The Last of the Potatoes

Back in late May we harvested our red and white potatoes that we had growing on seven rows in our garden.  We had a bumper crop of them - so much that we gave some away and still had a bunch that we've been eating every chance we get.  Here we are a full five months later and we're finally getting to the bottom of the potato bin.  You can see them below. Some of them have 'eyes' that are starting to grow, but we'll just pluck those off and cook them.

Our homegrown potatoes have never lasted so long without going bad.  This year they have really held up and stored well.  In previous years, we'd pull out the potato drawer and you'd get a whiff of something that smells bad.  You know that smell!  This year I did a little reading and learned how to store potatoes to last for the long haul.  I can vouch that it works, so I'll share the very simple tips:

1. After harvesting, don't wash the potatoes.  Leave the dirt on them.
2. Store in a ventilated container that allows lots of air flow.  A milk crate works beautifully.
3. Store in a dark, cool room.  Our mudroom worked great for this.  We kick off our shoes in there so we keep the door closed and the little room has its own air conditioning vent, so it stays cool and dark.  

The Last of the Spring Potatoes

The bottom of the barrel of potatoes always contains the smallest potatoes as we tend to pull out the biggest, prettiest once to eat first, unless we're cooking them with fresh green beans.  Then the nice little ones are perfect.

Anyway, all is not lost with the small potatoes.  I know they are difficult to peel so we just wash them before cooking and eat them with skins on.  We like to make hash browned potatoes for breakfast with scrambled eggs on Saturday morning.  We threw a bunch of the little potatoes in the food processor with the shredding attachment on, shredded them up, put them in a heated cast iron skillet with some butter, sliced mushrooms, and onions and in a few minutes you have a nice side dish to go alongside your scrambled eggs.  We'll add a little shredded cheddar cheese to the top of them while they're warm so it melts.  A dash or three of Tabasco sauce puts the finishing touches on them!

Hash Browned Potatoes

Everyone loves hash browns at our house.  The only bad thing is that our potato inventory is almost gone and I didn't plant a fall crop this year.  We have a long wait until we eat homegrown potatoes again.

A great way to start your day!  Homemade Hash Brown Potatoes

I generally plant them in the early Spring on Valentine's Day and harvest in mid to late May, so we'll just have to be patient...

Teaching the merits of Saving & Value

Benjamin and I have been talking about saving money and not going into debt.  I'm trying to give him some activities and examples that "hits him where he lives."  In other words, I'm trying to help him understand money from the eyes of a 12 year old boy.  I've got my work cut out for me!

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For example, I was trying to make the point how it is a good idea to save your money versus spend it and that the bank or lending institution will pay you interest for 'borrowing' your money.  We give Benjamin an allowance for doing some farm chores.  Some things he is not paid for as there are jobs that you are expected to do just for being part of the family.  As an added incentive, we give him 50 cents for every dozen eggs we sell.  He's saved some money over the years and it is sitting in a savings account.  I wanted to show him the concept of compound interest so we got out his latest bank statement to show him what he's earned in interest.

Benjamin: So Dad, how often does the bank pay me for keeping my money in the savings account?
Dad: Well, they pay you once a quarter - that's once every 3 months.
Benjamin: How much did they pay me for the last quarter.
Dad: Hmmm.  Let's check your bank statement.  Right here, they made a quarterly interest payment to you for 12 cents.
Benjamin: (long silence)  Umm, Dad, can I use twenty dollars of my savings to buy a Star Wars LEGO set I've had my eyes on?

This is going to be harder than I thought, but honestly, the incentive is not there to save.  With inflation you are losing money.  Even a kid knows it's probably smarter to spend it.  We did discuss risk and reward and I showed him that you can definitely make a higher rate of return in the stock market, but the risks of loss are much greater.

Benjamin is motivated, however, and figured out that collecting cans can be a money making venture.  He researched and found that it takes 31 cans to make a pound of aluminum and that the going rate is $0.40 per pound, so it takes about 80 cans to make a dollar.  I don't know about where you live, but people throw many "dollars" out of their window around my house and Benjamin aims to pick them up and convert them into profit.  Cha ching!

So he asked me to go walking down the road with him yesterday, pulling a wagon and picking up cans.  Off we went.  As we walked about a mile down the road and back, picking up cans, we had a good chance to talk about life, how home school is going and we also observed many things, including:

#1 Why do people litter?  I don't have an answer to that question, but I remember when someone threw paper out of the car window and it fell at the feet of this guy and it made him sad (Remember that?):

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#2 A neighbor of ours has a serious erosion problem going on:

Losing his land

In our area both the Parish as well as individuals use Round-up to keep the fence rows and ditches clean so they don't have to mow it, but the roots of those grasses hold the soil together.  The absence of those roots mean that with every rain, more and more topsoil erodes and is washed into the roadside ditches.  It won't be long before the fence falls over.  What a mess!  If I paid for my land, I'd like to keep it, thank you very much.

#3 Goldenrods: 

Goldenrods in front of the house

The first thing I thought of when I saw these was allergies.  After reading about them, though, on two separate websites, I found that the reputation of the poor Goldenrod has been ruined through guilt by association.  The real culprit of allergy problems is ragweed and Goldenrod and ragweed often occupy the same areas.  I don't have a good sense of smell, but Benjamin says goldenrod smells good.  He went to sniff it and a bee almost flew up his nose.  Bees were all over the place gathering up the pollen.

