Winter Harvest Before the Ice Comes

Forecasts show lows of 23 degrees overnight into the morning and tomorrow lows down to 19 degrees overnight and into the morning.  This has sparked a flurry (pardon the pun) of activity in getting things taken care of and ready.  Yesterday, I wrapped all the pipes in the attic, the faucets attached to the house, and then all the water pipes and spigots in the garden and out in the pasture.  It took quite a while but we got prepared as best as we can.  Hopefully we can make it through the cold weather without any broken pipes.

Late this afternoon after church, we bundled up and got all the tarps out, covering everything that's out in the garden, trying to save what's there.  I'm not really worried about the root crops, so I'm leaving the beets and carrots and turnips alone.  The cabbage are said to fare very well through a freeze, too.  I did check on the cauliflower.  We have a LOT of cauliflower that's ready.  I learned that if your cauliflower freezes, it gets mushy and is ruined.  Not gonna take any chances with the cauliflower.  Gotta pick 'em!

Most of the cauliflower are very nice, bigger than the size of your hand.  I pick the head of the cauliflower off and feed all the leaves to the cows.  How they love that!  Cauliflower is one and done.  By that, I mean once you harvest the head, no more will grow.  Broccoli is a different story.  Once you pick the main broccoli head, little broccoli florets pop up all over the place, so you can continue harvesting as long as you have patience to get out there and pick.  Pound for pound, you probably get more broccoli from the little florets cumulatively than you do from the main head.

In pulling all the cauliflower off so they're not ruined in the freeze, we got a huge haul.  I don't really have anything for perspective, but that's a big basket in the photo below.  We'll be busy eating cauliflower and blanching and freezing it.

I like to also pull some beets (bull's blood and chioggia varieties) and carrots (Danvers and Cosmic Purple varieties).

As a kid, I often turned my nose up at vegetables, but no more!  We eat lots of them.  One of our favorite things to do is roast cauliflower, broccoli, beets, and carrots in the oven with some olive oil, butter, salt and minced garlic.  I cannot stress how delicious this is.

Fresh spinach is coming in too, right now in the garden, so Tricia made a beautiful spinach, ham, pecan and cheese quiche.  That paired nicely with lettuce from the garden and the roasted vegetables.  It made for an enjoyable lunch.

After two days, we'll take the tarps off the garden and see where we stand.  Will everything we covered survive?  Tune in and we'll report toward the end of the week.  Stay warm!

Got the Onions in The Ground

Last week we got our onions in the mail from Dixondale Farms in Carizo Springs, TX.  We received one bundle of the Short Day Sampler.  The Sampler includes 48 plants that are a mixture of the 1015 Texas Super Sweet, Texas Early White, and the Red Creole.  We like to plant this one as it is a nice variety.

We also got two bundles of the Yellow Granex Onion plants.  That contains 96 onion plants.  The Yellow Granex onion is the hybrid that most people would recognize as the Vidalia sweet onion.  I got them out of the box and prepared the soil, using the onion planting guide provided.  We grow these each year and have had great success with them, usually able to grow all the onions we'll need all year.

The guide contains helpful information on how far apart to plant them, how deep, and how far apart the rows should be.  We've always found that if you follow the instructions, you'll have no problem growing delicious onions.  I got busy with the hoe working the soil and started planting.  I was racing the sun, but by the time the sun was dipping over the horizon, I had the job completed.

And then...  Then we got the news that we'll be experiencing a winter storm early next week, bringing temps to around 20 degrees.  Dixondale Farms helpfully sent out an email with instructions on preparing for extremely cold weather and freezing.  They suggest covering the plants with a tarp and watering thoroughly before a freeze as moist soil holds heat from the day and insulates the bulb and tender roots.  You can bet we'll be doing both of those things prior to the deep freeze.

Hopefully, we'll save the onions and will enjoy delicious onions this summer in yet another bumper crop.

Road Kill Reminiscences

Yesterday I was traveling slowly to an appointment south and east of Lake Charles.  It was down a two-lane blacktop road bordered by rice fields and cattle pastures.  Something caught my eye and I slowed down, checking my rear view mirror for anyone following me.  The road was clear in both directions.  I put the vehicle in Park in the middle of the road and opened my door.  There was a marvelous creature in the middle of the road, dead.  The blood was fresh.  The beast had been struck by a motorist early this morning, probably around daybreak.

