Spring Garden in Late April (Part III)

Okay, I promise this is the last update on the garden in entirety.  I had forgotten to add a couple items.  First, let's look at some things I missed.  To the right, you'll see some birdhouse gourd vines that came up volunteer from last year's seeds.  Immediately to the left are a couple of butternut squash.  We LOVE to roast these bad boys and make a delicious soup.  So good!  To the far left (and all these vines mix together), are several spaghetti squash.  They'll vine all over the compost pile.  It will be a real hunt to find the ripened squash as those big leaves and vines will be all over the place.

I planted more melons at the north end of the potato patch.  Below, I have more butternut squash, some Hale's Best Cantaloupes, some Mini Cantaloupes, some Tahitian Melon Squash and Charleston Grey Watermelons.  These, if we're fortunate, will vine out into the yard.  (Less grass to mow.)

Here is the potato patch.  It is about 40 feet of Lasoda potatoes planted three across.  I planted about 8 pounds of potatoes.  They were looking beautiful a couple weeks ago, but they have an unhealthy yellowish color right now.  I'll get back to the potatoes in the minute.

Right in the middle of the potato patch, there is another (non-edible) crop that comes up year after year as they seed themselves.  I just let them grow.  They are zinnias.  They are multicolors.   Some pink:

Some orange, yellow and white.  I leave them growing as they add some beauty to the landscape of the garden.  You'll notice the potato patch is mulched deeply with oak leaves.  I'll turn these under to enrich the soil after the potato harvest.

Back to the potatoes.  This year I planted potatoes several weeks earlier than I normally do.  So I found the reason why the potato plants look like they are dying.  It is because the potatoes are almost ripe and the plants are about done!  I pulled back the mulch and exposed a mature red potato.  We'll be harvesting these in a couple of weeks.  Looking forward to it!

And one last thing.  I have one more late thing I'll be planting in the garden.  These are some tomatillos I planted very late.  It is my first time planting these so we'll see how it goes.  I like trying new things.  Some things we try we find we experience success.  Others, quite often, we fall on our face.  But that's okay.  We learn and we try again.

May your thumbs be green!

Spring Garden in Late April (Part II)

Back again.  Here is the second half of the garden update.  After the four rows of onions, we have two rows of tomatoes.  I had a catastrophe this year with all my planted tomato seeds.  I lost almost all of them.  I supplemented with (mostly) heirloom varieties that we purchased at a local nursery.

It won't be that much longer before we have red ripe tomatoes!

I have another row of corn.  This one is a shoepeg corn called "Country Gentleman."  I like that name.  The corn is a whitish color and it is sweet.  The weird thing about it is that the kernels aren't in uniform rows like most other corn.  the kernels are randomly spread.  I'll explain better with a photo once we harvest.

I have four varieties of okra planted this year: Clemson Spineless, Beck's Big Okra, Burgundy Okra, and Jing Orange Okra.  We ran completely out of okra this year before "gumbo season" was over.  Shame!  That won't happen again.

Here is a little plot of rainbow chard.  You can see how it gets its name.  The one with bright yellow veins and stems is hidden behind the other leaves.  The greens and stalks are sweet and very healthy.

From left to right in the photo below:

Amaranth!  Now, I've never grown or eaten this before, so this is a new thing.  It is supposed to be very healthy and a high source of protein.  I'm learning something new here.

Bull's Blood beets: We're harvesting beets almost every day now and eating them with every meal.  

Black Turtle Beans:  These will be over-running the beets soon.  We dry these and then make refried black beans.  We really like them with fresh-made tortillas!

And that about wraps up the garden, except for the potato patch and the melon patch.  Maybe I'll show you that next week?

Spring Garden in Late April (Part I)

Let's look at the spring garden, shall we?  This shot is looking from south to north.  It shows the garden in total, but you can't get a good idea of what exactly is growing.  To do that, after this photo, we'll start on the north end and work our way back south.  This photo does give a good indication of the Back to Eden Gardening method.  You'll notice a 4 inch layer of mulch is spread out over the entire garden, blocking out weeds and preserving soil moisture.

Against the fence we have a row of Lemon Queen sunflowers.  Then, hard to see, we have four eggplant and numerous pepper plants of all varieties.  There's also a parsley plant about to go to seed.

The very front of the garden is in a transitional stage.  You can see straightneck and crookneck yellow squash growing.  In the middle, you see lettuce from the fall crop that is going to seed.  I'm saving those seeds once fully dry.  Then I'll chop and drop the lettuce plant and mulch over it and the squash will occupy where the lettuce currently is.  There is some spinach that is going to seed on the right hand side of the photo.  I'll be saving those seeds, too.

One of the four hills of zucchini squash:

Black-eyed peas and a row of Stowell's Evergreen Sweet corn.

