Wishful Thinking

As we near the last day of August, two things were on my mind.  #1 A prayer that we would make it through hurricane season unscathed.  Wouldn't it be nice to possibly see homeowner's insurance rates go down or hold steady for a change?  With each passing day, the temperature should cool off somewhat, cooling the Gulf waters that fuel the strength and fury of hurricanes that have wreaked such destruction on these parts.  #2 The countdown in my head of the remaining days of summer.  We look at the extended forecast and see that one day this week, we might see lows in the upper 60's and highs only in the lower 90's.  Tick Tock.  It's nice to look forward to more forgiving weather than our punishing summers.

The few days of fall and then winter will be upon us, and we need to be prepared.  I spent 30 minutes with a "rat-tail" file, sharpening my chainsaw blade.  The 80 volt battery powered chainsaw turned out to be a good purchase.  Whoever would've thought that a battery powered chainsaw would cut through 30 inch diameter water oak tree trunks, but it has gotten the job done.  With this saw, you don't need to worry about a carburetor.  I even learned a trick that you can use (cheaper) vegetable oil in place of (more expensive) bar & chain oil to keep the chainsaw blade lubricated.  It's a hack learned from a logger in the Pacific northwest that posted a YouTube video about it.

I charge one 80V battery while using the other and am able to keep the saw running while I cut the felled tree trunk in 2 1/2 foot sections.  Then I got my double edged ax, the sledgehammer and two splitting wedges and walked out to begin the hard part of the job.  Yes, I'll admit, there are easier ways to do this job.  They sell wood-splitters at Tractor Supply.  However, there's something to be said about swinging an ax and the sound of the sledgehammer making purchase with the splitting wedge.  The crack of the wood splitting in two is a pleasing sound to one's ears as the wedge disappears between the two pieces of tree trunk.

Before long the firewood is split into manageable pieces that we'll burn in our fireplace this winter.  I wet two t-shirts with sweat as my wife shook her head at me.  "There's cooler weather coming to do this work in." she says.  That's okay.  The job was done!  The chickens gathered around, scratching at the ground around the wood chips for the occasional beetle or grub worm that had taken up residence in the log, but was now exposed.

Now's the time to carry the wood and stack it up atop the woodpile.  I put sheets of tine on top, weighted down by river stone to keep rainwater off the top.  Upon just getting goats many years ago, I learned a valuable lesson in stacking firewood.  Back then, I stacked the wood right against the fence.  Those mischievous creatures jumped up on the woodpile, over the fence and all got out into the neighbor's yard.  We were able to get them all back in, but had to move the wood, restacking it away from the fence.  You live and you learn, they say.

The firewood we have split so far should get us through the winter easily, but I've got more wood to split.  We plan on getting a good inventory built up.  The bad news was that by the evening I was nursing several nice-sized blisters on my palm and fingers.  The good news was that I slept like a baby that evening partially because of the physical exertion from a day of swinging an ax and partly because it feels good to get a job done I've had on a to-do list.  We'll be nice and toasty as we keep our fireplace blazing with fire this fall/winter.

Ring the Bell - Leading you Home

 

Image Credit

When I was 10 years old we moved out to the country.  We had five acres of wooded land to roam around on.  Five acres may not sound like much to you, but to us, it was like the Hundred Acre Wood where Christopher Robin and his friend Winnie the Pooh found many adventures awaiting.  It's where I killed my first wood duck and many fox squirrels.  It's where we built many forts and camps where we hunkered down against imaginary foes.  It contained sassafras trees from which we made gumbo file from the roots and sassafras tea from the roots and where we picked mayhaws for jelly making.

There was one drawback, for my mom, at least.  This was 25 years before cell phones came on the scene.  If we were needed, how would our parents contact us when we were skirmishing with enemy troops in our many battles?  This communication problem was solved when Dad erected a cast iron bell mounted on a 4x4 post.  If Mom needed us, the bell would ring, the peals loudly echoing through acres of long leaf pine, and we were instructed to come running home.  There was no excuse for not hearing the bell.  We didn't call it the Liberty Bell.  It actually cut into our freedom, but one important thing it did was to call us home.

Almost 50 years later, we find ourselves modern people with modern problems, diversions and distractions.  Our past, our common point of reference often seems so far away, so distant that it seems an impossible endeavor - this quest to go home.  Thomas Wolfe famously said, "You can't go home again."  What he meant is that we've changed and our old home place has changed and so it's impossible to go back home to that nostalgic place in our memory to experience what we cherished.  But is this true?  Can we not return "home?"  I'm thinking of my childhood home, but I'm also thinking in a broader sense of home - that gathering point.

