A Bumper Crop of Pecans!

We lit our first fire of the season in the fireplace this week.  We put off turning on the heat for as long as we can and enjoy sitting in front of the fireplace in the evenings, enjoying the warmth and the mesmerizing fire.  There are so many memories associated with fireplaces.  The andirons come from my mom's great aunt and uncle's fireplace.  The bellows hanging was my maternal grandmother's (Bumby) and the fireplace tools were from my paternal grandparents' home.

We've watched a TV show set in Canada called 'Heartland.'  The grandfather (Jack) in that program has a fireplace in his home and has special stones set in the fireplace that are named after people.  They are special and have a place in the hearts and minds of those who gather around the hearth to enjoy the fire.  I wish we would've done that.  In the home I grew up in, Mom & Dad have bricks in their fireplace that were from other buildings that were special to my parents.  They can point them out and there are stories to go along with them.  I think that's neat.

As 'fireplace season' progresses, this is a place at night where I spend a lot of time, sitting around, shelling pecans.  We have SO many pecans this year.  We'll take the small ones from our trees to the feed store we patronize.  They have a pecan shelling machine.  You can hear it pop as the pecans are fed into it.  The pecans are cracked (for a fee, of course, and you're charged by the pound).  I'll sit here and separate the shells from the nut.  It's mind-numbing, but pleasant work on a cold winter's evening.

Our neighbors let us know that they are so busy working on their house that they won't be picking up any pecans from their trees this year.  They didn't want to see them go to waste, so they told us to pick up all we wanted.  Wow!  How generous.  Their pecans are almost as big as golf balls.  On a beautiful afternoon last week, I set up my pecan cracking operation on the back patio while listening to an audiobook.  How relaxing!

My pecan cracking operation doesn't involve mechanized equipment.  I use elbow grease.  I use a Reed's Rocket, circa 1950 manufactured by the Arthur W. Reed Manufacturing Company out of Little Rock, Arkansas.  I'll show you how the process works.  It is wonderfully simple.  There is no rush to the process.  It doesn't require any deep thinking or ciphering.  You just settle in to a rhythmic, efficient repetitive motion.  The nuts go in a bowl and the shells go in a bucket to be either burned in the fireplace (they make cherry-red coals) or composted in the garden.

The Reed's Rocket is adjustable and thus allows you to crack any size pecan, walnut, etc. in it.  You can adjust the threads to accommodate a larger or smaller nut.  Once you get is set just right, you slip the pecan in and use leverage to pull the 'piston' down.

You hear a loud crack and little pieces of pecan shell fly across the patio, revealing the treasured pecan inside.

While the pecans from our trees are only about half this size, they are full of oil, rich and fat.  These pecans from the neighbor's trees are larger and just about perfect, from my vantage point.

About 1 in 10 are bad, and I just throw them away.  Let me correct that.  Nothing goes to waste.  As it turns out, Belle eats them, even those that have bad spots.  A pecan-eating dog, can you imagine?  In just a short time, I filled a blue plastic 'pea-shellin' bowl with shelled pecans.  The contents filled two 1 gallon sized zip loc bags.  We'll put them in the deep freeze for later use.

This just scratches the surface of the pecans we'll have on hand.  We'll be shelling pecans all winter long, both on the patio and in front of the fireplace.  It's a good thing that we love pecan pies!  If you drop by to visit, we'll send you home with some shelled pecans.  Maybe Tricia will share her oven roasted pecan recipe with you.  It's got Worcestershire Sauce in it.  They are so addictive that you might have to attend a 12 step program once you've indulged.  

Prior to the Deep Freeze

The deep freeze that affected much of the fruited plain last week reached down into the deep south, too.  The freeze from the previous year killed some of our citrus and knocked all of it back so much that we cut numerous limbs off.  We had no blooms and no fruit last year, but we were hopeful for this year.  In fact, if you look at the navel orange tree below, you can spot blooms that were just about to open.  There's even some small fruit that had evaded my notice.

In only a week or two, the blossoms you see below would have opened and you would spot me out by the trees enjoying the great aroma.  The honeybees would have been all over them, too!  Why am I talking about them in the past tense?