Contender Green Beans and Blue Lake Green Beans.

Italian Roma II Green Beans and then on the trellis, we have 3 types of cucumbers: Boston Pickling Cucumbers, Mademore Cucumbers and (just popping up) Suyo Long Cucumbers.

This crazy jungle is cilantro that is going to seed.  The coriander seeds it produces will self seed and once again, we'll have volunteer cilantro popping up next winter without having to plant.  I'm figuring something else to plant in this spot once the seeds drop.

Four rows of onions nearing harvest.  The varieties are Yellow Granex, Texas Sweet 1015, White, and Creole.

They are nice sized now and haven't finished growing yet.  Looks to be a good crop.

Tomorrow, we'll pick up with Part II.

Crab Boil on a Saturday Afternoon

On Saturday morning, Benjamin and Russ and my Dad headed down south on a crabbing trip.  It promised to be good Grandpa-grandson time, and I was very excited for them to go.  We haven't been on a family crabbing trip in a while and need to do it again.  I think THIS POST shows crabbing in action the last time we went.  Benjamin and his roommate in college have been going a lot.  They crab and take them back to their apartment, invite friends over and boil them.  

Bright and early they headed to the coast with string, chicken necks for bait, a net and an ice chest.  Crabbing is easy and fun.  You tie a neck to the string and toss it out.  The crabs grab the neck with their pinchers and the string tightens up.  The person holding the string gently pulls it in.  When the string gets close enough, the person with the net puts the net under the crab and pulls the crab in.  Russ is always good pulling the crabs in and Benjamin is an expert with the net.  In fact, we nicknamed him Benjamin "Net-an-yahoo" due to his prowess!

I called and checked on the crabbers mid-morning.  The wind was blowing hard and the crabs weren't biting like they had been in the past, but they still got about 20.  The crabs were big and pretty.

You don't want to get pinched by those pinchers!  We filled our boiling pot with water and added Crab Boil Seasoning and brought the water to a boil.  We added the crabs, potatoes, garlic, onions, lemons and eggs.

We let the crabs boil for 15 minutes and then cut the fire off and let them soak for 25 minutes.  Then it was time to eat!

The four of us wiped out all the crabs, potatoes and all the other fixings.  It was delicious!  

We will have to plan another crabbing trip again soon before it gets too hot!

Spring is Officially Here

Spring is a very, very short window around here.  It moves quickly into summer.  We're already seeing afternoon temps in the mid-80's.  We will enjoy the mornings in the 60's while we still have them, cherish them and relish them.  They will soon be a distant memory as the humidity rolls in.  Enough of that melancholy talk!

The plants are all sporting new growth and the very last tree in our area that puts on leaves are the pecan trees.  Some folks say that is how you can tell that spring has officially arrived.  Well, it is here.  The warmer weather has provoked the pecans to come out of dormancy.  They have quickly put out fresh, green growth and they'll soon be providing shade.  The cows, goats and chickens like to sit underneath them and nap.

The garden is quickly growing as well.  Everything is coming up aside from some Ozark Razorback Peas that I planted.  They were old.  I had saved them in 2012 and planted them this year to rotate my old saved seed inventory.  Well, due to their age, I only achieved about a 50% germination rate.  I'll likely fill in the gaps with a bunch more planted closely to use the old seed up and get a better stand.

The other peas and beans are popping up in every row.  I love to see seedlings popping up in an otherwise barren landscape.

From the cotyledons come fresh first true leaves that soon open in the sunlight.  Spring is an optimistic, hopeful time.  Each new day brings noticeable growth in the garden.

Along with the coming of the new, there is the finishing up of the old.  The fall crop is about gone.  The last of the dinosaur kale will be chopped and fed to the cows.  At this time of year, they get little bugs all over them.  The swiss chard is still producing well.  We have two more kohlrabi plants to harvest.

The last of the fall crop is the bull's blood beets.  You can spot them by their leaves that look like bulls bled all over them.  They are quite colorful in the garden contrasted with the green leaves of the beans growing nearby.

We have started harvesting them and Tricia cuts them up and roasts them in the oven.  A very tasty side dish, that's for sure.  We had pickled beets in a salad today and they were delicious!

Perhaps Sunday I'll post an update on the garden and show you what's growing and give a progress report on the spring garden.

On The Road Again

My new job affords me the opportunity to drive around and see plenty of countryside.  My assigned area is Allen Parish, Beauregard Parish, Calcasieu Parish and Jefferson Davis Parish.  Parishes are the same thing as counties in other states.  I drive through areas that are densely populated with pine trees and lots of logging is going on.  With lumber prices peaking, I guess the timber companies are cashing in on hopes of higher profits.

