The Worm Turns

The worm turns is an idiom used to explain a situation that changes suddenly and abruptly.  It's appropriate to use that expression when talking about today's topic.  Cucumbers.  Our spring/summer cucumber crop was stellar, stupendous, and superlative.  Each day we'd harvest all we could carry.  We ate them every lunch, gave lots away at church and to family and friends and lacto-fermented many pickles in gallon and quart-sized jars.  

When the cucumbers in that garden petered out, I planted another row of them on the same trellis, while working some compost into the soil for nutrients.  You never want to take more out of the soil than you put into it.  The cucumbers quickly grew, attached themselves to the trellis, bloomed and set fruit. In fact, just as we ate the last pickle from the pickle jar, the cucumber harvest began to come in again.  We were just starting to bring in a half dozen a day and enjoying them cut up with some salt and pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then...

And then in one stinking day things turned south.  Worms descended on our cucumbers like the plagues in Egypt.   I guess had I been more vigilant and observant, I could have tried some neem oil on them, but it was not to be.

Just look at the destruction.  A few days prior, the leaves were broad and bright green, tendrils gripping the trellis as hopeful vines inched skyward.  Today we're left with webs, poop and the remnants of formerly productive vines.  

I scratched through the rubble of the failed crop and found the perpetrator, in fact three of them feasting on the last remaining cucumber.  I tossed it over the fence where many hens were waiting and watched with delight as I witnessed the worms got their comeuppance.

But no long faces here,  tomorrow I'll work some fresh compost and some chicken litter into the soil beneath the trellis and I'll plant our fall crop of Sugar Snap Peas.  Things turned quickly with the cucumbers - from abundance to abhorrent.  But things can turn quickly again with our crop of sugar snap peas hopefully and prayerfully planted.  If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Red Sky At Night

 I ran out to the road the other day and captured this beautiful red sunset.  What a sight!

It reminded me of the old saying, "Red sky in morning, sailor's take warning.  Red sky at night, sailor's delight."  I'm not going sailing, but if the saying is true, tonight would be the night to do it.  Did you know that this old saying is mentioned in the Bible?  It is found in Matthew 16:2-3, mentioned by our Lord.

2 He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.  3 And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

The Sadducees and Pharisees were two rival parties, but their hatred for Jesus caused them to be in agreement.  That brings up another old saying, by the way: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."  These religious leaders were looking for a sign.  They wanted Him to work a miracle in order that they might believe He is the Christ.  They were always looking for signs and wonders.  These people had the Son of God sitting before them.  Prophecy was being fulfilled before their very eyes and yet they were blind.  No one is as blind as he who just won't see.

Here's the thing:  A miracle or sign or wonder will not convict you to turn from your unbelief to salvation.  Why did Jesus bring up the weather?  He was making the point that their blindness was deliberate.  He was telling them that they had no problems looking at Creation that HE created and draw conclusions to guide them, yet they were confronted by evidence that He had shown them repeatedly and couldn't connect the dots.  Their own Scripture pointed prophecies of the Messiah coming that they should have recognized, but their eyes seemed to be closed to the truth.

Their eyes were closed.  Their hearts were hardened.  In verse 4 Jesus called them an adulterous generation.  Now some of them may have been committing adultery in terms of not being faithful to their wives, but Jesus was speaking more of spiritual adultery.  They were God's chosen people and they were not faithful to Him.  Instead, they were trusting in a set of rules and laws that they had manufactured.  They were worshipping a god they had constructed.  If they were following God, they would have recognized the Messiah in their midst.

Have you recognized the Messiah?  Do you know Jesus?  Have you manufactured a god or a system that you're trusting to get you to Heaven?  Jesus is the One foretold by the Old Testament prophets.  He is the promised Messiah that solved the "sin problem" that originated in Genesis 3.  He is the Good News that the New Testament speaks of.  Try as we might, we can't purchase salvation.  The smartest men and women can't invent a cure for our terminal sinful condition.  All it takes is faith, placing full reliance on Jesus for the remission of your sins.  Despite the weather forecast, if you trust Him, regardless the color of the sky at morning or night, you'll sail into eternity secure with Him.

The Trouble With Goats

Goats are interesting creatures.  Always getting into trouble.  In fact, just this morning I woke up to find Agnes, one of our goats, had gotten herself completely tangled up into some portable fencing.  I struggled for almost 10 minutes before going to get the wire cutters and destroying my fence in order to free her.  It is no wonder that in Matthew 25 our Lord separates the sheep from the goats.  A quick study of this passage shows that the goats are not the good guys.  In fact, they are told to depart to everlasting fire.  Although goats are cute, they can definitely be troublesome, and if I'm honest, sometimes I wish some of ours to be on the coals of a barbecue fire, if not everlasting fire.  

