A Little Hot Stuff

We grow a lot of peppers.  All different types.  Jalapenos, Criolla Sellas, Anaheims, Sweet Bells.  We start them from seeds in early January.  Once it cools off in the fall before it freezes, the peppers have a last burst of productivity.  We harvest and freeze lots of them.  We dry them and make chili powder.  One thing we did this year was dried jalapenos and then ground it up to make Jalapeno Pepper powder.  It's good for adding to anything like you would black pepper.  This just has an added punch to it.

We also like hot sauce.  We like Crystal Hot Sauce and Tabasco Sauce.  Benjamin and I decided to make our own Jalapeno Hot Sauce this year.  We gathered all of our ingredients:  Jalapeno peppers (1 pound freshly picked), 3/4 cup white vinegar, 1/3 cup water, 1 cup onions, 1 teaspoon cumin, 1 teaspoon oregano, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 garlic cloves, and black pepper.

We picked the freshest jalapenos off the plants in the garden and washed them in water.

Then I de-stemmed the jalapenos.  I left the seeds and everything with the peppers.  Tricia said she could really smell them when I started cutting them.  I made a note to NOT put my fingers anywhere near my eyes.  I learned that lesson before.

I sautéed the onion and garlic in some oil in a dutch oven.  Once translucent I added the oregano, salt and cumin and allowed to cook for a minute.  Then I added the peppers, vinegar and water and brought to a simmer.

I poured all that into a food processor and added some sprigs of fresh cilantro on top.  Then I pulsed it until smooth.

We poured it all into a quart jar.  You ought to smell it.  Powerful stuff!

It'll keep in the fridge for about a month.

We just spoon out a dollop of it on top of our food.  This morning I mixed a tablespoon of it into my bowl of grits for breakfast.  It added a nice little kick!  But that's just one idea.  Really, we'll put it on anything except maybe dessert.

The Snap Bean Goal

We always have a goal to have fresh snap beans for Thanksgiving Dinner.  Some years we get an early freeze and the beans don't make it.  Some other years we've had worms and/or rabbits decimate the plants before they even bloom.  This year, in spite of the drought, we got the beans in the ground at the right time.  The seed we used was saved seed from the spring crop.

Well, we met our goal.  On Thanksgiving morning, I was bending over in the garden harvesting snap beans.  They were quite nice.  I filled up my basket with three different varieties.

From the left side to the right in the basket, we have Italian Roma II, Blue Lake Bush/Contenders, and Purple TeePee Beans.

From a taste standpoint, the star of the show is the Italian Roma.  These beans are wide and flat.  To me they have a delicious taste.

To ensure we were going to meet our goal of having them for Thanksgiving Dinner, I snapped off the ends of the beans and washed them up.  Tricia cooked them and we ate them up.  Mission Accomplished.

We like to grow things that are colorful.  The purple teepee beans add a colorful touch to the garden.  Oddly, when they are cooked, they lose the purple color.  Regardless the color, they are all scrumptious.  Tricia cooked them, adding some cashews and cranberries.  They were a hit.  What we couldn't eat fresh, we blanched and froze.  We've already picked another mess of snap beans and will be eating them again shortly.

Restoring Hope in Mankind

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think about these things.  Philippians 4:8

Times are hard.  Bad news on every corner.  There's always something in the news that makes you say (or think): "Our world is going to hell in a handbasket."  It's so easy to get cynical.  But every so often something happens that makes you smile and restores your hope in mankind.  Sunday afternoon after church we had just finished up with lunch.  We were sitting around relaxing when there were some abrupt, loud knocks on the front door.  What in the world?

No one ever comes to our front door.  Most family and friends come through our side door or back door.  Tricia went to answer it.  I could hear her talking to someone.  She came into the room I was in and said, "Oh, Kyle, you've got to come see this."  I followed her to the foyer and looked out the window.

Two young neighborhood boys had come over, laid their bicycles down in the yard, walked up the sidewalk onto the front porch, and knocked on the door and asked if they could mow our yard or if there were any odd jobs they could do.  You see, they told us they were trying to earn money to buy Christmas gifts for their family.  It melted our hearts.  I told Tricia there's no way I was putting those boys on our lawn mower, but we could figure out something for them to do to earn a little money.

