Seeking Unity in the Barnyard

Earlier this summer we had some hens get broody.  We still have some hens that are broody.  Anyway, we let the hens set on a few eggs and the mama hens hatched out some little biddies.  We put the mamas and the babies in the chicken tractor so they would be safe from predators.  After a little bit, we moved the hens back into general population.  The biddies continued to grow.  Of the six, we have two cockrels and four pullets.  Perfect.  That will replace some hens lost to predation.  Minks, specifically, but I don't like to even mention that wicked animal by name!

The time finally came to bring the six birds and slowly incorporate them with the flock.  It's a tricky situation.  We clipped their wings so they won't fly over the perimeter fence and we brought them to the barn.  The plan goes like this:  We're going to leave them in the dog kennel for a couple of days to get them used to their new surroundings, but mostly to allow the other birds to get used to the "newcomers."

Then, we'll let them out.  The other birds pick on them a little bit and don't share their feed, so we have to be intentional about caring for the new birds.  You'll notice they are mixed breed since they were hatched out.  The white ones are Aracaunas and the red ones are a mix of Rhode Island Red and Golden Comet.  Here are the newbies next to their kennel.  They are nervous and scoping everything out.  It's a brave new world.

They stick close to the barn, which can be trouble.  Tricia is about to milk LuLu and if one of these birds got under LuLu's feet, well, it would be disastrous for the bird.  LuLu?  She wouldn't even notice.  It's still 90 degrees + in late September, so thank the Good Lord for the fans in the barn.  They keep us (and LuLu) cool and also blow the mosquitoes away.

Each night, the new birds instinctually roost atop the kennel.  We put them inside and lock the door so the minks don't get them.  Each morning they are freed.  They are getting braver and braver, extending their foraging farther away from the barn.

They instinctually scratch through the cow poop, looking for grain and other treasures.  The pullets have not started laying eggs yet, but we figure that should be coming in another month.

All is relatively peaceful and calm.  But it is the calm before the storm.  A battle is brewing.  Here is the king.  The cock of the walk.  The big kahuna.  He rules the barnyard.  A war broke out between he and the Barred Rock rooster and the barred rock lost.  He runs around scared, keeping his distance.  The Big Chief even killed the prior King Rooster, a beautiful Rhode Island Red.  They are vicious and brutal, but such is life.  It's survival of the fittest and the whole flock respects the process.

Soon.  When the young cockrels 'feel their oats' and challenge the king, there will be war in the barnyard.  I imagine it to be a showdown like in the movie Tombstone, where Kurt Russell played Wyatt Earp and said, "You tell 'em I'm comin'! And Hell's comin' with me, you hear? Hell's comin' with me!"  I can almost hear one of the roosters yelling that.  But for now, there's peace in the valley.

What to do With an Abundance of Hot Peppers

We love hot peppers and grow a bunch of them every year.  This year someone offered us some free hot banana peppers - five plants, actually.  We have the normal jalapenos and anaheims that we normally grow.  We had a strange arrival, too.  One of the seeds that was in the shishito package was NOT a shishito pepper.  It was a brilliant orange pepper and this bad boy was hot.  So what do you do with a bunch of peppers that are too hot to just eat plain?

Well, we'll show you what we do.  First we enjoy the electric colors of the hot peppers.  Makes a pretty basket, doesn't it?

Then, after washing them, I cut them in half and removed the seeds and the ribs.  This is the point at which you want to remember NOT to touch your eyes or your face.  Not even after washing your hands.  Ask me how I know!

Load onto the rack of the dehydrator and put on the 'vegetable mode' and run that baby until the peppers are shriveled up and dried completely.

Then we put the dried peppers in the food processor and run until the peppers have been ground into, well, ground pepper.  I wish you could smell this!  Wonderful, rich, aromatic!  Sprinkle just a dash onto your food and it livens up the dish nicely.

We always make Emeril's Essence Seasoning using the following RECIPE.  If you click that link, it will bring you to the recipe.  In place of the 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper, we substituted our mystery hot orange pepper.  We'll call it Emeril's Very Hot Essence!  We'll be making a lot more as out pepper supply seems limitless this year.  That's a good problem to have.  Stay spicy, my friends!