One thing that keeps us busy with goats is dealing with foot problems.  Ours are very susceptible to foot rot.  It's a condition that has us constantly trimming hooves and applying copper sulfate soaks on affected hooves.  I want to introduce you to "Bunny."  Bunny is a goat that sadly lost her baby as a stillborn this spring.  We call her Bunny due to her pink nose and striking resemblance to a bunny rabbit.

Bunny is in our goat milking stanchion for her hoof treatment.  She has an issue with her front left hoof.  We put her in the stanchion so that we might be able to isolate the hoof for treatment.  We gave ol' Bunny a cup of sweet feed to somewhat distract her from the task at hand.

I got some hoof trimmers and clipped around the affected, tender area.  There is a spot that appears to be an abscess.  It started to bleed, and I squeezed it hard to see if I could get any infection out.  Then Tricia mixed up a copper sulfate solution for soaking.  The poured it into a "hoof bath" apparatus and we set Bunny's affected hoof into the soaking solution.  I then used duct tape to secure it on her leg, so she wouldn't kick it off.

We left the boot on for 20 minutes, hoping to give the copper sulfate time to work.

We finally took the boot off.  Hopefully Bunny will improve.  If not, we're not opposed to bringing her to the veterinarian.  Bunny is not the only hoof patient at the moment.  "Tillerson," who is Tillie's little buckling was also limping.  Tricia squirted some copper sulfate into the affected hoof.  

We'll continue to watch Bunny and Tillerson for improvement and provide care to them as needed..

A New Project That Must Be Completed Before Winter

So that we can quarantine animals, we have a portion of the pasture fenced off in an area we call "the bull pen."  You see, the quarantining I'm talking about is not due to illness, but due to the wanton desires of the male species.  If you don't keep the males separated from the females, we've found that things get a little dangerous.  Wild hanky-panky notwithstanding, if you don't separate the males from the females, you cannot control the breeding date.

We generally keep the bull in the bull pasture until we see a cow or heifer go in heat and then we'll put her in the bull pen with the pull for a day of courtship and romance.  But it's not just the male of the bovine persuasion.  We keep the billy goat, Popcorn, in the bull pen, too.  For similar reasons, but for another as well.  Billy goats are, well, there's not a nice way to put it.  They're gross.  During their season of lust, they pee on themselves, all over their beard, and it stinks.  We don't want to be anywhere around them.

So here's where the project comes into play.  Goats aren't real fond of rainy weather.  The bull pen is gated into the barn, but the barn has the cows and heifer and also the does there.  We need to build some sort of small lean-to shed so that the billy goat and bull can get in out of the weather.  Nothing too big and nothing fancy and certainly nothing expensive.  So I decided to put up an 8x8 simple shed.  It will be closed on three sides and open to the south side.  In winter, it will provide a respite from the rain and north winds. 

Saturday, I enlisted Russ' help and we used a post-hole digger to place four 8 foot 4x4's into the ground in the bull pen and anchored them in with Quik Crete.  I kept the bull and the billy goat out of the bull pen for 24 hours to give the cement time to cure.  Nicky, the bull, has a propensity for rubbing his head on things, and I didn't want him to push the posts after we had worked hard to level them.  After 24 hours I put the bull and the billy back in the bull pen.

They were curious as to what the project was.  What are these posts in our pasture?  I felt sure they would set out to destroy the work we started, but so far, the posts have held firm.

I'll work on this as time allows, day by day, until we have a shelter for the Nicky and Popcorn.  Everyone needs to be able to get out of the rain, right?

Belle's Bath Day

Our Great Pyrenees, Belle, is 5 1/2 years old.  I can remember giving her a bath twice.  Now, that may seem like animal abuse to some.  There is a thriving industry of dog groomers, but Belle will never go to one.  She's a working livestock guardian dog and instinctively does her duty day in and day out.  But the other day, Belle walked by us and Benjamin said, "Belle, you stink!"  He put it on his list to give her a bath.

I agreed to help as I wasn't sure how she was going to react to getting wet.  Normally, if it's raining, she makes a beeline for the garage.  We coerced her into the back yard and Benjamin put soap in the bottom of a livestock molasses lick tub and began filling it with water from the hose.  The goats were grazing in the pasture in the background.  The one who needs a bath more than Belle is Popcorn, the Billy Goat.  He stinks VERY bad!

We picked up Belle and deposited her in the bucket full of water and suds.  Surprisingly, she enjoyed it, like a human enjoys a relaxing bath.  She just sat there in the water, enjoying the process to the fullest.

Benjamin adjusted the jet of water to give Belle a deep cleaning.  We watched as the clear water underneath the suds turned cloudy.