As we look around us and see things change so that many of the values and mores of our childhood seem foreign or quaint or even backwards, outdated and old fashioned, I submit to you that we must listen and return home.  I'm not ashamed to say that the Bible is like that cast iron bell that calls us home, that rings out to those that have ears to hear, to come home.  Home, figuratively speaking, is Truth.  Home is the bedrock of faith in Christ and His Word.  Home are the values, the old ways, that our fathers and forefathers walked.  There is great wisdom in the old paths.

One Scripture reference that comes to mind is Jeremiah 6:16 which says: "Thus says the LORD: Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls."  The people of Judah were called to return to the Lord, to come back to ways that were tried and true.  Rebellious people back then and yes, today, think the old paths are boring and irrelevant to a modern society.  This call home promises rest for our souls.  Don't we all need rest?

The interesting thing about that call is that it is not mandatory that we answer it.  We have the choice, the free will, to follow or to stray.  The next verse, Jeremiah 6:17 goes on to say: But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ Also, I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ‘We will not listen.’  

The rest of the chapter tells of the judgment and calamity that would befall them because of their obstinate rejection of His wisdom.  You see, we have free will to make choices, but choices we make set in place an irrefutable law.  We can't insulate ourselves forever from the consequences of our choices.

One day, the Word tells us, the trump will sound and those of the faith will be gathered home.  I can almost hear that bell a-ringing!  God, give us ears to hear. 

The Trouble With Garlic

Despite loving to eat garlic, we haven't grown it in our garden for the last several years.  I have a love-hate relationship with garlic.  I love to eat it and grow it, but I hate curing it and storing it.  Here's what generally happens.  The garlic grows and is finally ready to harvest.  I follow all the directions and then harvest it.  I lay it out with plenty of air flow, with fans blowing on it.  Since it is harvested in a time with high humidity, the garlic doesn't cure or dry.  In fact, a lot of it gets soft, starts smelling and goes bad.  It is so aggravating.  After failing yet again, I decided to not plant it anymore.

But I learned something that I should've already known and now I'm willing to give it another try.  I'll be planting on 10/1.  Garlic is a loooooooooooong crop to grow.  210 days to maturity.  

I ordered some softneck garlic.  That's the variety that works best in South Louisiana.  I also ordered some Elephant Garlic.  It came in the mail earlier this week.

The thing I'm going to do differently this year is after I harvest it, I'm going to do my best to cure it, but before it starts going bad, I'm going to break up the cloves and put them in this little device and roll it around to take the "paper" off the garlic clove.

Then once all the cloves are broken off and "paper" removed, I'll do the step that I hadn't been doing and allowed the garlic in the past to go bad.

We'll put the garlic cloves in a mason jar and freeze it.  

When we're ready to cook with it, which is in most every recipe, we'll pop out what we need.  In the past, Tricia used her Pampered Chef garlic press to mince the garlic.  Lately, she just uses a grater to grate the garlic into the dish.  Good stuff!  Hopefully, this method will allow us to preserve the garlic we grow.  We'll be planting soon and in roughly 210 days, we'll report back on the garlic harvest and if we're successful in saving it.

Go (North) West, Young Man

We were out of pocket last week on vacation.  A childhood friend who was the best man in our wedding asked Tricia and I to go on vacation with he and his wife to a place he has in Vail, Colorado.  How could we say no to that?  The temperatures were lows in the upper 30's to a high of 85, but there was no humidity, so no heat index.  It was so nice and relaxing.

We flew into Denver and drove two hours to Vail.  The next morning we drove out near Glenwood Springs, Colorado and hiked up to Hanging Lake.  It's a beautiful, yet strenuous 1.2 mile hike that left you breathless on two accounts - First, breathless due to the Scenery and second, literal breathlessness as us flatlanders tried to act younger than our age.  I felt a certain kinship to the lyrics of a Toby Keith song that says, "My body says 'you can't do this boy' but my pride says, "oh, yes you can."  Our calf muscles were sore for the rest of the trip!

The trail up to Hanging Lake was rustic and steep.  Fellow hikers coming down told us they saw a bear with two cubs, but we didn't get to see them.

Majestic sights all around as we paused to catch our breath.

The air was crisp and clean.  Have you ever seen a sky so blue?

We made it up to the top and relaxed by hanging lake.  There were trout in the lake and the water was cool, fed by springs feeding into the lake by waterfalls (at back of photo).

That evening, we drove back toward Denver and attended a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater.  What a fantastic venue to see a concert.  I think it opened in 1941 and every notable singer has performed there from the Beatles to John Denver to U2.  We saw the rock group Heart and Todd Rundgren opened for them.  The Wilson sisters are in their early 70's and Todd Rundgren is 77.  Those septuagenarians still have lots and lots of energy!

