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!

Update on the New Hen House Gate

In the last post, we told you about a purchase we made in which we installed a solar powered automatic hen house door.  Currently, each night we go out and manually close the gate and each morning, we open the gate.  This keeps them safely protected from minks that have plagued the birds.  We had gone out the night of installation and discovered that the gate was closed and all birds were safe and sound.

In the photo below, you can see the solar panel mounted on the wall of the hen house above the door.  There are several settings and a remote control.  You can set it to close at sunset and open at sunrise.  Alternatively, you can set it like an alarm to open at any certain time (6 AM, for example) and close at any time (8 PM, for example).  Or you can use the remote control to open and close at will.

This morning we walked out to the barn to do our morning chores and...  The door was closed.  It was still before sunrise, but we were a little concerned that it wasn't going to open.  As we finished chores, I noticed a green light came on and the door opened.  It was 6:24 AM.  All the birds began filing out, one by one.  A white hen and a red hen zoomed out as you can see!

How about that!  This evening, we walked out at 8 PM to check on the doors.  It was quiet in the pasture.  All the hens were in the hen house, but the door was still open.  We decided to sit out and wait and watch.  At 8:04 exactly, a red light appeared on the door's indicator light and the door slowly closed.

What a lovely contraption!  We opened the door to the hen house and everyone was inside and on the roosting bars.  It's hard to see with the shadow, but there are 47 birds in here, all settled in for the night.  In addition to laying eggs in the nesting boxed that are all closed up for the night, the birds are doing an additional job for me.  They are making fertilizer.  All the poop that falls to the ground will be swept up and used as fertilizer in the garden after allowing it to 'cool down' a little bit.

So far, this is working out to be a good purchase.  No fowl play at all with installation of this hen house automatic door.  Two thumbs up!

The High Tech Hen House

We splurged a little and bought a contraption for the hen house.  Total price tag was $44.  We'll see if it works.  It is a solar powered chicken coop door.  It opens at sunrise and closes at sunset.  The current arrangement goes like this:  At night after all the chickens are roosting in the hen house, I go and close the door so that the minks don't kill all of them.  After they killed 39 in total, we've finally built the flock back up to 40 in total.  Each morning, we go back out to the barn and open the door to the hen house so that they can run around on 3 acres and forage for bugs, worms and grass.

This is not a new invention - I remember my friend in Hathaway had one of these on his hen house many years ago.  I was impressed with it.  It was delivered to the door yesterday and today after work, I got the instructions out and began the installation process.

I took the existing hen house door off and took measurements, using the old adage, "Measure twice, cut once."  It fit like a hand in a glove.  I began screwing everything in place and brought the charging apparatus inside to charge with electricity since it would soon be getting dark. Tonight, we'll manually close it once its charged and then tomorrow we'll begin the automatic sunrise open and sunset close feature.

It's about 6:30 pm and some of the girls are checking out the new door.  "How's this gonna work?"  The opening is four times smaller than it used to be.  Will they figure it out?  I'm sure it will, but after it gets dark, we'll check and see if they all made it in.

It's 9:30 pm and we went out and manually closed the door.  Let's check in and see if they all made their way in to roost:

They did!  The hens and roosters are all up on their roosts and ready to call it a night.  As am I.  Good night everyone!

The Green Light on the Dock

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“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”  F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

My job is such that I'm on the road a lot.  It's a good thing I have a company vehicle.  I'll put 200 miles a day on the odometer.  That's a lot of miles on a vehicle.  But similarly and as time marches on, we find that we have a lot of sand that's fallen through the hour glasses on our frail, human bodies.  That's sort of what I want to talk about today.  What's it all about?

King Solomon, the smartest man to ever live, wrote about that in Ecclesiastes:

"Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher,

"Vanity of vanities!  All is vanity."

What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun?

With my daily drive time, I pray, then I listen to podcasts.  I have 3 favorites of which I never miss an episode:

1. The Art of Manliness

2. Bear Grease

3. Victor Davis Hansen

That is quite a variety, you might say!  I also have a library card and have downloaded the Libby App on my phone.  That way I can listen to audiobooks.  I like mysteries from the likes of authors like James Lee Burke and Michael Connelly.  But lately, I've pledged to go back and re-read a lot of the classics.  I just finished up with "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley.  It was written in 1932 and it's amazing how true to life that book is with 2025 America.

The one I finished before that was "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  As stated, I've read all these before, but I it interesting to re-visit them in the eyes of a middle aged man.  This audiobook is almost 5 hours long, which is pretty short.  Here's my take on the book:

I told my wife after listening to 3 hours of it, that I hated it.  The characters in the book were wealthy, worldly, hedonistic, and fake.  They lived for themselves and their selfish pleasures, feeding their physical desires.  They were constantly at parties, drinking, and it seemed like most were having affairs, living lives of excess and no one was really happy.  They all seemed to be very lonely people.

You see, Gatsby was from a very humble upbringing.  He fell in love with a woman of great wealth named Daisy Buchanan.  He knew in order to have her, he would need to be rich and successful.  He was very driven and commenced to doing just that and he succeeded in bootlegging during Prohibition, along with other illegal schemes and enterprises.  Doing this enabled him to amass great wealth and a big mansion on Long Island.  Many people would come to his parties, drink his alcohol, dance to his music, and enjoy seeing and being seen.  Gatsby would gaze longingly across the sound and see the green light on Daisy Buchanan's dock, so far away.

Spoiler alert:  At the end of the book, Gatsby dies!  Nick, his only true friend, is calling people to tell them the time of the funeral, but everyone has more pressing plans.  All of the "friends" that were eager to attend his parties and drink his alcohol while he was living, abandoned him once he had no more to give.  No one attended his funeral.