A bobcat!  Much larger than the common housecat, it's fur was beautiful, with spots running down the legs and underside.  You can see it's short tail and understand why it's called a bobcat.  This cat wasn't skinny.  It was agile and muscular and fit, probably fattened on rabbits, rats, squirrels and maybe even a chicken from a farmer's pen.

I was sad that this ferocious feline was dead.  As I looked at the teeth on this cat, I shivered to think that if this thing would come to life, he'd tear me to pieces.

It reminded me of a time twenty five years ago when I was crawfishing.  A part of the 120 acres that I was crawfishing on bordered some woods on the north and east corner of a small patch my Dad rented from my Aunt Ida.  It was from this patch of woods that raccoons would come out at night and feed on my crawfish.  They would knock the traps over when robbing the crawfish out of them.  The turned over traps sunk beneath the water and since you couldn't see them, you'd run over them with the boat, crushing the trap.  Each trap cost $8.  With each ruined trap, my anger toward the raccoons intensified.

In the mornings, I would walk through the woods with my Marlin lever action .22 rifle.  Fat raccoons filled from their all-you-can-eat crawfish buffet all night would sleep in the crook of trees.  I shot them out of the tree, relishing the loud "THUMP" of the raccoon as he'd hit the forest floor.  But the population of raccoons exceeded my skill of killing them.  I began setting traps.  In talking to people, I had learned that raccoons are very curious critters.  I was told that if you put some aluminum foil, shiny side up, on the trigger pan of a snap trap, the curious raccoon would reach his hand to touch the shiny part and SNAP! - you'd catch him.  You did have to check traps often as they have been known to chew their leg off to avoid getting caught.

Within the next day or so, I came around the corner in my boat and heard quite the commotion going on.  There was a shrieking sound, followed by a tumbling motion with dust clouds arising from the water's edge.  I got a raccoon!  But as I got closer, I realized I was wrong.  I had caught a bobcat.  I killed the cat and ended up giving him to a relative that sold furs.  It was a beautiful animal, and I was sad that I had to kill it.  That cat wasn't eating my crawfish.  He was just in the wrong place at the right time.  Curiosity had indeed killed the cat.

Lache Pas La Patate

That phrase translated from Cajun French to English means, "Don't drop the potato!"  That phrase also means "Don't give up!" or "Hang in There!"  We won't be dropping any potatoes - at least not today.  Our phone rang right before 5pm and the caller id said, "Parsley's Feed."  I knew immediately what they were calling about.  Mrs. Johnette confirmed it when she said, "Your seed potatoes are in."  I told her I'd be over directly to pick them up.  A couple of weeks back I had put our names on an order list at our local feed store for 10 pounds of LaSoda seed potatoes.  Today they came in and we hopped in the car and drove over to get them.   

At the feed store, they had a notebook with several pages of names and numbers and how many pounds of seed potatoes the customer wanted.  As customers were called today, people were driving up to pick up their potatoes before closing time at 5pm.  A gentleman from our church that just turned 90 years old had ordered 50 pounds of seed potatoes!  (You read that right)  I hope in 31 years when I'm 90 I'm still planting potatoes!

I always have the same exact thought every year when I open the box and look at the potatoes:  "Should we just eat them?"  It's going to get chilly tonight and a potato soup with bacon, green onions and fresh parsley would hit the spot.  What if the yield on our potato crop is such that we harvest less than we plant?  That's always a possibility, but hope springs eternal.  We'll get these in the ground.

But something has to be done first.  We cut the potatoes and let them scab over.  You see the potato has a number of eyes.  From out of these eyes, a plant will grow.  Hopefully, each potato plant will grow numerous potatoes.  I use a knife to cut each potato in half, being careful (not to drop it!), but also not to cut through an eye.

When I finished the task, I had an entire tray of cut up seed potatoes.  I'll put the tray in a warm room and let the cuts scab over for about a week and then I'll put them in the ground in 10 days or so.

