The Garden in the Side Yard

Years ago after running out of room in the garden, I incorporated part of the lawn into what I call "the garden in the side yard."  I've been amending lots and lots of composted leaves and wood chip mulch and have improved the soil immensely.  We have 112 potato plants growing in this patch along with watermelons, cantaloupes and butternut squash on the very end where they can vine out.  You can't see them yet as they are just germinating, but I planted some Lemon Queen sunflowers in a long row alongside the potatoes.  The flowers are for the bees.  To the left, we have our muscadines and our thornless blackberries.

Just to the south is a small raised bed we call our herb garden.  It did not fare so well in our big freeze.  Our rosemary was probably at least 5 years old.  It is dead.  I've already planted another in its place since this photo was taken.

We thought the oregano was finished as well, but we were surprised and happy to see it coming back!

One thing that's not coming back is our Lemongrass.  The freeze finished it off, for sure.  It had made it for years and years, coming back in the spring, but not this spring.  I replanted some from some seed I had saved but none germinated.  I'm trying again with some purchased seed.  We'll see if we can get it growing.  We made a lot of lemongrass tea from this plant.  Hoping we can get another growing to take its place.

The two plants in the background are parsley that came up from seed.  It's very healthy and we use it often in cooking.  When it bolts, we'll let it go to seed again.  Then maybe it will come up again next year from seed.  

The two plants in the foreground are celery that Tricia started from the base of a store bought celery.

Finally, this plant.  This is an herb that is new to us.  We planted it from seed last year and it came up on its own again this spring.  It's French Sorrel.  I had never eaten it.  We really are enjoying it and eat some almost every day.

We'll pick about 10 leaves off of it and put on a slice of toasted homemade sour dough bread.  We then put a fried egg on top with a slice of provolone cheese topped with sliced avocado and another slice of sour dough bread.  It makes a great sandwich!

The Horses Next Door

"I can't think of nothing better than riding a fine horse into a new country." - Capt. Augustus McCrae

About 100 yards to the east of our home, is a beautiful pasture bordered with a white fence, filled with green grass, yellow flowers, with red barns as a backdrop.  There's also four beautiful horses that call that place Home.  They aren't our horses (unfortunately).  Our five acres is just not big enough for a horse, although we've always wanted one.

Now that the days are getting longer and the weather is still quite nice, we've been walking every afternoon along the road that runs east.  Rice fields and crawfish ponds border the road.  Ducks fly over the road as we walk and splash down in a pond with cypress trees growing on the edges.  It is a truly peaceful time.

The horses are curious with our presence and come to greet us.  They are big and strong and they gallop up to the fence.  We pet their soft noses and smell their "horse" smells.  

We had our dog, Belle, with us and they were very interested in her.  She's always been the biggest animal around.  I think she was intimidated by their size and didn't want to come near them.

For a very long time we watched the show, "Heartland" on TV.  It's about a girl up in Canada named Amy Fleming who had a gift with horses.  She had a keen ability to connect with them and train them. 

Of the four, the one with the white stripe was the most friendly.  Seems like the buckskin took a particular liking to Tricia.

The sun was setting so we needed to get home.  We promised them that tomorrow we'd bring some carrot tops for them to eat from some carrots that we need to harvest.  Maybe one day if we could get just a little more land, we could get a horse of our own.  Who knows?

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

"Let sleeping dogs lie" is an old saying that means leave things as they are.  Don't go stirring things up that are better left alone.  There's a lot of wisdom in that.  It can also be meant in the literal sense.  Belle was sleeping out in the garage.  She must have been deep in REM sleep.  She never even heard me.  That big 'ol girl was sprawled out on the cool pavement on her back.  When someone (beast or person) is sleeping so soundly.  It is best to leave them be!

But that doesn't mean that everyone's napping.  We've been busy.  We've learned new skills in beekeeping and we'll be opening the hive in another week to see if the queen is laying.  Can't wait!  Spring time means the hens are laying lots of fresh eggs.  Daily production has doubled and we've been eating lots of eggs.