The Best Thirst Quincher

On October 2, 1965 a thirst quencher was invented at the University of Florida called Gatorade.  It was named after the school's mascot, the Gators.  The doctors at the university were researching to try to create a product the combat heat-related illness among their athletes.  The original recipe contained salts, sugars and electrolytes.  The original flavor was lemon lime.  The rights were sold to Stokely-Van Camp for $25,000.  That's not a mis-print.  The sale allowed Gatorade to move from the laboratory to eventually store shelves.  The orange flavor was later added to the lemon-lime.  I still remember those glass bottles and the taste of the original recipe!  It was so salty.  I read that the football players at the University of Florida threw up after drinking it.  It was so bad!  But it worked in replenishing everything that the body loses when exerting yourself in physical activity in high heat.

As I was in the garden yesterday, I was watering a bunch of soil that I had just planted in broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, beets, lettuce, bok choy, snap beans and kohlrabi.  It was hot.  I stood there with my thumb over the end of the water hose.  The cool water on a hot day jettedran out of the end of the hose in a full, fat stream.  And it reminded me of my childhood.  Like Captain Kirk from Star Trek, I was transported back to my youth.

We were young boys, the whole neighborhood was there in the backyard.  The end zone and sidelines were marked off by shoes and t-shirts that we had shed for the backyard football game.  We hollered and ran and sweated and tackled one another.  There was a lot of spitting and some loss of blood.  From time to time there were tears.  Soon someone would call "time out" and we would run to the side of the house where a water hose was coiled up and connected to the spigot.

We turned on the hose and let it run for a while.  This was important.  Even though you were SO thirsty, you couldn't just turn the water on and begin drinking as the sun had heated the water in the hose to temperatures approaching that of liquid magma.  After what seemed like hours, the hose finally yielded the ultimate thirst quencher, water!  It was cool and refreshing.  We drank until our bellies were full and put the hose on our heads to cool us off for good measure.  There was one rule.  No one could put their lips on the end of the hose.  That was gross and was forbidden.

Soon the line behind the garden hose ended and we got back to the football game.  Good times!  As I finished watering the garden, I was smiling just thinking of those good memories.  Since then, I think we've been taught that it probably wasn't a good idea to drink from a rubber hose.  We know better now, don't we?  But yesterday afternoon, I shook myself from nostalgia and thought, "one little drink from the hose for the sake of reminiscing won't hurt me, will it?"  And after making sure the water was cool, I took a long, satisfying drink from the end of the hose.  I made sure not to let my lips touch the end of the hose, being courteous, even though no one was behind me in line.  Water from a garden hose, the original thirst quencher - pre-dating Gatorade.

Bumper Crop of Butternut Squash

Back on June 12th we picked our first batch of butternut squash.  The variety name is Waltham, I'm pretty sure.  These hold up pretty well if you don't refrigerate them.  Their flesh is a dark orange and the taste is rich and sweet, even if you cut them in half and just oven roast them.  A perfect side dish for any protein on your plate.

My favorite way to eat them is butternut squash soup.  It's so rich and creamy.  Down here in Louisiana, it's so hot.  It's hard for me to enjoy soup until the temperature drops or else you're eating it and dabbing your forehead to wipe the sweat off.  So our excitement intensified when a "cool front" rolled through.  I'm being generous with the term cool front.  By that, I mean that it was the first week in which the high temperatures didn't go over the 90 degree mark.  It's a judgment call, but we consulted with one another and determined that it could be decreed "gumbo weather."  That means that in our home, and by our rules, it is safe and legal to eat gumbo and/or soup.  

Using some fresh cream from LuLu, who generously donated some heavy cream to the butternut squash soup project, Tricia whipped up a pot full of soup.

After a long hot summer, the shallots have revived themselves.  I went out and cut some fresh shallots to put atop the butternut squash soup.  We also toasted some sourdough bread and drizzled some olive oil on top of the toast.  Even though it's not exactly cool enough outside, it was cool enough to enjoy our first bowl of butternut squash soup in many moons.

Here's the "money" shot.  Rich, creamy, smooth and flavorful!

Butternut squash soup.  There's plenty more of those to be made in the next several months!

My (Redneck) Garden Riddle

This is not what you expected.  I don't have a riddle for you in terms of a joke to guess.  A garden riddle is an old term for a soil sieve.  I need this to get a good growing medium for seedlings.  Many of the cole crops and lettuce seed are so small and they are only to be planted 1/8 of an inch deep.  Because of that you need a light, airy mix that they can grow in - something that isn't heavy and clumpy.

That's why I need a garden riddle.  I'll show you my redneck version.  The first thing that I got was a big landscape bucket full of composted wood chips.  These have been composting down in a pile for three or four years.  The pile (that was dropped of FREE!) has decomposed to about 1/3 the size that it originally was.  I shoveled the bucket full and carried it to the garden.  You can see that some of it looks like topsoil and you can see some sticks that haven't quite decomposed.  More on that later.

