on my face!

Elsie, the Heifer, At a Month and Three Weeks Old

I thought we'd catch you up to date on Elsie, our little heifer.  She's almost two months old.  We have had quite a few calves over the years, but we think she may be the prettiest.  Rosie and Clarabelle may beg to differ.  Elsie is inquisitive and frisky.  We watch her jump around the pasture, playing with the goats.  Then she lifts her tail high in the air and runs as fast as she can.  Our neighbor has told us that she enjoys watching all the animal activity.  Here's Clarabelle and Elsie in the pasture on a sunny afternoon recently.  The grass in the pasture still hasn't really taken off.  We are still supplementing with hay, but with the warm days, the grass will soon outpace the animals' eating.

Elsie is getting plenty of Clarabelle's good milk to drink.  In the late afternoon, we call the cows to the barn so that we can separate Elsie from her momma.  About a week ago, we would have to milk Clarabelle out as Elsie wasn't drinking everything.  Not anymore.  That girl is growing!  She's now drinking it all.  We separate and all night long Clarabelle is able to make milk for us.  In the morning we milk (Tricia during the week and I do it on weekends) and then put Elsie back with Clarabelle.  We don't milk hard in order to leave a little for Elsie, but Clarabelle holds back some.

When we open the gate, hungry Elsie rushes out and begin to ravenously suck on each of Clarabelle's four teats, switching from one to another until they are all empty.

Right now, Elsie is drinking primarily milk.  Her rumen is not fully functional yet.  Her rumen is a fermentation vat where her body breaks down food.  In about four months her rumen will be developed and then she'll be able to digest grass.

Until then, she'll continue to nurse, drinking Clarabelle's sweet milk.

A New Twist on Meatloaf and Mac 'n Cheese

I was fortunate enough to get a Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker for Christmas.  We've been playing around with different recipes.  I am a novice at smoking meat, and it is a learning experience (and experiment), but we're enjoying it.  After smoking a brisket, we decided to try something different - Smoked Meatloaf and Smoked Macaroni and Cheese.  I have been learning and getting recipes from Smoking-Meat.com.

The meatloaf was different from the start in that you laid out all the ground meat, seasonings, cheese, onions, and peppers flat on a pan and then proceeded to roll the meatloaf up.

Then you mold it into a loaf comme ça.

I got a charcoal fire going in the base of the smoker and earlier, I had gathered a bunch of pecan wood that had fallen from our trees.  I cut that into chunks and used pecan as the wood for smoking.  The meatloaf smokes for longer and goes on the bottom rack.  All you have to do is keep the temperature between 200 and 250, by checking the thermometer on the lid regularly and adjusting the vents, adding wood as needed. 

It started smelling good!  I had the cows eating in the yard.  I felt badly.  I think Rosie smelled it, too.  This was not soy or vegetable protein.  No sir, 100% beef - raised on that pasture right there.

The macaroni and cheese goes on the top rack.  It doesn't smoke for as long as the meatloaf.

Time to put the lid on and smoke.

After three hours and 45 minutes the meatloaf was looking real nice.

We cut into the meatloaf and observed a nice smoke ring.  The smoked macaroni and cheese was smoky and cheesy!

It was delicious.  I enjoyed it with a cold glass of smoked milk.  Just joking, of course.  We can't wait to try out some other recipes on the smoker.

Buried Treasure Beneath the Monkey Grass

Saturday afternoon I was looking for my wife.  I couldn't find her anywhere.  I checked out to see if she was with Cupcake, our little doeling who we are trying to get to walk.  Not there.  I called for her inside.  No dice.  I looked in the backyard and in the garden.  The little lady was nowhere to be found.  Finally, I opened the front door and there she was.  Tricia was on her hands and knees digging out monkey grass that was spreading out at the base of the oak trees.  Tricia and monkey grass are like oil and water or fire and ice.  They don't mix.  She had a big pile of uprooted monkey grass spread out in the yard.