Tricia boiled a bunch and pickled a gallon and a half of them.  It'll be a nice snack.  We're allowing them to sit a while in the spices so they are flavorful.  There's some jalapenos and garlic in there, along with the other seasonings.

The cabbage crop has all been harvested.  Once it starts warming up, it's time to pick them.  The snails wreak havoc with the heads of cabbage.  I picked them all and we've had cole slaw a bunch of times as well as cabbage sweated down in a cast iron skillet and a deconstructed cabbage roll dish with sausage.  This weekend we cut up a bunch of cabbage and carrots, mixed with ground beef and spices and made homemade egg rolls.  We ate until we couldn't eat another one.

This strange looking thing is something new we tried.  Dehydrated cabbage.

First time we've ever tried putting cabbage in the dehydrator.  After completely dehydrated, we store in mason jars and will add to soups and such.

Almost forgot to mention that we made homemade Sauer kraut.  We put the jars in the back of the fridge.  The longer you let it sit, the better it gets.

I trust your spring is going well?

Cranked Up the Lawn Mowers Today

This is a post I do most every spring.  Don't mean to bore anyone with it.  We do have a zero turn riding lawnmower.  It's a Bad Boy brand.  I have on my to do list to purchase a filter and some oil and change it before mowing the yard this year.  I still have a while to go before I mow, so I can put off changing the oil for another month.

The yard is full of white dutch clover, african violets, and many other weeds that I can't identify.  Lots of white, purple and yellow flowers in abundance for our honey bees.  Instead of cranking up the Bad Boy mower, I set Rosie, Elsie, and LuLu free in the yard to mow the grass for me.  They save gas, allow me to do other things, and they provide 'fertilizer to the lawn.

The photo below shows all three of them in a tight line doing 'precision mowing.'  They're just lined up and raring to go!  You can notice that I have some step-in posts in the ground with an electric fence line strung on it.  I break the lawn up into paddocks that I estimate that the cows can mow down nicely in one 6 hour time period.

The electric fencing is on a ratcheting reel that allows for quick deployment as well as rolling up.  Our Gallagher solar charger keeps the fencing energized.  Dad let me borrow a tester to determine if the fence was "hot" or not.  All of the lights were lit up, signifying the charger's intensity.  We were a bit concerned about putting Elsie and LuLu out as they've never been outside the pasture.  They are not accustomed to the electric fence.  Rosie knows it well and she's accustomed to it.  She respects it, you might say.  I watched them as soon as I put them in there.  First, Elsie reached over to eat on a shrub outside the perimeter.  She leaned in and touched the electric line.  POP!  She jumped backward.  Same thing happened a few minutes with LuLu.  Now they know.

The mowers did their jobs, effortlessly, quietly, and happily.  The photo below shows you how you know the mowing is done.

At the end of the day, with the sun setting, the mowing is deemed complete when you see the mowers sitting down.  You then simply turn off the electric fence charger and move the cows back into the pasture.  Then you move the fencing to the next paddock.  Rinse, wash, and repeat until the whole yard is mowed.  We do this a couple of times before mowing with the machine in late April or early May.

A New Kid for Agnes

Agnes' due date, according to what we had marked on our calendar, came and went.  We watched as her bag grew to large dimensions.  We were a little concerned, but she seemed to be acting normally.  Agnes is the only goat on the place that has horns.  She uses them to her advantage and bosses all the other animals around.  The only goat she gets along with is her doeling, Mocha, pictured below with all the spots.

This past weekend, when I went out to the barn to check on things, I found Agnes had just given birth to two kids.  The female was standing up and was already nursing when I arrived.  The male, however, was not.  He was a lot smaller than the female and had not gotten on his feet yet.  Agnes was licking him and getting him cleaned up.