Tricia went and got brooms for them and had them sweeping off the sidewalks all around the house.  These little guys were resourceful and diligent.  They worked hard!  Look at 'em go!

We gathered some money to give them when they were done and Benjamin even kicked in some money for the budding entrepreneurs as well.

When the boys were finished, I walked outside to settle up with the workers.  I asked them their names and gave them a firm handshake.  Then I thanked them and handed them some cash.  I told them that I was proud of them.  I communicated that they were setting themselves apart from the crowd by having good work ethic and not waiting for someone to give them something, but to go work for it.  I let them know that with that type of attitude, they would go far in life and be successful.  They smiled at me and told me thank you and pedaled off down the road.  I watched them ride off and smiled, feeling like I was looking at a Norman Rockwell painting.  Those two little dudes made our day! 

An Attitude of Gratitude

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I hope you and your family had a nice celebration.  We have so much to be thankful for.  I heard it said this week that a thankful spirit and a complaining spirit are like two roommates that cannot live under the same roof.  Someone has to pack their bags and leave!  Let's make sure we show the complaining spirit the door.

I knew this Thanksgiving was going to be a good one.  We do have a tremendous amount of things to thank our Lord for.  One of them is in the center of the photo below.  It's Benjamin.  He's standing up and walking!  Praise God.

Are things back to normal?  No.  Are things perfect?  No.  But he is alive and he is improving day by day and we can't stop thanking God and praising Him.  It's from Him that all blessings flow.  We had all of our kids with us, my Mom and Dad, my sister, her husband and her kids.  We gathered and laughed and talked and enjoyed one another's company.

In the photo above you can see that Laura Lee has opened some old family photo albums that she's looking at, remembering her childhood and reliving old memories and good times.  It's always good to remember the past that we're anchored to and be thankful for our families, the love we share and the God we serve.

We got so busy visiting, that I forgot to take photos when we were all eating.  I took this one when we were almost finished and the rest of the crew was visiting in the den.  We had a delicious meal with loads of leftovers.  No one left hungry, that's for sure.

We had turkey, ham, and beef brisket and more casseroles than you could shake a stick at.  I asked to help Tricia in the kitchen and she put me in charge of making a zucchini casserole that my grandmother, Bumby, used to make.  It's more like a soufflé.  There are lots of eggs in it.  Well, I have a confession to make.  I wasn't as diligent as I should have been and apparently, some egg shell made its way into the casserole (it's in the bottom of the photo below).  Several of us were chewing the crunchy casserole, having to spit out eggshell on a napkin.  I did not do a good job with this.  A lady at church today told me that this was a slick scheme of mine to not get asked to help in the kitchen next year!  

We didn't get a photo of Laura Lee before she took off back to Baton Rouge, but here is a shot of my Mom, Benjamin, my Dad, Russ and Tricia.

God has been so good to us!  We are incredibly thankful for all the works of His Mighty Hand.

Round Bales Delivered

On Saturday we were finishing up with the fire pit patio when I received a call from a friend who sells us round bales of hay for the cows.  He is quite a guy.  The price of the hay is the same price per bale as last year.  Considering the inflationary times we live in and the fact that we've been in a drought and hay is really hard to come by, I really appreciate that.  He delivers it to our house and we roll it off his trailer.  He brings us 10 bales at a time and it is good hay.  When he drove up, the cows saw the hay on the back of the trailer and started mooing... loudly.  

Once we rolled them off the truck.  I rolled one bale to LuLu and her bull calf, Nicky, in the separate pasture.  The other bale was rolled out for Rosie, Elsie and the goats.  Needless to say they were exuberant.  For the remaining 8 bales, I store those outside the pasture and prior to the next rain (if it ever rains again), I'll cover them up with a big tarp.

In the foreground, you can see one of the bales and if you look in the background in the distance above the sugar cane and against the woods, you can see the bale for LuLu and Nicky.  All the animals began eating their fill.  Later that afternoon, they sat in the shade and chewed their cud, happy and full.