While digging around in the bed pulling up the monkey grass, she told me she had unearthed an old cassette.  She had it laid by the sidewalk, so I took a look.

Well, I declare.  She had found an old Swamp Pop cassette from Cookie and the Cupcakes, Lil Alfred and Shelton Dunaway.  If you aren't familiar, Swamp Pop is a genre of music around here in Acadiana that mixes rock, country, rhythm and blues and French Louisiana styles of music.  The song that is the "anthem of Swamp Pop" is "Mathilda" by Cookie and the Cupcakes and was recorded in 1958.  The band was based in Lake Charles, Louisiana and the lead singer, Huey "Cupcake" Thierry, was born right down the road in Roanoke.

The funny thing is that we have a goat named Cupcake (name of the band) and another goat named Mathilda (name of the band's biggest song).  Strange!  How this old cassette came to be buried in the monkey grass bed, we'll never know.  The tape housing was full of mud and would never play, BUT, you are in luck.  If you wish to hear the song, Mathilda, from a recording on YouTube, here you go: (Go ahead and click the arrow...

Cool Beans!

This is the time of year that gardening is so rewarding.  The weather is still relatively cool.  It is not oppressively hot and humid yet.  The healthy green of the leaves is truly something to behold.  I stagger my planting of green beans to spread out the yield throughout the year after learning a technique from a good friend who used to go to church at our church prior to moving.  He told me that his Dad would plant snap beans staggered so that he had a green been harvest from spring through the fall.  Good idea!

As you can see there are some nice blooms on these Blue Lake Variety green beans.  I have some Contender variety planted as well, but the Blue Lake (named after the region in California where they were developed) beans are further along.

Pulling back the foliage from this neighboring plant, you can see beans of various sizes.  These green beans are prolific and require picking, once they start producing, just about every day so that you get them while they are still young and tender.

And here is the point where the dividends in the garden start paying off.  I pulled out some fresh-picked green beans and, it just so happens, the finest accompaniment to green beans were just harvested and ready.  I'm talking about new potatoes.  I just harvested these last week.  I pulled out the small ones - those a little smaller than a golf ball, to cook with the green beans.  

Fresh green beans, new potatoes, butter and a little salt.  You've got yourself a delicious side dish!

As they keep coming in, we'll eat some, give some away, and blanch and freeze the rest.  I'll also get another row planted in order to keep the bountiful green bean harvests coming in.

Breaking Elsie

Each night we go to the barn and separate Clarabelle from Elsie.   We bring Clarabelle into the barn and little Elsie follows, kicking up her heels, frisky and free.  We do this to separate the calf from the momma cow so WE have milk in the morning.  In past weeks (Elsie is now a month and two weeks old), I was bringing a bucket into the barn and milking at night, too.  Those days are gone.  Elsie is growing and as she grows, her demand for milk has grown.  Now in the evenings, she's taken ALL of the milk.

We feed Clarabelle before turning her out to the pasture.  Elsie stays in the barn behind the gate for the night.  Before we leave and while Clarabelle is eating, we get a little breaking halter out.  Elsie is not fond of it.  We put it around the back of her head and over her nose.

The way it works is that the more she pulls against it, the tighter it pulls around her nose, jaw, and head.  As I said, it is uncomfortable for her.  In the initial few times we did it, she was very dramatic.  She would pull against it and flop down on the ground.  Such drama!

With her head in the breaking halter, we tie the other end to a post in the barn - a strong post that doesn't move.  I read one time that when an elephant is a baby, a trainer will put a chain around its leg and tie it to a post.  The baby elephant tries and tries to break free, but can't.  When the elephant grows up, the chain is around its leg tied to a stake in the ground that could be easily pulled out, but the elephant doesn't even try.  The elephant learned as a baby that it is futile.  That's very sad, if you think about it.

