The Water Tower

The water tower still standing in Elton, Louisiana

If you grew up in a small town, the title of this post will jog your memory. We had a water tower in our small town (population 2,500). It has since been taken down. In 1993 a country singer by the name of Joe Diffie sang a song about the water tower in his town. The song was a catchy one. One that you'd sing at the top of your lungs as you rode in your truck with your windows rolled down on a dirt road.

1993 seems like such a long time ago.  Perhaps I was living in a bubble, but it seemed like people were happier back then.  Sure, there was division, but at the end of the day, we loved our Lord, we loved our country and we loved each other.  Think Mayberry.  Yes, it was just a TV show, but for the most part, the community values and spirit and neighborliness was real, at least where I lived.  

So let's talk about the water tower in a small town.  Here's how Joe Diffie's "John Deere Green" started: 

They were farm kids way down in Dixie

Met in high school in the '60s

Everyone knew it was love from the start

One July, in the midnight hour

He climbed upon the water tower

Stood on the rail and painted a ten-foot heart

The water tower in Kinder, Louisiana was silver in color and some home-town "artists" had climbed way up to the top and painted things.  They didn't paint a 10 foot heart.  If memory serves me right, the painting was, "SRS '76".  Translation: Seniors of 1976.  Some proud individuals that had or were going to graduate from Kinder High School, braved the climb with a can of black spray paint and advertised their school spirit for all the world to see.

Brave souls, indeed.  The water tower is way up there.  You had to have stamina to climb that ladder.  You had to not be afraid of heights.  Though I've done my share of other questionable things, I never climbed the water tower.  I'm telling on him, and he probably won't appreciate me saying this, but my Dad climbed the water tower when he was a young buck.

I'll have to get him to tell me the story again since it's been a long time since I heard it, but I seem to recall him telling me that he was scared to death.  Not to mention the fact that when he and his friends got to the top and looked down, there were flashing lights coming from the police cars of Kinder who had been tipped off about their nightly maneuvers.  To Protect and Serve.  The officers were interested in having the climbers come back down and have a visit.  There was no place to run and no place to hide!  

Here is the chorus to the song about the water tower in a small town: 

In John Deere green

On a hot summer night

He wrote, "Billy Bob loves Charlene"

In letters three-foot high

And the whole town said that he should've used red

But it looked good to Charlene

In John Deere green

See what I mean?  That's a song you can really sing out loud!  The young "Rembrandt" from a rural town wanted to convey his love to Charlene.  Yes, he should've used red to accentuate the romantic feelings, but all he had was a can of John Deere Green paint that would ordinarily be used to touch up the old John Deere 4020.

In addition to serving as a blank canvas on which to paint your pride in your academic prowess or your love for the "Charlene" in your life, the water tower actually served a purpose.  Water towers ensure pressured water to the community and rely on hydrostatic pressure to distribute water to the town.  They must be high in the air to accomplish this.  Each foot of height will provide 0.43 PSI (pounds per square inch) of pressure.  

This saves the municipality on pumping.  Once the water was up in the tank, you had pressure, even during power outages.  Even if the power was out, you could shower in the morning - at least while there was water in the tank. You would need a pump to pump water back up there once the reservoir was depleted.

Water towers often have the town's name painted on the side and/or the town's slogan and perhaps boasts of football championships painted up there as well.  Not to mention a place for the "Billy Bob's" of the community to declare their undying love for "Charlene."  It doesn't even need to be painted in red.  Charlene liked it in John Deere green.  God bless small towns in America!

As the song continues, you see that Billy Bob's painting on the water tower paid dividends:

They settled down on 80 acres

Raising sweet corn, kids, and tomatoes

They went together like a hand and a glove

On a clear day from their front yard

If you look and know what to look for

Up to the east, you can still read his words of love

In John Deere green
On a hot summer night
He wrote, "Billy Bob loves Charlene"
In letters three-foot high
And the whole town said, "The boy should've used red"
But it looked good to Charlene
In John Deere green.

Eating Homegrown Tomatoes on January 15th!

"Only two things that money can't buy - that's true love and homegrown tomatoes" - Guy Clark

Just before Christmas we got some REALLY cold weather.  I had reported to you that I went sadly to the garden and picked all of the fruit off of the gorgeous tomato plants.  I had many different varieties growing and they were all healthy.  Here is one of the boxes of tomatoes shortly after I brought them inside.

In past years, I cooked them down and made a green tomato sauce that we used as a soup base.  This time, however, we decided to try to ripen them.  We covered them in paper bags and put a banana under the paper bag with them.  

Soon the very green tomatoes began getting pink and then red!  We put them on the window sill for further ripening.

Soon we had bunches and bunches of red ripe tomatoes to eat and cook with...

Our summer time tomatoes are good, but these winter tomatoes are largely free of any blemishes brought about by stink bugs, worms and disease.

Tricia sliced up this perfect one right here to eat along with our after-church Sunday lunch.

It's interesting that while we are eating the last of the winter crop of tomatoes, just one room over from the kitchen, our spring crop of tomatoes have germinated and are just about to put on their first true leaves.  Out with the old and in with the new.  Spring is right around the corner.  In a month or so we'll transplant the seedlings in the garden so that we can get homegrown tomatoes harvested before the intense battle with heat and bug/disease pressure commences. 

Tick Tock... The Race Against Time

I've been experimenting with the fall tomato crop the past several years.  The spring tomato crop is okay, but I have so much stinkbug damage to the fruit that it is discouraging.  The fall crop has SO much potential, but timing it is crucial.  In This Post from January 2017 I show what happens if you miss the timing of your fall crop of tomatoes!  I had to make green tomato sauce with the entire crop.  Let's take a look at this year's fall tomato crop, shall we?