We got to talking to Benton about the drought and lack of forage for the cows.  He brought out something that I hadn't thought of.  He said, "In a year like this with minimal forage, it prematurely ages the cows."  I thought about that for a minute and then he explained.  When the cows don't have much grass to eat, they eat right near the ground.  This is hard on them and hard on their teeth, causing considerable wear and even loss of teeth.  That ages them and hurts their ability to get nutrition and their condition isn't quite what it should be.  As I thought about it, there's another issue as well.  When cows eat close to the ground, they pick up more parasites.  Not good for their health.

Now that we've got round bales out for the animals to eat on at will, we can slow down (or stop) feeding them the square bales that we have stored up in the loft.  We've been feeding them that hay since August.  We've never done that before.  In fact, normally, we don't feed them square bales until late November.  We've gone through a lot of that inventory already and have winter ahead of us.  We'll have to try to ration.  Cows and goats are notorious about wasting hay.  It aggravates me to no end! 

With that in mind, I think I'll plant some more turnips for the girls.  They'll need some fresh greens and turnip roots to supplement the hay and little bit of sweet feed we give them once the cold winds start to blow.

The Fire Pit Patio

It's almost "fire pit season."  That's the time of year that we build fires in the fire pit and sit outside and stare into the flames.  Peaceful.  Relaxing.  The photo below shows our fire pit.  The river rock square is a trip and fall hazard.  We normally put benches on the inside of the square and then back up when the fire is roaring.  The rocks do nothing but remind us that we have Build Fire Pit Patio as an item on our to do list.

Might as well do it since the weather is conducive to a little manual labor.  We marked out the size of our proposed patio, squared it up and got ready to drive in stakes to mark our corners and build our form.

I got out a mattock and began to work up a two inch indention in the rock-hard soil.

Finally we had it all done and moved the dirt out of the way in wagons!  That was more work than I thought it was going to be.

The form was constructed and we went to the local hardware store and bought 80 pound bags of gravel mix concrete.

Pouring concrete is hard.  The last time I did it I threw out my back mixing it with a shovel and shoveling it into place.  There has to be an easier way.  We found on You Tube a method called "Dry Pouring Concrete.  After watching the videos, we felt like this was the thing to do.  I'll show you the process.

First, you pour the bags of concrete into the form.  Use a long 2 x 4 to screed.  Our problem was that our form was bigger than any 2x4 that we had.  This meant that we were unable to level it properly, even going side to side from the corners.  I would have liked it to have been smoother, but it wasn't to be.  Once we had it as level as we were going to get it, we used a paint roller to smooth out the bigger ridges.

The powder is there.  Now you take a water hose and set it to mist.  Mist the concrete until it turns a darker color gray.

In exactly an hour, you do mist it again.  An hour following that, you set the garden hose sprayer to "shower" and shower the concrete real good.  An hour later you do it again.  An hour later you do it again.  (For every inch of thickness, you shower it in one hour intervals.)

Once that was done, we decided to dress it up a little by soldiering pavers on the surrounding edges.  We laid a base of sand and leveled the pavers with the slab.

We were going to put a plastic edging around the entire thing, but decided to make a concrete retainer.  We used the 'dry pour' method with this as well.  We poured the concrete powder and used a concrete edging tool to put the powder at a 45 degree angle about halfway up the paver.  We misted and sprayed.  This edge will keep the pavers from sliding.

Between the pavers, we poured polymeric sand, packing it in, sweeping it in and then used a leaf blower to blow off the excess.  Then we showered it in.

I pulled the dirt over the outer concrete retainer so that it met with the edge of the pavers.  We like the way it turned out.

We intend on spending many upcoming evenings outside enjoying the new fire pit patio.  It's not a perfect construction project, by any stretch of the imagination, but the job is complete and I'm sure we'll enjoy it.

A Successful Experiment

I remember reading about 10 years ago how Monsanto was suing small farmers to protect its patents on genetically modified seed.  No seed saving allowed.  That was their property.  I'm not big on genetic modification.  Call me old school.  That's one of the reasons why we plant open pollinated, non-hybrid heirloom seeds.  Each year we're able to save our own seeds.  Some seeds require different processes or techniques for saving the seed.  