We use a similar philosophy with Elsie and the breaking halter tied to the post.  The idea is that she'll learn after pulling against the post for quite some time, that it is futile.  She must be taught that the post is stronger than she is.  She eventually learns this.  For the time being, she'll pull and pull.

We gently rub her neck and behind her ears, talking to her gently.  Eventually, she doesn't pull as tightly against the post and allows some slack in the rope.  It is more comfortable for her, she learns, if she doesn't pull against it.

What we're trying to achieve, and will eventually get there, is for her to be able to be led on a rope without fighting and pulling against us.  I can identify with Elsie in some sense.  I can be hard headed and stubbornly pull against metaphorical lead ropes in my life on most days!  It is easier to halter break a calf when they are young.  We will keep working with her until she gets it.  I am confident she will.

The Tale of Cupcake, Our Disabled Goat

On February 27th Cupcake was born to Agnes.  Agnes is part Nubian and part LaMancha.  It was a happy day.  Cupcake was the first doeling born this early spring and was Agnes' first baby.  All seemed good.

Except there was a problem.  Cupcake's two front legs were disabled.  One leg was locked at about a 60 degree angle and the other was locked at a 40 degree angle.  They would not straighten out!  No matter how much we pulled, the tendons were just too tight.  It hurt Cupcake to try to fix her.  I hated to even post about it.  When difficulties arise and problems surface, sometimes it's hard to write about them, so I've been a little silent on Cupcake up to this point.  So Tricia read that this condition is caused by a Selenium deficiency.  We first got Selenium paste and then gave injections.

But here we are 2 and a half months down the road and no progress.  Tricia works with Cupcake daily, doing physical therapy on her, trying to pull the legs straight, but we were seeing no improvement.  All the other goats are out on the pasture, but poor cupcake crawls on her knees and can't join the others.  It is sad and pitiful to watch.  The other goats sense her handicap and are very mean to her.  Even though my wife is very attached to her, she confided in me that we might have to butcher her.  Tricia said, "Let's give it one more try."  

She cut a paint roller in half and used that to make a splint.  Using "Dragon Skin" duct tape, over the course of a week, she was able to move the leg frozen at the 60 degree angle to straight by slowly tightening the tape to pull the leg straight with the splint on either side of the leg!  It is now straightened out (though bow-legged).  The other leg is a different story.  Because it is bent at less than a 45 degree angle, it is very hard to pull it straight, but she's working on it.  Here is Cupcake with her splints on:

Because Cupcake can no longer crawl around on her knees like she was doing, she is even LESS mobile.  It is sad.  She lays in the barn in the corral.  Her momma, Agnes, comes and gives her encouraging words.

"Dr" Tricia and her little patient have a lot of work remaining, but we've seen remarkable progress in a week.  Today, Cupcake was standing on her front splinted leg!  That is a first.  She clumsily was trying to walk on it, but was having difficulty.  If we could get that other leg a little more straightened out, she would be able to get around better.

Cupcake still has a long road, but we feel good about her prognosis now and have taken the slaughterhouse option off the table, I think.  I'll report back on her continued improvement.  I think as she gets more practice, she'll get around great.  Even if the other leg is unable to be straightened, we can just change her name to "Tri-pod" and all will be well.

Digging Spuds in the Mud

With a week's worth of rain in the forecast, I figured it would be a good idea to dig up our potatoes.  No sense in letting them get this far and then have them all rot in the ground, right?  When we ran out of room in the garden, I put in a 45 foot bed in the side yard.  Why raise St. Augustine grass when you can raise something on that same ground that you can eat?  The soil, at first, was poor.  Hard and compacted.  Not an earthworm in sight.  Now, after several years of growing potatoes, purple hull peas, blackeyed peas, and squash while incorporating loads of organic matter, the ground is soft, teeming with earthworms and fertile.  The potatoes are mulched with chopped up live oak leaves to suppress weeds and maintain soil moisture.  Once the crop is harvested, I'll turn all the leaves under and prepare for the next crop.