The tomatoes look really nice.  Their foliage is thick and healthy and they are supported by the Florida Weave trellising technique.  It is doing a good job of holding them upright even with all of the weight of the leaves, vines and fruit.

The fruit is picture perfect.  No blemishes or scarring from insect pressure.  I've been looking closely for tomato hornworms, but so far, all is clear.

They continue to bloom and bloom.

Hidden underneath the foliage are some nice, big fruit.  Still green, but I think we'll be able to pick red ripe tomatoes.  Now as far as the fruit from those just blooming, probably not!

All of the tomatoes I planted was heirloom varieties, with one exception.  The tomatoes in the photo below are not heirloom tomatoes.  A lady from our church brought me a napkin with dried up tomato seeds that she had just saved and gave them to me.  The seeds were from tomatoes that she had bought in the produce department at Wal Mart!  I'm not sure what the variety is, but you've probably seen them if you've been in their produce department.  These tomatoes are sold in a plastic container and are still attached to the vine.  I never thought they would germinate and grow, but they did!  They don't look too bad, do they?

Wal Mart tomatoes growing in the garden, thanks to Mrs. Linda.  You can also see the hay bale twine that is supporting the tomato vines.

The vines are absolutely loaded up with fruit!

While most are still very green, there are a few that are on the pinkish-red side of shading that we'll be picking soon.  Fresh, red-ripe homegrown tomatoes in December!

It is risky business, but it sure is nice when the timing works out so that you can enjoy tomatoes in the fall before the freeze knocks out the vines.

Colorful Campfire

Yesterday we talked about the beautiful bright red color of Bull’s Blood Beets.  It got me to thinking about a recent fire we built in our fire pit in the backyard.  Quite often we will gather up all the sticks that fall out of the trees in our yard and we'll burn them in our fire pit.  We will place our patio chairs around the pit, light it up and enjoy just sitting around the fire, visiting and staring into the flames.

But why did the bright color of Bull's Blood Beets get me thinking about a fire in the fire pit? 

Benjamin stoking the fire

Benjamin collects metals of all kinds, including aluminum, brass, and copper.  He'll gather up a bunch of it and take it to a recycling center in Lake Charles to redeem for cash.  If you look at the 3 o'clock position on the fire pit below you'll see a coiled up piece of copper.  That's not part of a moonshine still.  He was seeing if he could make the copper melt, but we determined that copper melts at 1,984 degrees Fahrenheit.  A campfire will only get about 930 degrees.  So while he found that he couldn't melt the copper, he could sure get it soft enough to hammer it all out flat.

Heating up copper

As he heated the copper we started to notice something odd, though.

See anything strange?

First a little bit...

Green Flames

And then a lot!  The flames leaping up out of the fire pit above where he had laid the pieces of copper were a beautiful green color!

Why is this happening?  Why does burning copper cause green flames?  Well, Google told me that green flames are caused by burning copper.  Now I barely remember these terms from high school chemistry, but apparently when you burn copper, you free valence electrons and make ions.  The energy that the electron gives off in this process is emitted as a photon in the color of green.

It sure was pretty, but I'm not going to pretend I still remember what an ion or photon is!  Sure is pretty though.

If Dr. Seuss Had a Vegetable Garden...

Looking through the seed catalogs in front of the fireplace in the winter is a fun thing for me to do.  I like looking for new seed varieties to try.  We grow open-pollinated varieties of seed so that we can save the seed from year to year.  Of course we'll grow the old standbys, but sometimes it's fun to mix it up a bit and add some variety.  Tonight I'll show you two of the new items that we tried this year.

If Dr. Seuss had a vegetable garden, surely he'd have purple cauliflower growing in it.  I bet he'd eat it with his green eggs and ham.

Geaux Tigers!

As the days are short and it gets dark early, I had to harvest these by lantern-light tonight.  This photo below just doesn't do it justice, but this is a green cauliflower.  I have a row of purple cauliflower, a row of green cauliflower and a regular row of white cauliflower (boring, I know!)

It's not easy being green

Growing amid the healthy green leaves of the plants, the purple cauliflower just reaches out and grabs you.  It is a stark contrast to the dark green leaves.  Of course the cows came running when they saw me harvesting the cauliflower in the garden and I tossed the leaves over to them.  When you harvest broccoli, the plant will continue to make little florets that we keep harvesting and enjoying every single day.  Not so with cauliflower.  When you harvest the head - it's done.  The cows take care of it though.

Live Purple

Now these are just a different color, but they will taste exactly the same as traditional cauliflower.  

During the Spring, I grow some Dragon Tongue Beans that have purple stripes. When you cook them, they lose their purple stripes unfortunately.  We'll test this out to see if they hold their purple color once cooked.  

Beautiful Purple

Tricia put a little butter in the cast iron skillet and stir fried them.  This is my second favorite way to eat them.  My favorite way is to roast them in the oven drizzled with olive oil and minced garlic.  It's like eating candy.  These were cooked to perfection - cooked but not too much.  They still were crisp and delicious.  They weren't off the plant for 15 minutes before they were in the skillet.  From farm to table.  Doesn't get fresher than that unless, of course, you eat it in the field.

A Delish Dish

How about that?  The purple color stayed after cooking.   Tricia always likes the contrast of different colors on her plate.  This fits the bill.  This is the kind of crop that would make Dr. Seuss proud.  In his honor (with apologies to Sam I Am):

I would eat purple cauliflower in a cast iron pot,

I would eat it; you might not,

I would make it disappear from my plate,

While it's cookin' I can hardly wait.

I would eat the green ones too,

It's good for me.  It's good for you,

I'll clean my plate, thank you ma'am.

I like it, I like it, Sam I Am!