Well, with freezes incoming that dip down in the low twenties and upper teens, I fear the blooms and fruit are gone.  We did our very best, piling mulch around the base of the trees, ensuring to insulate the area with the graft with thick layers of wood chip mulch.  Then we finished wrapping our trees in tarps before the cold north winds began to blow.  We also wrapped pipes, doing our due diligence to mitigate against broken pipes.

The next morning we had to go out to all the water troughs and break thick ice so that the cows, goats, and chickens could drink.  There were long icicles on the blooming camelia shrubs.

I had rolled out a fresh round bale of hay for the animals.  It's always important to give them plenty of hay to eat.  The animals didn't seem fazed by the temperatures.  Belle was watching them nonchalantly.

Her thick white coat apparently provided thick insulation to make her indifferent to the cold.  After sitting for a bit, she ran all throughout the pasture with reckless abandon.

Just prior to the freeze, we picked lots of broccoli, kohlrabi, peppers, sweet peas, snap beans, mustard greens, lettuce and kale.  We covered everything with tarps and anchored them down so that the plants would stay covered when the winds began to blow.

We anchored down the chicken tractor with laying birds with tie down stakes on all four corners.  The tractor was covered with a tarp and we ran an extension cord to power a heat lamp that would keep the hens warm.  It worked.  They were comfy.

With everything prepared as well as we could expect, we went inside.  The heater in the den was off and even ahead of the cold, temps had dropped to 53 in the house.

Time to change that.  With our firewood inventory in very good shape, we stoked up a nice fire and kept it burning for hours and hours.  It heated up our den and we enjoyed the warmth and ambiance that a fireplace provides.  We get plenty of use out of it.  I was toying around with putting some sort of a mechanism in the fireplace wall to hang a cast iron dutch oven and cook over the bed of coals?

Happy to say that the garden fared well, all the animals survived, too!  The jury is still out on our citrus.  All the trees are stressed, for sure.  I hope they make it.  If not, we'll have to start over.  Not ideal, but we'll push forward once more.

Nothing's Cozier Than A Fireplace

There is a silver lining to every dark cloud, right?  That's the way I'm trying to look at things anyway.  The two Hurricanes in 2020 that affected us were Laura and Delta, and although we personally (Russ did) didn't have any property damage to speak of, we did have a number of trees on our property that 'got a haircut.'  Some lost some pretty large limbs, specifically one of the pecan trees up front.  So, the destruction of the hurricanes at least gave us some firewood.  And we were out!

It was sawed up and stacked in the back, but still needed to be split.  I generally like to wait for cold days to split wood.  Last week we had weather in the 30's during the day and in the 20's at night.  I figured that was perfect log splitting weather.  I got out the trusty ax and began swinging.  I warmed up fast.  The chickens always congregate as the split firewood exposes huge white worms that the chickens love to eat.  Sometimes, they'll get a little too close for comfort, and I have to watch my swinging.

Since the logs are a year and four months old, some of them are easy to split with the ax.  Others are full of knots and the wood grains are twisted.  The ax bounces off of it.  In these cases I have to go to Plan B.  I have a wedge and a sledge hammer.  This is very effective in getting the stubborn logs split.

In no time at all, I've got a wagon-load of firewood split.  It's all pecan wood.  I'll keep splitting since it is cool, and I have momentum now.  I split three more wagon-loads after this one just to keep ahead.  On cold days, I'll get a fire roaring in the fireplace and we'll sit in front of it, shell pecans or read and relax.

Here is one of those fires I'm talking about right here.  After it is burning for a little while, I like to step outside and smell.  Pecan smoke is a nice, soothing fragrance.  Special note to self: I need to reserve some pecan chips to use on my smoker.  Pecan-smoked meat is a real treat!

Here is my wife enjoying the fire.

Nice, glowing coals in the fireplace CHECK
Feet up on the hearth                        CHECK

Comfortable chair                             CHECK

Cup of coffee                                    CHECK

Reading material                               CHECK
Afghan quilt, if needed                     CHECK

Looks like the checklist for a nice day!  There's nothing cozier than a fireplace!