Constructing the Garden Sink

I've admitted many times before, I'm not a carpenter.  Sometimes, however, I get a hankering to complete a project that needs doing.  Wouldn't a garden sink be marvelous?  Tricia's old cast iron sink that was in the kitchen was removed after 25 years of service.  Although not a hoarder, I do like to save things that I think I may be able to repurpose.  I threw the old sink in the very back of the garden where it sat under the sugarcane patiently for over a year for me to make the decision to attempt the project that I had earmarked for it upon removal.  Last week, I pulled it from the garden and looked at it.  It didn't look good, but if I squinted my eyes, I could see potential there.  It's as if the old sink desired to be useful again.  Can we make that happen?

A garden sink would be so useful.  No more bringing in vegetables indoors for processing.  Vegetables that were dirty from harvest would get dirt and mud all over the place in Tricia's kitchen.  Vegetables that had stink bugs, spiders, slugs and snails clinging to them that would now be in the kitchen.  I searched and searched for plans online that would direct me on how to build it.  Oh, there were numerous plans and videos, but none were exactly what I saw in my mind's eye.  So I decided to build it without official plans.  I'd play it by ear, I'd fly by the seat of my pants, so to speak, in its construction.

The goal was to build it with lumber I had laying around.  This is what I roughed in.  As you can see, it's supported by a solid 4x4 frame supported by 2x4's, braced for sturdiness.  It would have a hardware cloth area for draining the cleaned vegetables.  I originally had ideas for a cutting board, but since this is going into the garden, I had a last-minute plan change to keep the garden sink reasonable in size.  I'll show you the workaround cutting board in a minute.

I was pleased with how this thing was taking shape.  Tricia liked that this would keep her kitchen cleaner.

I purchased the cheapest kitchen sink with sprayer from the local hardware store for fifty dollars.  Russ, my plumber son, helped me to pipe it all in.  The water run-off from the sink was plumbed to be caught in a blue tub.  That water that contained precious topsoil would be returned to the garden.  Either that or I would add chopped vegetable greens and stalks to the water and a little manure to manufacture my own fertilizer.  I'll show you that in another blog post sometime later.  The water source comes from a water hose connected by fittings to the sink.  It's not hard-piped in.  Since there's no hot water, I capped off the hot water portion of it.  I also added some 2x2 slats the have a shelf of sorts on the bottom for storage.  Doing so also added more stability to the garden sink.  We moved it out to the garden.

Time to test it out.  We had some Danvers carrots, Cosmic Purple Carrots, Detroit Red beets, and Chioggia beets ready for pickin'.  I pulled them, put them in the sink and washed and scrubbed them real good.

Using a makeshift cutting board that I placed over one of the sinks, I cut the greens off.  Of course with cows and goats nosing around, I fed the greens to them.

Chioggia beets remind me of Brach's Starlight Mints, one of my favorite mints, especially good to pop in your mouth when you are about to leave church in order to combat "church breath."  Church breath is a dreaded affliction one gets from sitting in church singing hymns and listening to the sermon, and starlight mints is the cure for it, I've found.  Chioggia beets, unlike starlight mints, aren't minty, but they are tasty.

The garden sink worked in splendid fashion to wash up the vegetables.  Total cost of the garden sink was less than $100.  As a result of having the sink, we were able to bring cleaned veggies into the house that were ready to be processed further without making a mess indoors.

Inside, we sliced these root vegetables into 1/4 inch slices, tossed them in olive oil and roasted them in the oven with butter and salt and pepper.  It was a good day and I've got to give the roasted vegetables AND the new garden sink good reviews.  The vegetables for taste and the garden sink for functionality.

Three New Hens

Since our oft talked about chicken catastrophe last year in which minks killed off half of our flock until I was able to trap them, our flock was cut in half.  We have 25 hens remaining.  So it was with great joy last week when our neighbor's grandson walked over and asked if we'd be interested in adopting three hens.  What a good neighbor!

His sister lives in town and purchased three hens at Tractor Supply.  At first her three hens seemed neat.  The newness quickly wore off and the hens wouldn't stay where they were supposed to stay.  They roamed around causing trouble and made lots of noise in the neighborhood and they laid eggs in different hiding places all around the yard.  Before long, it was determined that the 3 hens needed to be re-homed.

Of course, we'll take them.  Bring them on over.  They were wild and he had lots of trouble catching them.  I told him to wait until they're roosting at night and then he'd be able to grab them.  Sure enough, it worked.  He called me the next morning and told me that he had caught them the night before when they were roosting and he was bringing them over.

I asked him to put them in the cattle trailer and I'd introduce them to the rest of the flock when I got home.  The three birds are very healthy and will be a welcome addition to our dwindling flock.