Thinking about the green light on Daisy's dock that Gatsby would stare at, I think it symbolized several things - first Gatsby's quest to be someone successful, to have money and power and esteem.  He put all his energies in their pursuit.  I think he attained that in many ways, but having them didn't satiate something deeper within himself.  The green light was also a representation of Daisy's love.  It was there, but so far away, just beyond reach.

This is a picture, to me, of life that King Solomon wrote about so many years ago.  Everything is futility and striving after the wind.  The pursuit of wealth, riches, fame, success, at the end of life, is indeed hollow.  Maybe, like Gatsby, you never get the love of your life and maybe, no one will come to your funeral.  The chase of these material things is elusive.  Our lives are, the Bible tells us, a momentary vapor - here today and gone tomorrow.  No matter how close you come to achieving all the goals you set, true happiness seems just out of your grasp.  You never reach it, just like the green light in the distance on Daisy's dock.

"His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him."  Nick Carroway thinking about his friend, Gatsby.

I think that's why Jesus told us not to lay up for ourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal.  Instead lay up treasures in heaven where there is no decay or loss.  Where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.  Instead of seeking happiness, we should find contentment.

Gatsby died alone.  Was it all worth it for him?  I would say no.  We have an opportunity to go down a different path than Gatsby.  Unless Jesus returns during our lifetimes, we'll all die.  But death is not the end.  For the believer, that "green light" is within reach, without a doubt.  It's promised to us!  We will live in eternal bliss with our Savior.  While Gatsby died alone, we've been promised that our Lord will never leave us nor forsake us.  We won't be alone.  And, everything we've hoped for is there for all eternity.

In the Back of the Refrigerator

Before I get to today's topic, I wanted to show you one thing that my wife reminded me about the honey harvest.  Obviously we got honey and lots of it.  We also got beeswax and honey water.  The one thing I neglected to tell you that we also got was fire starters.  When we strained the impurities out of the beeswax, it left us with muslin rags filled with a waxy-debris substance.  These make great fire starters for a campfire or fireplace and we've put them into a zip loc bag to save for cooler weather and fire building.

Back in April when the weather was nice and cool, we posted THIS POST that explained one thing that we were going to do with the last of our cabbage crop.  We made kimchi or Korean sauerkraut.  If you click on the link highlighted in blue in the first sentence of this paragraph, it will take you back to that post and show you just how we did it, using lacto-fermentation as a food preservation method of choice.

We pushed the two quarts to the very back of the refrigerator.  The best thing to do is just forget it's there.  Then, on a hot, summer day, you reach back there and pull out a jar of kimchi that's been aging for months.

I guess ordinary folks would throw this out.  It looks kind of sketchy.  When you open the cap and sniff it, it smells very strong.

When you take a fork and dig into it, magic happens.  It's packed in there tight.  You have to work at it to get it unpacked and out of the jar and onto your plate.

Now for the taste test.  It's cool and tangy, effervescent and tart. It's also spicy.  In short, it's delicious and perfect for taking a few bites before your meal to get your digestion into gear.  We've been eating some for lunch each day and I suppose we'll be opening the second jar that's hiding in the back of the fridge.

The Honey Harvest (Part 7)

In the last installment of the honey harvest, we bottled up the honey for our sales department (Tricia).  If you thought we were finished, well, there's one more item of business.  See, honey isn't the only thing that was harvested.  There is a by-product that is very useful.  If you remember in one of the initial honey harvest posts, Benjamin used a knife to un-cap the capped frames of honey.  The wax cappings fell down into the table and most of the remaining honey flowed through a screen and we were able to get that honey.  

All that remained in the table was the wax.  We bagged that up into gallon zip loc bags and froze it for about 3 days.

We got out the old trusty crock pot and added about 2 1/2 inches of water to the bottom.  Then the wax cappings were put into a muslin cloth 'filter' and dipped into the water.  As it warms, the wax melts and flows out of the muslin and into the crock pot.

Any non-wax particles are captured in the muslin bag and we'll go give that back to the bees.  The beeswax and water is in the crock pot.

Now we turn off the crock pot and allow it to cool.  The wax rise to the top and the honey-water is on the bottom.

Once completely cool, you pull out the beeswax disk.  By the way, to the right of the beeswax is a fresh baking pan of sourdough bagels with everything seasoning on top, ready to slice in half and stick a fried egg in the middle for a nice breakfast bagel.

We repeated the process a couple of times and have two nice disks of beeswax.  If we wanted to, we could filter again and again to get clearer beeswax.

Out of curiosity, I put the wax on the scale and found that we got 3 pounds of beeswax.

But wait!  There's more.  The bottom of the crock pot contains the water that we put in and also the honey that cooked out of the wax.  We call this honey-water.  We bag this up and put it in the freezer.  In late winter and early spring, we put this in pans in front of the hive.  The bees quickly discover this and start drinking it and bring it back to the hive.  This mimics the "flow" and induces the queen to begin laying more and more eggs so she'll have workers.  This builds the population for when the real flow starts and gives you a head start on honey production.  They can hit the ground running.  It's a natural way to feed your bees.

We are finished with the 2025 honey harvest and have put a sign in front of the house to sell the honey.  With the beeswax harvested, we can make candles.  It'll be our first attempt, but we're anxious to try our hand at it.  One thing I've looked into is making herbal salves with beeswax.  The wax can also be melted and brushed onto the frames to give the bees a head start in drawing out comb.

All good things to shoot for.  We're also planning on pulling fall honey in October once the goldenrods are done.