Agnes continued grooming her kids, and I worked on getting the little buckling up.  He was so weak.  I put him on Agnes' teat, but he barely had a sucking reflex.  I even milked Anges out and tried giving him a bottle.  That didn't work either.  The doeling, on the other hand, was nursing like nobody's business.  Agnes went into labor again and delivered the placenta.  She promptly ate it.  That's what goats and cows do.

The little doeling has wattles, like Agnes.  Wattles are dangling 'tails' of skin that hang off of the neck of some goats.  The doeling's wattles are both black with white tips.  Scientists don't know what the purpose of wattles is.  They just dangle and look cute.

I would like to be able to give a happy report about the little buckling, but I can't.  I made my way out to the barn more times than I can count, trying to get the little fellow to stand or at least nurse on his momma.  But it was no use.  I began noticing that he was getting colder and colder.  Finally, the last time I went to work with him, I found him dead in the hay.  This is part of it.  We've gotten used to it.

The doeling is quite healthy.  She is spunky and strong.  She looks like she has white tube socks on her legs, with one sock being pulled up high and the other slouching lower.  She also has a white stripe running between her eyes and down to her nose.

She has a pink nose!  This is the first goat we've had with a pink nose.  Tricia said it makes her look like a bunny, so she named her "Bunny."  I think she likes her name.  In the photo below it looks like she's smiling!

Day by day she gets stronger.  Soon we'll be able to milk Agnes and Bunny will share some of the milk with us.  Until then, she's drinking a lot!

We keep our eyes on ol' Bunny.  The other animals, especially LuLu and Elsie, the heifers, are very curious.  They come and check Bunny out and like her with their long sandpaper-like tongues.  They are a little too rough with Bunny.  Agnes and Bunny sat down near the garden on a beautiful early spring day and soaked in the pleasant surroundings.

Welcome, Bunny, to Our Maker's Acres Family Farm!

A Land Flowing With Milk And (Hopefully) Honey

We mentioned in previous posts that we've been attending beekeeping classes.  We've learned a lot, but beekeeping is like learning to ride a bike.  At some point, you've got to stop watching and listening and start doing.  To that end, a friend let us borrow an old box with three frames that he wasn't using.  We put it out on the trampoline.  You can see that a few bees smell the wax that's on the frames and they are flying around, checking things out.  Hopefully, those are scout bees checking out a new piece of real estate and ensuring that this new home has "curb appeal."

To catch a wild swarm, I learned that you should place the box about 10 feet off the ground.  I put in on top of a ladder and used a ratchet strap to tie it down.  I wouldn't want it to blow off in the wind or be knocked off by Belle.  We took a drop or two of Lemongrass essential oil and put it on a cotton ball and put it in the box.  Bees love that scent.  You have to be careful, though.  We learned that while the worker bees love it, the queen does not.  A couple of bees found the box!  Followed by a couple dozen.

We checked out the box in a short while and there were a lot of bees flying around.  We were praying that they had little suitcases with them and were moving in.

I took a short video of them flying around.  You can hear them buzzing and also the rooster crowing in the background...  Click the arrow below to watch.

We checked on the box a little while later.  There weren't as many flying.  Maybe the queen never came?  Maybe they didn't like the box and moved on?  I figured I would check.  I didn't put the full bee suit on, but put on just the veil and gloves.  The plan was that I would remove the ratchet strap, open the top and see if there were any bees in the box.

When I took the lid off, there was a WHOLE BUNCH of bees inside!  I called a friend and he brought another box with 9 frames and a telescoping lid.  Our plan was to take the top off of the box of bees, set the deep box with frames on top of it and lift the bottom box off the bottom board and insert a queen excluder.

The excluder keeps your queen from escaping.  The workers can go where they please, in and out, but the queen can only move between the two boxes, laying eggs and building her colony.

So we went about doing just that.

Soon, we were finished!  We got the excluder on and the box set up just the way we wanted.  