How We Used to Watch TV

I can remember growing up we had TV trays.  Whatever happened to them?  I distinctly remember going to my grandmother Bumby's house as a kid and we'd get the TV trays out in front of the TV.  For some reason, I remember breakfast the best.  Bumby would bring us a big bowl of Rice Krispies and a sugar bowl with a teaspoon in it.  We would sprinkle sugar over our Rice Krispies and listen to Snap, Krackle and Pop.  Meanwhile she was in the kitchen.  Bumby made the best Cinnamon Toast ever!  She had a toaster oven and would put butter, cinnamon and sugar on the toast.  It would come out hot and so delicious.  She would put it right on our TV tray while we watched whatever we were watching.  It was fun until one time I remember my brother had this shiny racing jacket that he was very proud of.  My grandmother had a space heater glowing bright red in the den.  My brother got a little too close and melted his favorite jacket.  (Crazy things you remember!)

At my other grandmother (Myrtle Lee's) house, she had TV trays too.  We would park ourselves in front of the TV and eat rice and gravy and sausage.  Our cola was set down on the tv tray for us in aluminum cups that were FREEZING cold.  We'd watch Gunsmoke, Barnaby Jones, Hawaii 5-0, The Rockford Files and then we'd eat my grandpa's favorite ice cream - Ozark Black Walnut ice cream.  We would visit, for sure, but the TV tray allowed us to park in front of the TV, visit, and eat.  Multi-tasking at ist best.  Then we'd clean up the dishes and play solitaire.   The tv trays had legs that would fold out and you could put a chair down and pull it in front of you.  Whatever happened to them?  Today, we always eat at the table. 

Image Credit

I guess the reason I was thinking about TV trays tonight is because for the past few days with the freezing weather, we've brought a modern version of the TV tray into existence:

Tonight we had homemade beef and vegetable soup and a bowl of salad in front of the fireplace.  While we didn't have a TV tray, we had the next best thing.  We set our bowls down on the hearth, said grace, and gazed into the warm fire while eating and visiting.  So relaxing!

Once done, we cleared dishes away and pulled up our chairs to the fireplace .  Our improvised TV trays are much more sturdy than the old ones, allowing us to kick up our feet and warm our toes. 

TV trays, while great, were not that sturdy.

Preparing "Heart Pine" for Kindling

I can remember when I was a kid on the farm.  From time to time, Dad would "bring new land" into the farm, meaning we would plant rice on a piece of land that had been fallow since, well forever.  Clearing that land was quite an undertaking.  One of the last things we'd do before opening up the land with a plow was collecting pine knots and heart pine.  We would pull a wagon through the field and toss all the pine knots on top.  Eventually we'd pile up the old pine somewhere.  This heart pine was the very center part of old-growth long-leaf pine trees.  It was resistant to rot and decay and insects.  It lasts forever.

I still have some and still use it.  We never hooked up the gas jet to our fireplace to start firewood.  Why do this when you have heart pine that you can split into kindling?  Below I'll show you how I did it the other night.

I use a double-headed ax that I sharpen up.  Cutting heart pine is not like cutting any other wood.  It is hard as stone.  I stand the heart pine on end and then commence to cutting kindling off of it.

I said heart pine lasts forever.  I may be exaggerating there, but there is really no telling how old some of this stuff is.  I want you to look at the photo below closely:

That old post is solid heart pine.  If you look closely, you can see an old, rusty hinge on it along with a dozen or so nails and staples that were all hammered into it decades and decades ago.  I'm sure it was not easy to drive nails into this wood.  I have that old post, but I'll probably never cut it for kindling.  I think it has a lot of character and longevity and speaks volumes about quality.  If you buy a "landscape timber" at a hardware store, that thing will begin rotting as soon as you put your turn signal on leaving the parking lot.  This old log of heart pine stands the test of time...

From another heart pine log, I carefully cut long skinny pieces of kindling.  The wood smells like Pine Sol and is sticky to the touch.  The colors of red, yellow, and amber are rich.  If you inhale the scent, it reminds you of simpler times.

I put these pieces in the wagon along with some firewood.  I'll put a stick or two of heart pine kindling on the fireplace grate and then put some dry firewood on top.  I crumple up a piece of newspaper or two and strike a match.  Fire consumes the newspaper I've placed under the heart pine and it quickly ignites.