Back to the stream in Vail, Tricia and I would hike each morning and read the Bible and pray.  You could close your eyes and just listen to the water running over the rocks.  What a creation our Creator has created.  Such beauty!  I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that John Denver's song, "Rocky Mountain High" wasn't playing on a continuous loop in my head.

I got a little close to the edge, but the view from this elevation was something to see.  This was on the road to Leadville, the town with the highest elevation in Colorado.

Although the aspens weren't turning golden yet, there was plenty of gorgeous landscaping to take in.  We even saw a bee getting some pollen and nectar.

The last morning we got up before the sun rose and watched it come up over the mountains.  These are the gondolas that take you up the mountain in Vail to ski.  They were running each day, but there's no snow yet.  People ride the gondolas up there and hike, I think.

What a relaxing trip!  We came home all energized.  

The Beetles (Not the Band)

Let's quickly inspect the hives!  Although we pulled honey in early July, things aren't quite done.  We're planning on pulling honey again in October.  This will be the fall honey crop, and we've not done this before.  Fall honey is primarily made from goldenrod.  Goldenrod is a notorious weed around here that is not welcomed.  It causes many people to have severe allergy problems.

Goldenrod honey is good for allergies.  The odd thing about goldenrod honey is... it stinks.  Think the smell of sweaty gym socks.  In the fall you can smell it simply by walking around the hives.  When we had the colony inside our column by the side door, people would walk up to the door and say, "What's that smell?!"  The benefits are it's supposed to be really good for you.  We'll likely keep most of this for personal use unless someone shows an interest in it.

The hives are really active right now.  The bees are all outside the entrance and are pretty aggressive.  

What I'm checking for today is hive beetles.  I'm not going to use smoke because I'm just planning on opening the telescoping top to look in the very top of the hive.  Since I didn't use smoke, the bees start coming out of the top with an attitude.  They aren't liking my intrusion into their home, but I want to check out any hive beetle activity.  Hive beetle infestations can cause some real problems, especially if you have a weak hive.

Three weeks ago, Tricia and I put some hive beetle traps in the top, and we want to see if we've caught any.  When I say hive beetle traps, it's not really anything fancy.  You simply lay a Swiffer sheet up on top.  The bees run the hive beetles up and out of the frames of eggs, brood, honey, and pollen and bees actively corral them and keep them up top.  What happens next is that the hive beetles step onto the Swiffer sheets and the little barbs on their legs catch on the Swiffer sheets, and they cannot get out!

The first two hives did not have any hive beetles caught on the Swiffer sheet, but the third and fourth hive did.  In the center left of the photo below (and the bottom middle of the photo above), you can see three hive beetles that have met their demise.

So the trap appears to be working.  But what about the hives that had no hive beetles on the Swiffer sheets?  Well, it could mean a couple of things: the trap isn't working (which is unlikely as it was catching beetles in the second and third hive), or it could mean that there is not much of a hive beetle infestation in those hives.

There is another means (or two) of combatting them that I'm going to try.  The first is to put up a temporary fence around the hives and put some chickens in to scratch around and eat the beetles and larvae that are out on the ground.  The beetles go into the ground and pupate and the larvae come out of the ground before entering the hives.  If you put something on the ground to block their entrance into the ground, it helps.  I plan on putting a roll of thick black plastic matting under the hives to accomplish this.  As a side benefit, it makes it a little easier to mow and weed eat around the hives.  I'll try to do this when the weather gets a little cooler.

The Beetles.  They aren't quite as popular with beekeepers and the band.

Phase II in the Garden with Cucumbers and Summer Squash

We made a bumper crop of cucumbers this spring/summer in the garden.  It was a cool snack to have between meals or in a salad as a side dish and ate more cucumbers this year than you could shake a stick at.  We gave a bunch of them away and pickled the rest using the lacto-fermentation method.  Although we still have about a gallon of those left, the inventory is quickly depleting.  With that in mind, I planted a long row of them on the trellis that the sugar snap peas were growing on and they are coming on strong.

The cucumbers have blooms galore and if they set fruit, we'll have a spectacular fall cucumber harvest.  I planted several varieties: Boston Pickling (my personal favorite), Marketmore, and Suyo Long.  The Boston Pickling seeds were from some seed I had saved from 2015.  Knowing that seeds 10 years old would have a poor germination percentage, I planted them real thick.

Lots of blooms on the plants and if you look closely, you can see that we've got some baby cucumbers!