Over the years we've saved many different seeds and had great success.  Off-hand, we've saved the following seeds: carrots, lettuce, cowpeas, squash, tomatoes, kale, spinach, dill, parsley, peppers, okra, etc.  Funny thing is, we've never saved the simplest one.  The seed we all learned to grow in Kindergarten by planting these in some dirt in a Dixie cup.  Yep, green beans!  This year we aimed to do that.  We showed in an earlier post how we saved three varieties of snap beans: Contender, Italian Roma and Purple Teepee beans.

In the midst of the drought, we aimed to test germination of the saved seed.  Let's see what happened.  

Well, you know if you are seeing blooms, it's all good.  The purple bloom above is from the purple teepee beans.  The bloom below is from the Contender beans, or it could be the Italian Roma beans now that I think of it.  You can see the tiny bean pods developing.

Nearly every bean germinated, so I would say the experiment was a success.

We're already harvesting a few.  In the basket below, the Purple Teepee beans are at the top (of course!), the Contenders are to the right and the Italian Romas (my favorites) are to the left.

Our goal each year is to have fresh picked green beans for Thanksgiving Dinner.  Looks like this year we've achieved our goal.  With our experiment being a success, I now know that I have enough seed saved so that I don't need to purchase green bean seeds for this spring.  The only hard part in saving seed is having the discipline to save your seed and not eat it all!

Checking in on the Honeybees

The fall flow from goldenrod flowers is just about done.  We didn't pull any honey at all this year.  We caught two swarms in the spring and decided to let them grow the colony for the first year.  We will attempt to get honey in 2024.  We open the boxes and inspect what's going on.  They are slowly filling the boxes.  This spring we are planning on splitting to double our two boxes of bees to four.

We love watching what they are doing.  Currently, they are bringing pollen into the hives.  You can see the bright yellow pollen on their legs.  They are very interesting insects!  

You've heard the old saying, "busy as a bee."  They stay busy indeed.  They work and work and work.  Back in the 70's there was a song that had the following lyrics: "Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get?  Boney fingers.  Boney fingers."  Bees are kind of like that.  They work themselves to death.  Their lifespan is roughly 35 days.  They say that a bee will have flown 500 miles in it's life.  Tricia was looking at a honeybee the other day.  I was trying to get a good photo of it, but I couldn't get it to focus.  I think you can see roughly what I'm talking about in the photo below.  Look closely at the bee's wings:

The edges of the wings are ragged.  There are notches in it.  This is normal in a bee nearing the end of its life cycle.  It's just worn out.  Do you ever feel like that?  Ha ha!  The impressive thing about the honeybee is that its life is almost over, yet the been in Tricia's hand is still out there working, gathering pollen for the colony.  She'll soon be dead, yet she is gathering sustenance for the hive to eat long after she's gone.  The amazing, industrious honeybee.  Since learning about bees, I've often said, "How can you be a beekeeper and not believe in God?"

A Miraculous Update on Benjamin

It's been 70 days.  70 long days since Benjamin fell 3 stories off of a parking garage in Lake Charles.  I'm in Lake Charles every single day, but I have not wanted to go to the accident site.  Someone sent Benjamin a photo of it and he showed it to me.  The parking garage has five stories.  He fell from the third floor and hit the concrete below.  The ambulance driver said it was a 40 foot fall.  Seeing where it happened is kind of hard to process.  I choose to be thankful that he didn't land on his head or his back.  He landed where he had to land in order to still be with us.  There is nothing else to do but praise God!

I've gone far enough in this update without doing something that I should have started off with: Thank you for your continued prayers!  Seventy days ago we were here in ICU getting ready for both orthopedic surgery to put rods in both bones in both legs and neurosurgery to insert two rods in Benjamin's spine.  At this point we didn't know really what to expect.  You can see that on Russ' face.

Since those surgeries, he moved from ICU into a regular room at Lafayette General where he began to recover and start very basic rehab.  He was moved to Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in-patient rehab where he was involved in 2 weeks of intensive physical and occupational therapy.  They almost immediately had him doing things that we didn't think he'd be able to do for a long, long time.  Amazing, really!

Then he was released to come home with lots of medical equipment.  Three times a week he goes to out-patient rehab here in Jennings at Thibodeaux, Albro, & Touchet Therapy Group.  They have him working hard and we've seen marked improvement.  Remarkable, really.  He's been in a wheelchair.  Since his right leg is not load-bearing due to severe injuries sustained, he cannot walk.  He can put weight on his left leg as the bones with the rods have healed.  Because of that, he's been able to kind of gently hop on his left leg while standing in a walker.  