Here is part of the bed I'm talking about.  You can see the potato plants along with a beautiful Lemon Queen Sunflower that grew up volunteer from last year.  No weeds - just potato plants and mulched oak leaves.

Behold the Lemon Queen Sunflower.  How beautiful!  Here is reason # 4532 of How I KNOW there is a God.  Look intently at the center of the sunflower.  Observe the symmetry, the design, the order of the seed head of the sunflower.  It is mesmerizing.  It is like spirals folding into one another.  Design like that doesn't happen by chance!  Just for fun, if I went out and through out seeds, what are the chances that I could create a design like the center of this sunflower?  Slim to none?  Zilch.  Nada.  Zero.  A design like this requires a designer.  Creation like this requires a creator.

I dug up all the potatoes in the lower part of the garden.  We had gotten a lot of rain last week and the thick layer of leaves kept the soil moist and muddy in most places. As I pulled the plants up with garden forks, I pulled up a nice, big crate of potatoes.  Some, however, had already begun to rot in the ground.  Most, fortunately, were good.

As I pulled up the plants to expose the potatoes, I raked the leaves back over the soil.  I wish I would've taken a photo of all the fat earthworms.  A few years ago, this ground was devoid of earthworms.  We harvested potatoes of all shapes and sizes.  Here is one that fits nicely in the palm of your hand - baseball-sized.

Here are a couple that are smaller.  I like to cut these in half or in quarters and cook in butter with fresh-picked green beans.  Perfect!

The key to preserving these potatoes where they won't immediately rot is to NOT WASH THEM.  Lay them out where there is good air flow and let them dry off.  Once dry, bring them inside in a dark location and they will last for a couple months.  I've even been able to keep a few for seed potatoes to plant again in early August.

It wasn't a bumper crop, but six pounds of seed potatoes made more than a ten-fold increase and that isn't counting the potatoes that rotted in the ground or the eight feet row that I still have to harvest.  After a bunch more rain today, I better get out there tomorrow after work and dig the rest of them up!

Giving and Living

Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.  Luke 6:38

I want to tell a quick story, a testimony, really, of people God has put into our lives that live out the verse I have in red-letter just above.  We sing a hymn at church, "Count your Blessings, Name Them One by One," and to tell you the truth, God has showered us with so many blessings, I can't count that high!

First, my Mom & Dad and my Mother-in-law.  They are constantly so generous and thoughtful - not only to us, but to others as well.  They give until it hurts.  Sacrificially.  Gifts, money, advice, labor.  Always there.  What great role models and examples of Christian generosity!  It would be more than enough if it stopped there, but it doesn't.

The other day, I was in the kitchen after working outside.  I was filthy.  Hot, sweaty and dirty.  There was a knock at the door.  I opened the door and was surprised by someone from our church that makes delicious sweet dough fruit pies and had driven out to deliver an assortment of little tarts for us.  On another day, a lady from our church dropped off a tray of homemade cinnamon rolls.  

Later that week, another knock.  Our next door neighbor sets hoop nets on the bayou.  He had run his nets and caught 487 pounds (you read that right!) of catfish and wanted to share some with us.  He gave us a bag with 10 pounds of cleaned, skinned catfish, ready for frying or making a courtboullion!

 Later I was in the back yard checking on the potatoes and a gentleman came walking into the backyard with a bowl of fresh-picked blackberries.  Juicy and sweet!  He just wanted to share his bounty with us.  Just take a look at these bad boys:

These are some of the biggest blackberries I've ever seen in my life!

A couple days later a gentleman from our church drove up the driveway in his pickup truck.  He got out with a bag of fresh picked yellow squash and zucchini!

His "garden" is really a field.  He grows for his family, his church family, and really for the whole community.  He didn't just stop at our house.  He was making his rounds, sharing his crop with others.  And so it goes.   