But cucumbers aren't the only plants with blooms.  Right to the north of the cucumber trellis, we've a row of yellow crookneck squash, zucchini squash and straightneck squash.  We have a real battle on our hands with the squash borer.  One day you'll have a healthy plant and the very next, it will have wilted and died due to this terrible pest.  Even if we have a good bit of squash in the freezer, I want to put up plenty more.  The blooms give me great hope that we can have phase two of the squash harvest.

We aren't the only ones happy with the blooms on the squash.  A big, fat bumblebee was knee-deep in squash flower pollen as I snapped this photo.

If the Good Lord's willing, we'll see a maturation of fruit on both the cucumbers and squash and will enjoy a nice harvest!

More On Tomatoes and Mulch

In the last installment, we talked about the row of volunteer tomatoes of unknown variety that we planted.  We have more tomatoes than that, though.  I planted a number of tomatoes from seed.  They popped up with great germination rates and we babied them through the sweltering heat of July and early August in seed pots on the back patio, watering them with water enriched with (stinky) fish emulsion.

As they reached around four inches in height, it was time to transplant them into the garden.  I carefully removed them from the pots with a spoon and transplanted them into garden soil mixed with compost and chicken litter harvested from beneath the roost in the hen house.  They were planted about 24 inches apart and will be trellised using the Florida Weave method once they reach about a foot and a half in height.

In order to determine where in the garden to plant, I use two criteria:

1. I plant them in an area of the garden where tomatoes haven't been in the last two years,
2. I plant them between the rows where vegetables were planted last growing season.  This allows a crop rotation where the soil is rested.

Once the location is established, it's a quick job of planting and labeling the plants.  I water them in with the "home grown" fertilizer I made with rainwater, leaf mold, and weeds that's been fermenting in buckets with the tops on.  It doesn't smell nice, but I think the plants will love this home-brewed fertilizer concoction.

Once in the ground, there's one more thing to do.  We use the Back to Eden gardening method which involves no tilling.  In this process we add a four inch layer of composted wood chips.  This imitates what happens in forests, where trees fall and rot, contributing to the manufacture of rich, nutrient-laden topsoil that fuels growth of lush vegetation.

In the yard, we have pile after pile of wood chips that have been breaking down for several years.  A pitchfork and garden wagon is used to move the wood chips into the garden.  Just look at that dark brown (almost black) mulch.  If I was to rub this through my garden riddle, it would disintegrate into topsoil, but we won't do that - we'll allow nature to run it's course.

The mulch is forked in a four inch layer over the existing soil and moved around the plants.  This mulch provides a covering to the soil.  The soil should always be covered to discourage weeds.  The mulch also provides a barrier that slows evaporation and allows the soil to stay moist even during periods of drought.  You can't really tell, but the previous 4 inch mulch layer has mostly turned into soil and will be a fertile growing medium for the fall garden.

By the time the entire fall garden is planted, we'll have a new 4 inch layer of wood chips spread out.  It's an annual process and each year, the soil gets better and better, just teeming with earthworms and emitting a musty, yet healthy soil smell, if that description makes any sense.

The Invisible Fence

There is a saying, "Good fences make good neighbors."  I don't think I agree with that.  We don't have fences or walls keeping our neighbors out and have good relationships with all of them.  But as I think of it more, maybe there is some truth to the saying.  Five or six years ago, we had a Great Pyrenees dog named, "Big Boy."  Big Boy was a good livestock guardian dog.  It is ingrained in these dogs to protect their charge, whether cows, goats, or chickens.  As a result, Great Pyrenees are on patrol, guard duty at all times.  These dogs go out on maneuvers patrolling the boundary.

Big Boy's boundaries didn't exactly match our property line and he would go over to the neighbors' houses.  He even would follow us to church.  One particular day a neighbor came over to visit and politely, but assertively, informed me that Big Boy had marked his territory at his house by peeing all over his chrome Harley Davidson motorcycle.  I was not being a good neighbor, or more specifically, Big Boy was not exactly showering our neighbor with kindness.

When we got Belle, we figured we'd solve this issue and we got her a collar that would keep her within the perimeter.  It worked!  For two years that collar did a great job.  It works by GPS and we set a large perimeter boundary.  When she gets near the boundary, the collar vibrates and beeps.  If she hits the boundary, it will administer a shock.  She quickly learned to stay within our five acre property.  After 2 years, the collar gave up the ghost.  It's imperative that we get another because Belle has a bad habit of getting out on the road when the battery would run low.  It would be horrible if something was to happen to her.  We went to order another one, but it was discontinued.  Fortunately, there was another one that was an upgrade.  We got it in the mail yesterday. 