I'm going to be using this topsoil (wood chip compost) to plant broccoli and cauliflower in.  In order to filter out the sticks and matter that I don't want in the seed starting mix, I'll use a riddle or a soil sieve.  I'm going to build one, but time got away from me, but I did find something that will work.  We'll call it Kyle's Redneck Riddle.

It's actually the door to an old rabbit hutch.  I don't throw much away, always thinking that it will come in handy one day.  And it did!  Here's how it works:  I place the riddle (rabbit hutch door) over the bucket that I want to catch the filtered soil in.

This is a job where you get your hands dirty, but that's fun, isn't it?  You might use gloves, but I didn't.  I like to feel the sensation of fresh made compost in my hands.   I put a handful on top of the riddle.  The riddle has hardware cloth that is perfect for this job.  You rub the composted wood chips against the hardware cloth vigorously and the filtered soil falls into the bucket.

The remainder that won't go through the riddle is shown below.  It's just some sticks and chips that haven't rotted down yet.  I'll throw those back on the pile for additional "seasoning."  Then, I rinse, wash and repeat until I have a full bucket of sifted soil.

Look at this rich growing medium, would you?  If I was a seed, I would love to be nestled in this stuff.  I'd burst forth like a Fourth of July firework.  Think about the fertility in here.  Three or four years ago, this 'dirt' was cut from a tree and chipped.  The tree had sucked fertility and minerals from the soil and grown.  All that fertility and minerals were stored in the wood.  That wood was chipped and now decomposed.  Now, we're putting that right into our soil.  We're importing fertility!  And it was free!  What a deal...

I'll show you some photos as soon as the seeds start popping out.

Below is a FANCY garden riddle.  There's nothing redneck about it.  This is a You Tube video by one of my favorite bloggers, Herrick Kimball.  He's a master craftsman and in this video, he shows you how to build your own garden riddle.  It is a first class project - one I hope to do one day.  Until then, I'll continue to use the rabbit hutch door.  Click the arrow below to watch.  I think you'll enjoy!

Oh, what the heck.  I'll give you a garden riddle: Why did the tomato turn red?  Because he saw the salad dressing!

One of Hurricane Laura's Victims is No Longer With Us

Hurricane Laura was a category 4 storm that hit our area in August 2020.  A little more than four years after Hurricane Laura blew through Southwest Louisiana and we're looking at another one (Hurricane Francine).  This one yesterday showed coming directly for Jennings, LA, where we live.  With the latest update, it appears the storm is projected to hit somewhere around Morgan City at 7 PM tomorrow night.

For Hurricane prep, we always secure things in the yard and barn, make sure we have water and gasoline on hand, tie anything down that can blow and cause damage and prepare for power outages.  We're still preparing, but it looks like for now we are "outside the cone."  That's good news for us but bad news for whoever gets it.  One positive thing is that there is a strong ridge sitting right on the coast from a cool front.  Experts say that once the storm gets closer, wind shear will tear Hurricane Francine apart and she'll weaken in strength.  They project a category 1 storm with 90 mph sustained winds at landfall.

In Lake Charles, one monument still stood for four years as a testimony of the destructive force of Hurricane Laura.  I still call it the Calcasieu Marine Tower, but it changed to Hibernia Tower and I think most recently Capital One Tower.  Whatever its name, it had to come down.  It was an eyesore.  I was last in the building in 2017 when I had to go get a TWIC card for my job.  Other than the communication antennas on its roof, the building was empty.  Here is a photo I took of the building in July.  You can see all the windows that were blown out and had been patched with plywood.

Well, a demolition crew was hired and this past Saturday morning at 8 AM, the building was set to come down.  It was quite a sight.  You can click the arrow below and watch the demolition.  I came down perfectly.

That building was the skyline of Lake Charles, sitting right on the lake beside the Civic Center.  With it gone, it looks totally different.  As I understand, there are plans to revitalize the downtown area.  Hurricanes are a display of the might and destruction of nature.  We hope to not see anything like Hurricane Laura ever again!

Fiddling On the Roof

We have a steep pitched roof.  It is a 12/12.  That means that it rises 12 inches vertically for every 12 inches of horizontal run.  There are some advantages to this: There is more attic space and headroom that allows you to deck and have great storage.  The pitch allows the hot air to move up in the summer and not sit directly on top of you and that gives energy efficiency.  Finally, the steep pitch allows for rain to get off your roof quickly.