Both my family and I have been beneficiaries of the goodness of people that God placed in our lives - people that have mastered the art of holding onto things loosely, with open hands, and sharing with others.  We are truly blessed, and I aspire to learn to be more giving to others by following the example they have set.  God is so good!  

“I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.”  Acts 20:35

Onions! 2021 Harvest Notes

Our onion crop, up to this point (and I stress up to this point), looks real good.  The best we've ever had!  Now, we just have to get to the finish line.  With garlic and with onions, we have noticed that our warm, humid days and nights wreak havoc on them.  They grow really well, but once harvested, they tend to get soft, not cure, and rot!  It is discouraging to grow something for months only to have things fall apart after harvest when you are trying to store the onions.

In the photo below, you can see some of the crop of onions.  We planted three varieties: Texas Sweet 1015, White Onions, and Creole Onions.  When the green tops of the plant bend over, the bulb will not grow any more.  It has reached its full potential.  I pull them at this point.  If they don't bend over, I wait until the onion tops start to brown, then I pull them.

As they were growing, I kept them covered with mulch to discourage weed pressure which compete for fertility with the onions.  Once they get a little older, I pull the mulch and dirt away from the onions.  I learned that if you don't do this, your onions will not bulb.

The onions were all nice, but some of them were very nicely sized.  Here is a big, fat Texas sweet that I can't wait to eat!

Once I pull them, I shake the dirt off of the roots and lay them to dry on a screen to allow air flow all around them.  

Once they've dried like this for a couple days, I bring them to the patio where we have an old shelf that we stack the onions on.  We position a box fan underneath them and a ceiling fan above to blow air on them constantly to help them dry quickly.  It is important to keep your eye peeled so that you catch any onions that are getting soft.  For those we put them in the fridge and quickly eat them before they go bad.

We hope to get most of them dried where they will be shelf stable for a couple months while we eat them.  For the rest, we'll chop them up and freeze them for future use in almost everything we cook!

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave, When we practice to deceive.  But we're not deceiving anybody.  Today, I want to show you a method called the Florida Weave.  It's not a dance or a hairdo.  I don't know why it's called that.  It was probably developed by a Floridian.  What it is is a successful, easy method for keeping tomatoes upright.  No more stakes.  No more cages.  I learned this from the Internet many years ago and have used this technique ever since.

Let's take a look...  You need just a few items:  some sort of anchor points - I use metal t-posts, and some twine - I use the baling twine that I salvage from the round bales of hay we feed the cows.  I have approximately 15 foot long rows.  I drive a t-post into the ground on each end of the row and then one in the middle.

When your tomatoes are approximately 8 inches tall, you are ready to begin the Florida Weave.  It is a little hard to explain, so I'll describe and then show a few photos.  First, tie off the twine to a t-post on the end.  Pull the twine and zig-zag in and out of each tomato until you reach the center post.  Pull tight and tie off.  Then, continue zig-zagging in and out until you reach the end.  Pull tight and tie off.  Then, continue back the other way, doing the same thing, except go on the OPPOSITE side of the tomato than you did on the first pass.  Pull tight and tie off.

Let's look at some photos:  In this one, you can see how the twine is supporting the tomato plant.

This photo illustrates how the tightly pulled twine around both sides of the plant effectively holds the plant up.  Weave in.  Weave out.

As often as you wish, repeat the steps above as the tomato plant grows.  I run new twine and do the Florida Weave about every 6 to 8 inches.  While I'm doing it, it gives me a great opportunity to check out the health of the plant and pull all the 'suckers' off that are growing in the "elbows" of the tomato plant.

Firm supporting anchors like t-posts with twine pulled tight, enables a supporting skeleton structure for the tomato plants.  I plant indeterminate tomatoes, but this would work with determinates as well, I would think.

As the 'maters start growing, you'll need a stout supporting structure to hold up the weight of the fruit.

Won't be too much longer!  Oh, one more thing, you can add extensions to your t-posts and continue weaving as high up as you can reach.  My hat's off to the developer of the Florida Weave.