I also drive down gravel roads with rice fields and crawfish ponds as far as the eye can see.  Crop dusters fly overhead, putting down (very) expensive fertilizer on the growing crops.  Corn marks the rows and the sunlight catches the dewdrops on the growing leaves.  There's always something new to see.  I travel down south and see alligators basking in the sun in drainage canals and then back in rural areas where the trees envelope the road like a tunnel.

Many of the people I talk to are country folk and/or older people.  I enjoy spending a few minutes while I'm doing my work to talk to them.  For instance, last week I met with an older couple whose granddaughter had wrecked their car.  It was in a barn and was totaled, unfortunately.  I noticed some recently tilled ground in their yard, maybe two acres total and asked them about it.

They told me that they were in the process of planting okra.  They plant a variety of okra called Louisiana Longhorn.  They sell it by the bushel and no longer need to advertise.  News travels word of mouth and they get business from as far away as Texas.  Their okra must be picked every other day, and it is hot work and makes you itch.  They laughed and said they've done it for a long time and thought about quitting, but decided to do it again.  The gentleman told me that they get their grandchildren to come help them to teach them the value of hard work.  As much as the news broadcasts fear and doom and gloom, there are lots of good folk with old-fashioned values out there, I'm happy to report.

Some things I witness on my travels cannot be explained.  There is no one there to tell you the story.  The old abandoned farmhouse in the above photo makes me curious.  It is a well-built, two story farmhouse that has been abandoned for some time.  It is remarkable that it is still standing when modern homes lost roofs from our recent hurricanes.  The old farmhouse is flanked by rice fields and crawfish ponds and surrounded by old live oak trees and pecan trees.  The grass is grown up around it with cattails neck-high in the drain ditch in front of it.

What stories that house could tell?  It must have been a large family living there, perhaps to help working in the fields.  But what happened?  Did the family get out of farming and move to town?    It's a lonely place now.  The noise of kids playing that once filled the yard are now silent or replaced by the sound of bullfrogs.  I can imagine that the rain falling on the tin roof during spring rains lulled many to sleep in that old house.

The old house is still valiantly standing, but age and decay will soon take its toll, and it will crumble into the dirt beneath it.  I guess that is an appropriate analogy to what time and age does to our bodies!  I see a lot of sights as I'm driving on the scenic byways and windshield time gives me lots to think about.

Walkin' After Midnight

I didn't really go Walkin' After Midnight.  That's an old Patsy Cline song that I like, but something that happened made me think of that song.  It is quite a story and I'll tell you about it in tonight's post.  I try to have my head on the pillow between 10 and 10:30 pm.  I've got no problems sleeping, even if I drink coffee in the evening.  Since I made a job change, I've tried very hard to make some positive changes.  I'm 55 and as I age, I notice by metabolism slowing and find that things that in the past I would find easy - are now hard.  

One thing I've changed is I try to get between 7 and 8 hours of sleep each night.  I try also to eat better and make better food choices with smaller portion sizes and limit snacking between meals.  I mess up a lot, especially on holidays and family gatherings (and when special desserts are in the house!)  Another thing I try to do is walk every day.  I installed a step counter on my phone and my official goal is to walk 7,500 steps a day.  Unofficially, I aim for 10,000 steps since that is 4 miles.

Sometimes I hit the goal easily.  Other times, I find myself at the end of the day with only 2,500 steps.  That means I have to get going.  Right now, it's nice in the late afternoon.  It is still cool, low humidity, and no mosquitoes.  Soon that will change, but at least for the present, it is a nice time to walk.  I generally walk laps around the yard.  Most days, Tricia joins me and we talk while walking.  One lap is about 400 steps.  I can check out the animals, the garden, the trees, wave to neighbors, and see a pretty sunset while walking.

Daylight turns to dark quickly, though, and sometimes I'm out walking like last night when the sun goes down.  Tricia isn't keen on walking at night, so she goes in and turns on the floodlights for me so I can see without running into a tree or walking off into a ditch.

Last night's walk involved some excitement.  We had just returned from a family gathering.  It was nearing 10 o'clock and I was walking for a short while and about to call it quits.  I was about to the western furthermost part of the yard and about to turn back south when something caught my eye.

It darted out from the ditch and stopped right in front of me and lifted it's fluffy tail.  It was small, black with a white stripe.  A skunk.  Bête puante in Cajun French.  There was nothing I could do.  He sprayed, and I ran the other way.  It was not a direct hit, fortunately, but the wind was blowing and the smelly mist did get me.  I headed back to the house, opened the back door and Benjamin said, "Ugghh!  What's that smell?"  I told him and Tricia what happened and Tricia had me take my clothes off outside and head for the bathtub.  She told me that I may have to sleep in another room!  