Finally, we attempted to wash her face.  We weren't sure how she would react, but she did remarkably well.  We cleaned up those eye boogers in the corners of her eyes.  At last it was time for the bath to end, so we got her out of the bath tub.  She stood there as Benjamin brushed her.  He uses a brush that pulls out the long, tangled hair from her coat.  Belle LOVES this!  It's the same feeling you have when someone is scratching your back.  You sit there in a daze, hoping it never ends.  Thick clouds of white hair were removed with each brushing.  This hair thinning will make her feel cooler and better in the waning days of summer.

He brushed and brushed all over her body until no more white hair was coming out.  That's when you know that it is time to quit.  By this time Belle had shaken herself and was mostly dry.  I bet she was feeling so much better.

In a perfect world of American Kennel Club dog shows, Belle would have been proud of her clean, white coat.  But alas, Belle is not that kind of dog.  Within ten minutes of the photo above being taken, Belle was spotted digging a big hole in the flower beds and promptly rolled around and around in the soft, moist earth.  Belle's bath did not hold up.  Her cleanliness was short-lived.  By nightfall, you could see that she needed another bath.  She still smells nice, though, for the time being.

Securing the Border

Border security is serious business.  If you have no control of your border, undesirables come at will, unimpeded and wreak destruction on your land.  A fence can be porous.  Eyes cannot be on every square inch of land boundaries, making unlawful entry easy.  At first incursions are slow, almost unnoticeable, but gradually more border crossings are made, and before you know it, you've lost control of your land.  What was once paradise is ruined.  Dramatic actions are required to salvage things.  You must stop unlawful entries, severely punish those that have come in unlawfully, and then strengthen your borders to prevent this from occurring again.  One must be vigilant.

I'm talking about our garden.  We have a fence that borders our garden and acts as the boundary between the garden and our pasture.  Our pasture is primarily bahia grass and bermuda grass.  Grasses great for pasture, but BAD for gardens.  They run from rhizomes and quickly spread.  A fence does nothing to keep it out.  If left unattended, the bermuda, bahia, and nutsedge will quickly overtake the garden. You can see the grass coming through the border in the photo below:

I have found that a mattock is an under-appreciated garden tool.  I use this bad boy to dig up the border crossers by the roots.  I toss them over the fence - back where they belong.

I clear a two foot "de-militarized zone" to represent land re-patriated and reclaimed.

But I'm not done.  I move wood chip mulch and tightly pack in the cleared zone four inches deep, creating a clear border that is easier to patrol.

Over two afternoons, I patrolled the border, stopped illegal border crossings, and fixed things to deter future crossings, for the near future at least.

Here's a look all the way down the border fence once the job was done.

It was good to get the job done.  It was homeland security - literally.

A Labor Day Late Lunch

We planned on firing up the smoker on Labor Day and doing something new for us - Chuck Roast Burnt Ends.  It all started with a trip to a local slaughterhouse that cuts meat to order, and Tricia purchased a 4 pound chuck roast.  I stabbed the roast repeatedly and then made a rub of salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika, dried oregano, cumin and coffee.  I rubbed that all over the roast and put it in a plastic container and poured a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce all over it.  I put the lid on and gave it a good shake and then put it in the ice box to marinate overnight.  First thing in the morning, I lit the chimney with charcoal until they were burning.

Here is our chuck roast, marinated and ready to be smoked.

The roast was placed on the lower grille of the smoker.

I was looking to get the temperature in our smoker to 240 degrees and then hold it there for eight hours.  During the smoke, I added pecan sticks to the charcoal to keep the temperature where I wanted it.  I repeatedly opened and closed the vents to regulate the temperature.

After eight hours, the center of the roast was 190 degrees and ready to come off the smoker.  There is a nice black crust on the roast.  It smells great, but we're not done yet.

I sliced up the roast and it was nice looking.  Tasty fat with a deep red smoke ring.

I sliced the roast into cubes for the next step.

I put the cubed roast in a roasting pan and dusted the meat liberally with the remaining rub and some Baby Ray's BBQ sauce was poured over it and all stirred up.

Money shot!

You have several options here.  You can put it back on the smoker for 2 more hours OR you can put in the oven on broil OR you can put the roaster on the stovetop and cook until the coating on the meat is caramelized.  The last option is the one we went with for expedience.  We were hungry by this point!

Mom and Dad came over and Benjamin and Russ also joined Tricia and I for the "Roast Beast Feast."  It turned out really good and tasty, but if I'm honest, visiting and spending time with family was the highlight of Labor Day.

I trust you enjoyed your Labor Day as well.  Tomorrow, it's back to work!

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.