Tricia charged it and programmed the boundary.  I walked up to Belle as she napped and put the new collar on her.  For the rest of the day, it worked like a charm!

You're not supposed to leave the collar on for more than 12 hours at a time, so at night I took it off, and put Belle in the garage.  Last night I heard coyotes howling in the distance and this ignited Belle to barking in the garage in answer to this threat of her livestock.  The collar has a few things to be aware of: sometimes on cloudy days, it might have trouble gaining connection to GPS and sometimes under the cover of trees, the signal might be sketchy.  Other than that, as we walked around the yard testing it this afternoon, we think this is going to be a good product, for Belle, for us, and for our neighbors.  Thou shalt not pee on Thy neighbor's Harley would have to be one of a dog's ten commandments, I would think.

At night we bring the collar inside and recharge it, although it didn't need a charge tonight as we had installed the collar mid afternoon.

We're hoping that this collar will work as well as the last one did.  We want to make sure that we (and our dog, Belle) are being good neighbors.  Belle's new collar will help her keep her end of the bargain.

First Fall Tomato Transplants

A month or so ago, I noticed some tomato seedlings coming up volunteer in the garden.  I have no idea what variety they are as we plant 9 or 10 varieties of heirloom tomatoes and it could have been any of those.  I carefully dug them up, potted them and have been taking care of them hoping to get a good head start for fall tomatoes. 

Fall tomatoes are a little tricky.  Plant them too soon in the heat of the summer and they won't fruit.  Plant them too late and an early freeze will wipe out any of your dreams of fall tomatoes.  But hit it just right and you've got terrific tomatoes - no pests or diseases to speak of and it is fun to garden in the cool temperatures.

The tomatoes (13 plants in all) were ready to go into the ground.  Some of them were a couple feet tall already.  I transplanted them on the first row south of the okra and put in the first strand of Florida Weave Trellis.

As you can see, we already have a bloom on one of the plants.  Will it make fruit?  Hard to tell.  We're still in the hot days of summer.  92 degrees today with a heat index of 101.  So far most of the transplanted fall tomatoes look really healthy.

Except for this one.  I know what you're thinking: Tomato hornworms!  Nope, would you believe me if I told you it was a male cardinal (red bird)?  We watched it fly down to where we had the tomatoes potted and snip off the leaves with his beak and fly off.  Tricia tried her best to scare him away.

I did notice there is some new growth coming from where the suckers grow.  Hopefully, since we've moved the tomatoes when we transplanted them, they'll be safe from the cardinal attacks.

I do have a problem with my garden labeling.  We have some heavy duty plastic signs and normally use a Sharpie to write the name of the plant on the label and then stick it in the ground by the plant.  Here's what's happened: the strong, blistering summer sun burns the Sharpie ink right off of the label.  By the time harvest time comes, you cannot read what variety you're harvesting, what variety did well, and what did not.

We're trying an experiment using the same plastic labels, but a different ink.  Rather than using a Sharpie, we're trying out a paint pen.  Will the sun cook the paint off the label?

That's the burning question.  We'll find out soon enough.

Too Many Roosters

The chicks we incubated back on March 18th have resided in the chicken tractor in the backyard.  Oh, how they've grown.  There are 6 hens and 6 roosters.  The roosters' courtship of the hens is loud and raucous.  There is no peace in the backyard.  Time for the birds to be introduced to the flock running free in the pasture.  One problem is that we have two too many roosters for the amount of hens.  Too many roosters means lots of fights and violence.

What will we do with the two roosters?  Sometimes to avoid violence, you must act with violence.  We will put those two roosters in the freezer.  I cut the arteries of the two and let them both bleed out in a bucket.

The roosters' hearts beat out all the blood.  Once dead, we wait for our water to get hot enough.

In my crawfish boiling pot, I'm looking for scalding water that's 145 degrees.  Any cooler and the feathers won't come off in the plucker.  Any warmer and you'll cook the birds.

Dish soap is added to the water once it's scalding and the bird is dunked in the water for about two minutes.  A tail feather and wing feather is pulled to test.  Once they pull out with ease, the bird is ready for the plucker.

The plucker's turned on and the bird is dropped in while we spray it.  The rubber fingers de-feather the bird.

What a nice job our plucker does?

The roosters are de-headed, feet cut off and gutted.

Then we do the 8 piece cut up that we normally do, saving the neck and back for broth making.

We clean up the liver, hearts and gizzards...

And bag them up for eating.  These will make tasty gumbos and soups this winter.

We were all done and had everything cleaned by 10 AM.  The next morning we both remarked how nice and quiet and peaceful it was in the backyard!