The sap-enriched wood crackles, sending up billows of black smoke that coats the inside of the fireplace, ensuring that we'll need to call a Chimney Sweep to come and clean our chimney from time to time.  Heart Pine is an old relic from the past.  I'm glad I have a pretty good supply of it as its existence is growing rarer by the day.

Keep the Home Fire Burning!

The Last Fire of the Season

I lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house.  Henry David Thoreau

It is March and the leaves are all budding outside with new growth.  The citrus trees and other fruit trees are blooming.  The weather threw us a curve ball, though, and we had freezing weather two days in a row last week.  It gave us an opportunity to light up a fire in the fireplace for the last time until maybe later this year in November.  We enjoy lighting a fire in the fireplace. 

Chop your own firewood and it will warm you twice.  - Henry Ford

Sitting in front of a roaring fireplace on a cold night is a relaxing event.  As I think on it, it is more than the warmth of the fire that makes it so appealing.  Just staring into a burning fire, listening to the fire crackle has been shown by researchers to be so calming that it reduces blood pressure by 5%.  I truly believe this as I always feel relaxed sitting in front of the fire with family.

The thing about it is, that a lot of work went into making the fire.  First, we don't use a gas jet to light our fire.  We use lighter pine that we've chopped into kindling.  The embedded sap in the pine lights easily and quickly starts the oak burning.  The oak was grown on our land and cut down and split into firewood.  Once the fire has consumed the wood, the ashes will be broadcast in the garden or trench composted, where the nutrients from the ashes will enrich the soil.  Wood ash contains calcium carbonate which will increase the pH level of the soil.  It also contains potash and potassium.  It is a big circle.  The ashes from the trees grown on the land will, in turn, spur new growth.

In a way, the last fire of the season is also a sad time.  In South Louisiana, our spring is very short.  Our summers are very long.  Before dwelling on the hot and humid months ahead of us, we'll enjoy the last fire of the season.

Using Heart Pine To Start The Fireplace

This morning when I woke up the winds were briskly blowing out of the north and east with temperatures in the mid 40s.  This evening it was downright chilly.  I made a fire in the fire pit outside.  Prior to that, though, I was thinking about starting a fire in the fireplace in the next couple of nights.  I've moved a load or two of firewood under the patio for when we light one, but realized that I need to go cut some heart pine or lighter pine.

When we light fires in the fireplace, we always start the fire with a few kindling sticks of lighter pine.  I looked on the Internet to see exactly what heart pine actually is and it confirmed my suspicions:

"Heart pine," as it is referred to, is only long leaf pine. It was the main type of pine found in the old growth forests from Virginia to Texas. This type of pine is called "heart" because when it reaches maturity the tree is mostly heartwood. This is not true of other lesser specie of pine such as loblolly and slash. The original old growth long leaf pines grew to be 300-500 years old. It contains almost twice the resin content of other types of pine and had much much higher structural strength. It was used for the tall masts of sailing ships and was referred to as "The Kings Pine" when this country was owned by England. Much of this information and more is contained in historical record of the Great Southern Lumber Company in Bogalusa, LA. This mill was opened in the early 1900's and was the largest sawmill in the world at the time, producing 1 million bdft of long leaf pine per day.  Credit Link

Here is a big chunk of lighter pine that I chopped some kindling sticks off of today:

I have a stack of this stuff that I keep on hand for fire starting.  I wish you could smell how Great it smells by scratching the photo below!:

From looking at heart pine from the outside, it is unremarkable.  Hard, heavy and dull looking.  But when you split it open, it has an amber tint and is oozing with sap and bursting with aroma of pine.  In my scouting days, they taught us to take our pocket knives and carve little slits in a stick of heart pine on every side, opening it up like a Christmas tree shape.  Then you would light it and use it to start a campfire.

I can remember clearing land at the farm in Oberlin that was previously all in pine timber.  We'd pile up sticks to burn, but we'd put all the pine knots and heart pine that we would find on a trailer and would save it.  Many years ago my neighbor gave me a bunch of logs of heart pine that he had gotten from Georgia while on a job.  Each year I cut sticks off of the bigger logs and place it on the bottom of the firewood in the fireplace.  It starts very easily and pretty soon, you have a roaring fireplace!