Bees don't fly at night.  We decided to put the bees in the wagon.  As soon as nightfall came, all the bees came 'home' and into the box.  Since none were flying, I pulled the wagon full of bees out to the location where we are placing the hive.  We will set it down on top of some cinder blocks.  We're really excited!  Tomorrow we plan on buying some additional boxes and set out some more swarm traps.  We'd like to catch some more.  We will open the box of bees in a couple of weeks and inspect in order to see if we see eggs/brood.  We will keep you posted.

Pistol Bridge

The Calcasieu River Bridge is often talked about as the "scariest" bridge in Louisiana.  Our state, because it has a lot of water, has lots of bridges.  This bridge goes over the Calcasieu River in Lake Charles is in need of replacement.  It was built in 1952 and has exceeded it's lifespan.  I drive over the bridge almost everyday.  There is no shoulder, it is steep, and you can count on someone's vehicle breaking down 7on the bridge and causing traffic delays.

Those delays will put you and your vehicle at a standstill while you wait for the wrecker to come clear the vehicle off of the roadway.  While you are waiting, there's plenty to look at.  I'm told that when this bridge was built, the builders were interested in more than simply moving the traveler over the water.  They wanted the bridge to be pretty and have a distinctive artistic flair.  

While I was in a traffic jam the other day, I had the opportunity to look at this "artistic flair" up close and personal.  The Calcasieu River Bridge in Lake Charles has crossed flintlock derringer pistols.  These are the types of pistols that pirates used.  Pirate Jean Lafitte sailed around this area.  Supposedly there is gold hidden in one of the many bayous.  There are 5,286 pair of these pistols on the bridge.

There's probably not that many anymore, though.  Numerous vehicles have hit the railing, knocking the pistols off of the bridge and into the water far below.

From what I understand, they are trying to raise money to replace the bridge (before it falls into the water far below as well.)  As I was looking at the pistols on the bridge, I was thinking that it would be neat to have a pair as a souvenir.  When the bridge is finally torn down and replaced, I'm thinking that perhaps they could auction off some of the pistols to locals who would want a nice conversation piece to frame and hang over the mantel.

Freeze Warning on March 19th

In a really unusual happening, we have a freeze warning tonight.  As I type this, temps are predicted to get down to 31 degrees tonight and stay that way for several hours.  That would put a severe hurting on our garden.  We have every single thing planted in the garden with the exception of blackeye peas, purple hull peas and Ozark razorback peas.  We did our best to protect them, but we won't know where we stand until tomorrow afternoon.

We have saved a big inventory of landscape pots, 5 gallon buckets and tarps.  This afternoon, with temps in the 50's I got to work.  The number one task was tomatoes.  I have about 50 tomato plants that range in height from 6-12" tall.  I covered them up with buckets/pots and did the same with the peppers.  Then I stretched a large tarp over the snap beans and then over most of the tomatoes that were covered with buckets, hoping the extra layer of insulation would help.  Some of the tomatoes have blooms on them!  I covered the cucumbers as well.  They're located on the bottom left under the trellis.  Some items, like carrots can withstand a freeze so they needed no protection.

On the backside of the garden, I covered all of the squash, okra, eggplant, tomatillos, basil and butterbeans.  The onions should be fine without any covering.  I was a little concerned that the wind would blow the pots off of the plants, so on some of them I placed sticks or dirt clods on top to weigh them down.  As it turns out, as soon as the sun set, the winds diminished, so the weights weren't necessary.

I moved to the bed in the side yard and covered all 112 potato plants as well as the butternut squash, cantaloupes and watermelon plants.  Planting this early was somewhat of a gamble, but the Farmer's Almanac showed the average last spring frost date for our zip code was March 1st.  A freeze this late is an outlier indeed.

Rushing to plant everything this early is a risk; however, sometimes it pays off as you begin harvesting prior to the onslaught of pest pressure.  After we finished covering everything, I told Tricia that we did what we could.  If we lose everything, we'll just replant.  We'll see how it goes.