There's one problem, though.  In the spring when the live oaks tassel, they fall in thick mats.  Even on a steep roof, sometimes they stay in the valleys and pile up.  They catch leaves and sticks and before you know it, you have a bunch of debris on your roof and that's not good.  The steep pitch makes the roof impossible to walk on.  So how do I get the debris cleared?  Well, with a little redneck engineering, I've devised a method that works.

I wish I would've taken a photo of all the leaves, sticks and tassels before I started, but I was so focused I forgot to.  The photos that follow shows when I'm just about done, but you'll get the idea.  You can see some debris remaining and the remnants in the valley in the photo below.   I'll show you how we cleaned things up.

You can see several joints of PVC pipe I've fitted together and am pulling the debris off the roof.

Almost got the last bit off.  There was a LOT up there.  I was worried that if I left it any longer, it would damage the roof.  Even torrential rainfall has not knocked it down.

In the end of the 1/2 PVC pipe, I jammed a hand garden tool and taped it securely with a little duct tape.  I push the pvc pipe up the valley past the obstruction with the forks pointed upward so it slides.  Once I have it past the debris, I flip the pvc pipe over and now the prongs of the garden tool bite into the mat of debris.  Then, I pull downward.  Soon, after doing this task repeatedly, all of the stuff is cleared from the roof.

I do have to wait for an opportune time to do this task every year - When it is raining!  Why?  Because there is a colony of honeybees that live in the hollow fiberglass column that is mere feet from were I need to be on top of a ladder to execute this job.  I don't want to get attacked by angry bees when I'm standing atop an 8 foot ladder.  That's a long way down.  During rainfall, bees don't fly.  This afternoon, in a rainstorm, I quickly executed my plan, and it worked to perfection.

Here's a look at the finished product.  Once we get a nice rain, like I think I can hear as I'm typing this, it will clean the remaining leaves off the roof.

Fiddling on the Roof.  It's become an annual "Tradition!"

The Harvest

Then He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.  Luke 10:2

Between Jennings and Hathaway on Louisiana Highway 26 south, our little church lies off the road on the western side in the "S" curve.  A highway sign simply stating "CHURCH" alerts people that there is a church.  I've often wondered why.  Perhaps to turn alert you to turn down your music?  Or to slow down for people turning off or on the road?  I'm not sure.  The other day when I passed by the rice harvest was in full operation in the field bordering the road.

This field on the eastern side of the road across from the church rotates in production each year between rice and crawfish.  This is the field where, I'm convinced, the minks that killed 39 of our laying hens lived as I saw the carcasses of one or two that met their demise trying to cross the road to come have a chicken dinner at our place.  As I looked out of the window, two big John Deere combines, a cart and a grain truck were getting the work done.  Wide swaths of rice were being harvested. They were rolling! To bring the harvest in, the farmers work late into the night, with bright LED lights assisting.

The rice crop will be trucked to the rice drier, dried to the appropriate moisture level and then shipped off to the mills where it'll be put on ships or trains to be transported to the ultimate buyer for processing or consumption.  It's a busy time in Louisiana as farmers try to get the crop in prior to winds that accompany storms and knock the rice down flat on the ground making the harvest more difficult.

Even when the crop is harvested, there are still question marks.  What is the price going to be?  The price is dependent upon a number of factors.  The weather, competitor's yields all over the world, and  quality of the sample, to name a few.  You take a sample of your rice to have it graded.  They check for chaff, milling, how many brokens, and weed seed are in the sample.  There are many variables - some which are in the farmer's control and some that aren't.

The large equipment used these days make the job easier, but the capital investment involved in farming is so high, it is driving out many small farmers who cannot get financed.  It's a tough business.  It's rewarding, but it's not easy.  A lot of prime farmland is being sold to developers who are building subdivisions for people drawn to "country life."  A large subdivision next to me is named "Heritage Fields."  It's truly sad to see.

To farm, you must have dependable labor.  I was talking to a friend of my son's tonight.  Right in the middle of his harvest this year, his dad lost all his labor.  Can you imagine getting your field planted, you've taken care of the crop, irrigating it, eradicating pests and weed pressure, the crop is ripening in the field and you have no one to help you harvest?  What stress!  In the old days, neighboring farmers would help as they finished up, and I'm sure this still occurs in places, but you have to have help to get the crop in.

And that reminded me of Jesus' talking in the Gospel of Luke, likening the multitudes of people to a field ready for harvest.  If there are no laborers, the harvest would not come in.  In agricultural terms, if there is no one to harvest the crop, the rice will over-ripen and "shatter" and fall off the head.  Your crop will be lost.  Disastrous!