Here's my bucket of cut up heart pine.  In a few days, we'll be ready to burn our first fire in the fireplace of the winter.

Can't wait!

A Few More Fires in the Fireplace Before Spring

Sunday the rains started... again.  There is a high probability of rain every day this week with temperatures in the upper 70's.  On Wednesday night, though, the weather will once again change as another front will blow through bringing freezing temperatures with it.  The weatherman said wind chills could be in the high 20's. So before the rain started, I filled up a wagon load of firewood and stacked it under the patio where it will be dry once the rain starts.

This is all the firewood that is left over from the big water oak tree that we took down in the front yard and split up.  It has lasted us for a long time, keeping us warm and cozy through three winters. A small group of hens roosts on the wood pile every night.  They'll soon be looking for a new spot to roost once the pile disappears. The wood pile has also provided a place for Annie, the goat, to climb up on and thus given good exercise for me as I have to re-stack the woodpile after she knocks the wood down - an almost daily occurrence.

The dwindling wood pile

When the chickens see me heading to the wood pile with the wagon, they come running.  They know that the buffet line is about to open.  The wood pile is also home to numerous roaches and big, white grub worms and that is prime eating for the chickens.  Although safe underneath the stack of wood, once I start removing the wood, insects and worms are unearthed and exposed to the hungry chickens who scratch and promptly devour them.  By the time they are finished, the ground is scratched clean.

Cleaning things up

The woodpile is near the end.  Not to worry, though.  We have another stack from the three smaller water oak trees that we took down this summer.  The boys and I will split it and stack it to burn next winter.

Fuel for next year

As I type this entry tonight, I'm sitting in front of a fire that was roaring 45 minutes ago, warming all in the room.  I was shelling pecans while talking to the family, relaxing and winding down for the night.  Now all that is left of the fire is some glowing embers, still putting out heat, but fading fast.

A cozy fire

Just like me!  Goodnight all...

Fireside Chat

Winter season is upon us at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  It has been cold and wet for days now and the ground is a saturated, muddy mess.  It gets dark by 5:15 or so and I can't get a doggone thing done around the place until the weekend.  So much for the complaining.

Yesterday evening when I got home from work, I was feeling real sorry for the cows and was in the process of putting out a fresh bale of hay for them when Daisy, Rosie, and Maggie all escaped through the opened gate.  They ran with reckless abandon through the neighbor's yards in search of grass to eat.  They wouldn't listen and would run from me when I got near them.  I ran and got Tricia to come help me round them up and push them back into the pasture.  It was a harrowing experience for a while as they were heading toward a busy road.   Fortunately we were able to get them back in.

By the time I got back inside the house, I was wet and cold.  It was time to get the fireplace blazing. Fortunately, when the big water oak tree in the front yard died, we were able to get several years' inventory of firewood put away.  I had Benjamin bring a wagon load full to stack by the french doors in the back so it stays dry.

Firewood for the winter

It only took a few pieces of heart pine kindling and some dry oak and we had the fire started.  I like to sit by the fireplace and shell pecans.  For some reason, that is very relaxing to me.  We also like to lay out blankets by the fire and watch movies on these cold, rainy evenings.  We watched Jeremiah Johnson tonight.

The andirons in our fireplace were from my Mom's Great Aunt and Uncle's house.  I always like to use old things with some history to them.

 A cozy fire

The cold rain persisted for days.  The photo doesn't really convey how miserable it is out there.

This next photo tells the story though.  It is so lousy out there that Big Boy (the dog) and Christie (the cat) are at total peace with one another on the back patio, when they are natural enemies.  Something about a dry patio blocking the north winds that made them set aside their differences and get along for the moment.  It made me immediately think of Isaiah 11:6-7 in which Isaiah is talking about our Lord's Millennial reign "The wolf will lie down with the lamb and the leopard with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together. Also the cow and the bear will graze and the lion will eat straw like the ox."

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Thankfully we're inside with family enjoying a cozy evening by a roaring fire.  

A Cozy Fire

In addition to shelling pecans, it is about time to pull out the seed catalogs, take inventory of the seed varieties we saved, and begin planning the Spring Garden.  Life is Good!