Save Our Hens!

If you were following, we put 42 of our eggs on the incubator and 25 hatched out.  We have lost quite a few birds lately to predation.  Of the 25 that hatched, 5 of them did not make it.  The 20 that remain are doing well and are growing.  Odds tell you that of the 20, about half will be egg laying hens to replenish our flock.  and the other half will be made into gumbo, ha ha!

Ten hens doesn't quite replace what we've lost lately.  I think we've lost five alone in the last two weeks.  So on March 10th, I put another 42 fertilized (I hope) eggs on the incubator.  I think they are fertilized.  It is springtime and the roosters have been very... let's say romantically inclined out in the pasture.  We'll have more chicks hatching out on March 31st.  

So what is killing our hens?  I can't say for sure.  Something nocturnal.  All the deaths are at night.  We find the carcass in the morning.  The bird's carcass is intact, but the head is missing.  A neighbor stopped by today and told me he lost 30 of his hens to MINKS.  He told me that he through the headless chickens in a cage trap and the mink came back to eat the chicken and that's how he caught them.  I don't know what's killing ours, but I aim to stop it with a two-pronged attack.

First, since they are killing at night, we've begun locking up all our hens in the henhouse at dusk.  I worked on the hinges to a little side door so that it opens and shuts.  You can see the door in the photo below behind LuLu.  The hens go into the door each evening and we walk out there, check to see that none are out, and then we close the door up behind them.  Safe and secure for the night.  A mandated curfew, you might say.

I also set another cage trap in the woods behind the hen house.  Almost immediately I caught a possum.

He's got to go.

But the more I read about it, possums don't eat the head off of chickens.  That's more the calling card of raccoons and minks.  Those are harder to trap than the poor, hapless possum.  We've added another layer of defense.  Besides locking the hens up and setting traps, we're placing Belle, our Great Pyrenees dog, out by the barn every night to keep her eyes on things.

Chicken feed is expensive.  Eggs are expensive.  We can't afford to have predators take our hens.

An Afternoon Out at the Farm

Last Saturday I got to thinking that before long it will be hot and humid.  The mosquitoes would be attacking and summer would be on.  We'd better enjoy the nice weather while we could.  I loaded up my smoker and all the accoutrements for a picnic and headed to Oberlin.  Dad and Mom agreed to meet Tricia, me and Benjamin at the farm on the old homeplace.  We got the smoker going and we sat out in lawn chairs and visited.  The weather was nice, but it was a little windy. 

The menu for the day was smoked meatloaf, smoked macaroni 'n cheese, and salad with strawberries and walnuts.  Here is the meatloaf right when it is going on the smoker.

I must admit, we were ready to eat when it came off so I didn't get an 'after' shot.  However, I've linked the recipe from a previous post in 2021:  Recipe for smoked meatloaf  I like it.

The old live oak tree could tell a lot of stories I'm sure.  I remember 50 years ago climbing up in its branches covered in resurrection fern.  It was huge back then.  No telling how old it is.  It has had a big hole in the middle of it for as long as I can remember.  When I was younger, we watched a mama red fox raise her babies in the hole of the live oak.

Right behind the old oak was where the old homeplace was.  That's where my grandpa was raised.  There was a water well off to the side of the house and a big persimmon tree that made big orange persimmons we'd eat.

Here is the macaroni and cheese about to go in the smoker.  The mac 'n cheese only needs to go on the smoker for an hour or so.

Here it is coming out of the smoker.  Delicious!  We gobbled it down. 

With everything off the smoker, it was time to eat.  Dad moved his truck to block off the wind and we set up the table right next to it and began to eat.

We visited until the sun went down.  By then the smoker had cooled down and we could load it in the back of the car and drive back to Jennings.  What a peaceful, relaxing, and enjoyable day spent with people you love and good food.