I emerged from the bathtub smelling better.  My clothes, however, may have to be thrown away!  What an adventure.  This afternoon when we walked, Tricia made it very clear that she was going inside BEFORE it got dark.  I though that was a good idea and followed her indoors.

He Is Risen!

He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.  Matthew 28:6

image credit

Here at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, we trust that you had a Happy Resurrection Sunday.  He is Risen and because of Jesus' victory over sin, death and the grave, we have hope of eternal life.  Praise His Name!

From the Texas Line Back to Our Maker's Acres Family Farm on a Spring Day

I had a work assignment that led me out west to Starks, Louisiana.  Starks is pretty doggone close to Texas.  My wife was with me and I asked her how far the Sabine River was from our location.  She pulled up her map and said, "A half mile that way."  So we turned around and headed that way.  In no time at all we were on the bank of the Sabine River.  The sun was shining.  It was cool.  The current in the river was brisk.  Right on the other side is the State of Texas.

We made it back home, finished up with work and decided I would soak up a spring day just relishing the beauty of God's creation.  These were come oxalis that were blooming by the fence to the east of the pasture.  This is a bad weed in the garden, but it is beautiful if not growing in the garden.  I pulled these and fed them to the goats.  They were begging me for them.

Speaking of the goats, many years ago I planted some yellow iris along the border of the eastern fence.  My thought was that it would be a privacy fence.  Not so much for us but for the neighbors, so they wouldn't have to look at all the activity in the pasture all day.  Well, the goats had other plans, and I should have known better.  As soon as the iris came up, the goats devoured them.  The iris migrated to the east and now they form a border fence on the neighbor's property.  They are blooming now and are very pretty to look at.

Here is our Japanese Magnolia.  We call it Laura Lee's tree (our daughter).  It puts out blooms THEN puts on flowers.  I learned a valuable lesson from this tree.  We planted it in the side yard and planted it close to the sewer line.  Well, the roots clogged the drain line!

The previous photo highlighted the flower.  This one shows the entire tree.

Right next to the Japanese Magnolia is the Redbud tree.  Similarly, it puts on blooms BEFORE the big, heart-shaped leaves come out.

Here is a close up of the flowers.

Here is an African yellow iris.  Tricia planted this a couple years ago between the palm trees and has been waiting for it to bloom.  Well, it finally did!

Here is the red lily

And finally, the amaryllis.

Spring time is a beautiful time of year!  

Caught in a Trap

The cause of all trouble, the root of all sorrow, the dread of every man lies in this one small word - sin. It has crippled the nature of man. It has caused man to be caught in the devil's trap. - Billy Graham

We use an assortment of traps around here in order to catch predators, pests, and vermin.  We realize we're not going to be successful in eliminating every pest, nor would we want to.  There is a natural order of predator and prey.  For the most part this balance is important to the landscape.  For example, killing every single rat snake would eradicate the fear in the henhouse when collecting eggs and you find yourself eyeball to eyeball with a 6 foot snake eating eggs.  These snakes are harmless to humans, but can really scare you!  If you killed them all, your rat problem would be a huge.  

One must learn to pick your battles.  Squirrels, for example.  Playful critters, for sure.  Fun to watch in the yard.  However, the population of these "tree rats" has exploded here lately due to a favorable pecan and acorn crop.  I like having them around.  We do eat the occasional squirrel in a brown gravy.  If meat prices continue to rise, we have plenty of fresh squirrels for supper that are only a .22 long rifle bullet away.

The squirrels have really gotten emboldened lately.  Yesterday after church, one sat on our window sill and watched us eat lunch.  Very rude of the old fellow!  Then, after planting rows of snap beans, lima beans, corn and peas, something was digging up all the seeds!  The deal breaker for me occurred last week.  After planting all of the vegetables, I've gotten in the habit of planting two varieties of Sunflowers on the perimeter of the garden in the cinderblocks the border the picket fence.  I bent over and planted a 30 foot row of sunflowers.  Back breaking work, to be sure.

The next morning, imagine my dismay to see the sunflower seeds all dug up and eaten by our bushy tailed friends.  This was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.  I set a small cage trap right on top of the cinderblocks and baited it with (you guessed it) Sunflower seeds.  For three days - nothing.  Then, this morning, our friend's greed got the best of him.  Caught in a trap!

He realized what a pickle he was in.  There was no way out!

No amount of clawing against the cage would save him.  There is no parole from this incarceration.  Justice must be served.

I'll leave it to your imagination about what happened to Mr. Squirrel.  You might say he went on a long vacation from which he won't be returning.  You might say he was sent off to "summer camp."  For those with a soft spot for our furry friends, I'll spare you the macabre details.  I will, however, leave a clue.  This is our cat, Ginger, visiting the prisoner...

Visiting hours at central lockup are now closed.  There will be no more seeds dug up in the garden - at least not by this fellow.