Benjamin has lost 25 pounds since the day of the accident.  He has lots of nerve pain in his right ankle and foot.  He still has weakness and lack of feeling in his right hand and fingers.  He works with putty to strengthen the hand and have seen improvement in strength.  Still numb and tingly, though.

He still wears a back brace at all times and wears a bone healing stimulator for a couple hours a day.  He can't bend and he can't twist while his spine injuries continue to heal.  The orthopedic surgeon told him he would be able to be load bearing on his right leg tomorrow.  We have been looking forward to that day.  Well, I have a surprise for you.  This video right here is miraculous!  Click on the arrow below to get a glimpse of what we witnessed this evening:

I can't describe to you the emotion, the gratitude, the awe that we feel.  Benjamin still has a ways to go.  He told me tonight, "It's a marathon, not a sprint, Dad."  But God is so good!  There is nothing He cannot do.  Thank you family and friends, and readers for your continued prayers.  We are so grateful for your love and support.

Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.  Psalm 107:1

An Eye For Pies

Proverbs 23:21 KJV - For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.

I have to tell you my weakness.  Sweets.  I've never met a dessert that I didn't like.  I don't even know how to rank my favorites.  Do you have a favorite dessert?  Might you be a confectionary confederate?  As I ponder that deep philosophical question of what dessert is my favorite I would have to say homemade pies.  There is just something about a homemade pie!  Now, I would never look down my nose at a store-bought pie, but goodness gracious, a pie made from scratch with a nice meringue sends shivers down my spine.

On Sunday afternoon right after lunch, when we've pushed the dinner plates aside and set the coffee to brewing, that's the best time to cut open a homemade pie.  Tricia had told us that she was working in the kitchen on Saturday whipping up a Chocolate Pie with a meringue and homemade crust.  It had been chilling in the ice box overnight.  With the the after-church meal complete, our anticipation level was red-lined, we waited with all the patience we could muster as the pie was served and brought to the table.  Would you just look at this thing it all its glory?

We savored each bite and, I'm not the slightest bit embarrassed to tell you, we licked our plates clean.  Like animals, savages even.  Let's keep that information between just you and me, shall we?  We wouldn't do that in front of company.  We're not that uncouth.

Well, you can about imagine my excitement Saturday night, when Tricia notified the pie guys (Benjamin and me) that homemade pie was on the menu for the Sunday after church dinner.  This time, she was pulling out all the stops, for it was homemade Coconut Cream Pie on the menu.  Good golly, Miss Molly.

We generally like to talk around the table, planning the week ahead, talking of events of the last week.  We keep a list of conversation starter questions that we ask of each other.  There wasn't a lot of conversation during dessert time as we primarily just ate pie.

As I pontificate on pies, it reminds me of something.  When I was growing up, we would travel to a place in LeCompte, Louisiana called Lea's Lunchroom.  We'd eat ham with collard greens and butter beans and cornbread.  His specialty was homemade pies.  Who knows?  Maybe that started my affinity for pies.  Mr. Lea, who resembled Colonel Sanders, would walk around and greet all the patrons of his restaurant.  He was a southern gentleman.  He'd walk up to the table and shake my hand and say, "Boy, yo momma and daddy brought you to Sunday School today?"  I'd answer, "Yessir."

As I was writing this, I had the recollection that he was on the Johnny Carson show.  Wouldn't you know I found it on Youtube!  Enjoy the clip by pressing the button below.  (Then go enjoy a slice of homemade pie!)

Our Bunny Rabbit

We have a goat named Bunny.  I know, a strange name for a goat, but she has long ears and a pink nose and when she was just a baby, we thought she looked like a bunny.  That's how she got her name.  She is a cute little critter.  Her mother is Agnes.  Agnes is the only goat on the property with horns.  We always say that we'll never allow another goat to have horns.  She certainly uses them to gain dominance over the other hornless goats.  