Before putting them with the rest of the chickens, I used some tin snips to clip one of their wings.  This keeps them off balance should they decide to try to fly up and over the exterior fence.  After cutting the feathers off, I gently set the hens down with the rest of the flock.

It generally takes a while for new birds to get acclimated to the rest of the flock.  They tend to be standoffish.  The new birds don't know the routine.  Last night, they didn't go into the henhouse before the door closed.  That resulted in them being out exposed in a very dangerous place.  Mink and raccoons and possums prowl about at night on their nocturnal maneuvers.  We lost one hen just last year that didn't get into the henhouse before the door closed and a big barn owl was eating the hen when I went out the next morning to do the chores.

Last night I went  out after dark to see if the new hens made it into the hen house.  Nope.  They didn't.  I used a headlamp to find them out in the pasture, huddled in a little group.  I caught one by hand and put her locked up securely in the hen house.  The other two were wise to my plans and were wild by then and were having nothing doing with me.  No amount of telling them that it was for their own good would help.  I went and got the net we normally use when we go crabbing and used it to scoop up the other two hens.  Believe it or not, I had to run out tonight and catch those 3 hens once again.  They just don't realize the danger they are in.  After I secured them in the hen house, I locked the door.  I hope they figure out the routine.  I don't want to have to go chasing hens every stinking night to safely secure them.  After losing so many hens and then being gifted three to make up for that, I want to keep the hens happy, healthy and laying many eggs for us.                           

Empty Nesters - Remember When

Today our youngest turned 25 years old.  I can't believe.  Where did the time go?  Not only that, but he bought a home.  It's about 35 miles away from us, but it is close to his work.  He was living in Welsh with his brother, Russ, but now he's on his own.  We helped move him in.  His Momma has been helping him clean and get everything in order.  We are proud of him and all of our kids.  Here he is standing by his front door:

I am positive that many of you who are reading this have experienced the same bittersweet feelings I'm trying to express.  Since welcoming them into the world, you try to do your dead level best to introduce them to Jesus, parent them properly, instill values and teach them skills so that they can make it on their own in a dog eat dog world.  You think you have all the time in the world.  But you don't!

And then the day comes when they pack up and leave.  And the house becomes big and quiet.  You are left painfully aware of the mistakes you made in parenting and wishing that you might have done things differently or better.  We are frail and faulty, right?  You've shot your quiver of arrows out into the world.  You pray for your kids who are forging their own way in a cruel world.

You are left with silence and memories of their childhood.  Time marches on.  It waits for no one.  It's a stark reminder that I should be a better steward of it.  Looking back I remember Benjamin as a young boy out in the side yard with his rifle and Confederate Kepi hat reenacting Pickett's charge.  He'd get shot by a sharpshooter and lay writhing on the ground.  We watched from a distance as he imagined various combat situations.  He and Russ fought many battles against the enemy and each other with Air-soft guns.  In fact, look what I found years later in the side yard:

Look right in the center of the photo

Can you see the bright orange air soft pellet?  I think decades from now someone will find one of these and wonder what it is.  Years ago in digging up the bed in our garden in the side yard to plant Irish potatoes, I unearthed an old blue porcelain marble.  Years and years ago, in the same place where Benjamin and Russ battled it out, another young man played marbles, enjoying times of imagination and fun, with parents looking on at the innocence and vivid imagination you have in childhood.

In that same general location, eighteen years prior I constructed a simple swing for Laura Lee and hung it in a live oak tree.  She'd swing and I'd push her.  Good times!  She (and Russ) have homes of their own now, and the swing sits dormant, swaying only when a swift breeze pushes it.

Alan Jackson sings a song called "Remember When," and it gets me in the 'feels' whenever I hear it.  

Verse 4 says:

Remember when
The sound of little feet
Was the music we danced to week to week
Brought back the love, we found trust
Vowed we'd never give it up
Remember when

Verse 6 says:

Remember when

We said when we turned gray

When the children grow up and move away

We won't be sad, we'll be glad

For all the life we've had

And we'll remember when

I think Alan Jackson puts it in the right perspective.  Although it's sad, we'll be glad, for we shared a lot of love and life.  We often talk on this blog about raising animals and plants and honeybees, but the most important, by far, crop we raise is children.