But from a spiritual standpoint, it's even worse!  You see, there are souls out there that desperately need to know the Good News of Christ.  If there are no laborers, the harvest of souls will be lost.  The Lord asks us to pray that laborers will be sent out.  Laborers must be sent out to bring in the harvest.  Those laborers include great preachers like Adrien Rogers, for example, but also include people like you and me.  Time is short.  Trust Jesus today!  If you are a believer, use every opportunity given to be used as a laborer in the Lord's harvest.

Pushing the Limit

We plant heirloom (non-hybrid) seeds, so we try to save seeds from year to year.  It saves money, for sure.  Most years I also purchase seeds just as "insurance."  To save seed, you must research as saving bean or pea seeds differ from saving tomato, squash, and cucumber.  The hardest thing, however, about saving seed, is you want to save seed from your prettiest, biggest, most healthy harvest instead of eating it.

I have several drawers full of old medicine bottles and supplement cannisters that are labeled and stashed away.  Most years I'll plant a row of purchased seed and also a row of saved seed.  I want to rotate them using the first in - first out method.  What we've found is that as time marches on, the vigor and germination rate falls off.  To compensate, if my seed is really old, instead of planting a seed every four inches as some calls for, I'll plant a seed every inch.  

I have a whole bunch of Boston Pickling Cucumber seeds saved.  That is my favorite variety, although I grow 3 other varieties.  Boston Pickling are smaller, crisp, and have small seeds.  They snap and crunch when you bite into them and as the name suggests, they are perfect for pickling.  I pulled these saved seeds out of the drawer.  I saved them back in the spring of 2015.  They're almost 10 years old, but they've been kept dry and out of sunlight.  Let's plant them and see what they do.

I poured a bunch of seeds in my hand.  They look fine, but you can't judge a book by its cover.

I planted two seeds per seed pot, watered them and set aside.  In just a little bit, we had some growth.  We also had some with no growth.  Out of 12 seeds planted, four of them came up, giving us a 33% germination.  Not too good.  I'll remember to plant the rest of these next spring and I'll plant them very very close to make up for the low germination.

This evening I checked on them and they have their first true leaves on them and they look healthy.  I'll get these transplanted in the garden beneath the trellis tomorrow morning.

We had a spectacular crop of cucumbers this spring and enjoyed cucumber salads daily with fresh dill and blueberries.  Hopefully, we'll have a nice fall crop of Boston Pickling Cucumbers from seeds that are almost a decade old.

Processing Wild Persimmons

Other than pumpkin-spice flavored everything, the one thing that lets me know that fall is just around the corner is the ripening of the wild persimmons on our tree.  When we first bought the property twenty four years ago, there were two wild persimmon trees, but one succumbed.  The remaining tree produces hundreds of little golf ball-sized persimmons at this time every year.  They turn orange and fall to the ground and we go out and pick them up.

They are sticky, sweet and the birds love them.  My neighbor told me that prior to us moving here the raccoons loved them, too!  They would climb up in the tree and eat until they were full.  We haven't seen raccoons in a long time.  Each day we go out to the base of the tree and pick up the persimmons that have fallen.  

We take them in and wash them up.  They are very soft.  Some of them have broken as they hit the ground.  To be honest with you, most people would just let the birds eat them.  I'll show you why in a minute.  Each persimmon has a large number of big seeds in them.

We have a food mill that we sit on top of an 8 cup Pyrex measuring bowl.  We feed the persimmons into the food mill and crank.  The persimmon flesh is pushed through the holes in the mill and the seeds stay on top.

We spoon out the seeds and put them in a bowl.  They'll be fed to the animals or go in the compost pile.  Can you see what I mean about the seeds?  You get more seeds from each persimmon than you do edible fruit.

But that's okay.  The fruit we get is delicious!

We have a recipe for a persimmon Bundt cake that we have enjoyed for years.  We even have altered it to make a chocolate persimmon cake.  When it comes out of the oven, the fragrance fills the kitchen and it is so good to eat it while it is still warm.  Each recipe calls for a cup and a half of persimmon.

So we package the processed persimmons in pint-sized freezer bags with 1 and 1/2 cups of persimmon in each bag and then freeze them in stacks.  That way we can look at the stack in the freezer and inventory and know how many cakes we'll be eating!

So far we have 8 cakes in the freezer with plenty more persimmons left to fall.  It looks like it will be a good year.  That's a good thing because with the drought last year, we didn't pick any, so we need to build our inventory back up.