Bunny is part Nubian and part LaMancha.  The other day we bought her a pretty pink collar and I figured it was a good time to introduce her to you.  We have a lot of goats for our little pasture - too many, in fact.  They are fun to watch.  The are canailles (mischievous).  Bunny will hop up on this table and knock the fan off the table.

Her new pink collar contrasts nicely against her black fur.  Notice also what's hanging from her neck over the collar.

They are called wattles.  They serve no purpose.  Wattles are like skin tags or fleshy appendages with hair on them.  They are dominant.  A goat can't have wattles if neither parent had them.  In Bunny's case, her momma, Agnes, had them.

Bunny's wattles make her look unique.  But that's not the only thing making Bunny look unique.  She has a white stripe running down her face and a pink nose.  We've never had a goat with a pink nose before.

Bunny wishes you all a nice weekend!

Casualties of the Drought

It rained two inches in October.  None so far in November, although my weather forecast this evening shows a 48% chance of the wet stuff on Friday and a 79% chance on Saturday!  We are praying that we get it.  For years we have sequestered rain water by placing barrels, buckets and water troughs under the drip line of the house and the barn.  Not counting the barn, I think I calculated at one time that I can catch 400 gallons of rainwater with a 1 inch rain.  

We use that rainwater for watering the plants, the chickens, and the cows and goats.  It helps minimize the water bill - when it rains!  Yesterday morning I walked out to bring a 5 gallon bucket full of rainwater to the hens in the chicken tractor.  When I dipped the bucket in the rain barrel, something surprised me.  There was a big dead rat in the barrel that had drowned.  

Upon closer inspection, it was a squirrel.  The poor squirrel had no doubt tried to drink from the barrel and fell in.  Squirrels aren't good swimmers and he succumbed.  With the drought, water isn't as easy to find.  All the water in the ditches has long since evaporated.  We are overrun with squirrels.  They eat all the acorns and pecans and they are plentiful and fat.  I was just thinking that I was going to kill a mess of them and make a good squirrel gravy. 

And then this morning I was greeted with this sight in the water trough that catches rain off of the barn: (Can you see something at about the 4 o'clock position?)

Another drowned squirrel!  But that's not all.  Tricia had pulled another drowned squirrel out yesterday!

There are more shallow water troughs than this one.  I don't know why they are going to that one to try to drink from.  Three doesn't really put a dent into the squirrel population, but I'd rather not see them die and go to waste.  Hopefully we get the rain forecast for this weekend and fill the ditches and holes in the woods with water, thus making available safer places for them to find water.

Discovering A Hidden Nest

 

Tricia texted me this morning as I was driving to my first stop.  For safety, I pressed the button and the vehicle will read the text to you.  The text read as follows:

"So I don't forget to tell you, there is a next full of eggs in the goat barn.  I know what chicken it is.  It's the Aracauna hen that used to be in the chicken tractor - the black and white one that used to get into the garden."

Let me back up and explain the context of this text.  Our goat barn is just to the east of our milking barn.  The photo above shows the hidden nest my wife found right in the corner and yes, they are blue eggs, which are indicative of Aracaunas.  You can also see in that photo the large cracks in the earth from our drought.

As we move toward shorter days, the egg production from the hens drops off pretty significantly.  This hidden nest accounts for some of the reduction in eggs we pick up.  There's a story behind the Aracauna.  That bird along with one other earned the nickname: "the bad little hens."  They are smaller hens than the Barred Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, and Golden Comets.  As a result, they were able to shimmy between the 4x4 fence holes and get into the garden.  They scratched up plants in the garden earning my wrath.  I caught them with a net and kept them in the chicken tractor until I had time to line the entire garden with smaller mesh.  Those two bad little hens cost me a lot of time, but they don't get into the garden anymore.  

One of them found a new way to cause trouble, though.  Rather than laying her eggs in the nesting boxes in the hen house, she found a quiet spot to hide her eggs.  Tricia found them today, but no telling how old they are.  We could test them by putting them in a bucket of water.  If they float, they are bad.  If they sink and stay on the bottom, they are good.  I think we'll test them and go ahead and give them to Belle to enjoy.  She likes it when we break an egg over her dog food.  

Fortunately, Tricia discovered the hidden nest.  I'll remember to check in the corner of the goat barn for eggs each day.  Sometimes, it's like an easter egg hunt.