Native Americans chewed the leaves of a young goldenrod to relieve sore throats and chewed the roots to relieve toothaches.  Who knew?  I have a pharmacy in the roadside ditch across from my house!

Full of flowers and sticky pollen - our bees love this stuff!

After about 30 minutes we collected about 93 cans or roughly $1.16.  

Precious metals

We crushed the cans as we pick them up to conserve space.  Once we got home, we dumped them out and counted them.

93 crushed aluminum cans

Not a whole lot of value there.  Neither me or Benjamin will be getting rich off of what we picked up in the ditch in 30 minutes.  The real value, though, came in time spent with him along the way - a great investment in my book.  

Cleaning up the clutter

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

A Chinese philosopher once made that quote and I find it to be true.  Sometimes I build a project up in my mind to be so formidable that I make excuses, procrastinate, and delay making a start on it.  Instead, I skip down to other projects on my list that are quick and make a noticeable impact.  I guess it is the immediate gratification thing that I have going.  My wife helped me make a single step on a project that I had been dreading and we got it completed this weekend.

Tricia had been talking to me for a while about organizing my workbench and peg board in our garage. Unkempt and disheveled are two adjectives that might come to your mind if I had the guts to post the 'before' picture of the de-cluttering project.

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I am not a hoarder, but I do have some problems with throwing things away.  I always think, "Someday this will come in handy.  I better not throw it away."  That's not really a bad thing, but everything must have a 'home.'  If it doesn't, chances are when it comes time to use something, you're not going to be able to find it.  You'll be walking around, scratching your head, saying, "Now where did I put that thing-a-ma-jig?"

So we rolled up our sleeves and got started last week.  We got our first taste of Fall weather and it was actually comfortable and not humid working in the garage.  This wasn't going to be something that would be able to be finished in one day.  We removed everything off the workbench and took everything down off the peg board.  I plugged the leaf blower in and blew out the area that had been occupied by odds and ends.  The result created something that I would have suspected to see in the "Dust Bowl Days."  I will admit, I was antsy.  I like to stay busy and 'do' versus standing around thinking about logically organizing things.  That is not my strong suit, but it is my wife's.  God said back in Genesis, "It is not good for the man to live alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."  Tricia certainly helps me.  We make a good team.

I have containers full of nuts and bolts, nails, screws, washers and staples.  When I have a project, I generally dump it out on the workbench, sort through the items and can find what I need.

The problem with this is that the top of the workbench was filled with so much stuff, I didn't have room to dump out the containers anymore!  So we got going, placing all like items together, logically putting items lower on the peg board that we used the most.  We also bought some organizing drawers to put odds & ends in. Tricia got some freezer tape and a Sharpie and labeled all of my cans and boxes to denote the contents. Now I know where things go and will keep them organized.

Here is the finished product.  You might think it still needs work, but you should have seen it before!  I'm proud of the work we accomplished.

You can see the table top now!

In fact, I'm so happy with the progress made, next we'll organize the Feed Room in the barn.  YIKES!

Organization Project #2

Harvesting and Cooking Okra

Now that we are getting regular rain, our okra is beginning to produce nicely.  The hot, dry summer really cut our okra yield short.  We'd normally have a lot of okra cut and frozen and/or pickled by now, so we've got to try to make up for lost ground. Okra grows so fast, that you need to harvest it every day or you run the risk of your okra getting too big and the pods will  get "woody" and inedible.

Here is an okra flower.  The bloom lets you know that more okra is on the way.

We grow both Clemson spineless okra, which is green, as well as Burgundy okra, which is... well, you can guess.

Beautiful burgundy okra

It doesn't take long to pick a bucket full to bring inside.

We put them in a colander and wash them up.  Sometimes they'll have bugs, especially ants, on them.  For some reason fire ants are attracted to the okra pods.  They'll climb up the okra stalk and to the pods.  When you pick them, they'll bite you.

Cleaning up okra

In order to prep the okra for eating, I chopped them up in half inch slices.  Normally, at this point we'll cook the okra slices down with onion, tomatoes, and a little lemon juice (to knock down the 'slime' factor). Today, we're cooking them a little differently - Okra Curry, from a recipe that was emailed to me.  We like the bold, spicy taste of it and are always looking for new recipes and new ways to use the fresh produce that we have coming in.  

Sliced okra

We finely mince an onion and a bulb of garlic and saute in butter until they are translucent.  Then we add the sliced okra into the pot and stir.

Now we'll add the fragrant spices.  The recipe calls for a teaspoon of chili powder.  We substitute 1/2 teaspoon of our homemade Criolla Sella pepper for half of it.

To that we'll add 1/2 teaspoon for turmeric

And then we add a healthy dash or two of ground cumin.  To the top of that we finely slice a chili pepper and stir it all up to mix in the flavors.  

We'll cook that over low heat until the okra is tender.  The fragrant dish fills the kitchen with a nice aroma the lures everyone into the room.

Okra Curry

You'll notice that when you cook burgundy okra it turns green.  Regardless what color it is, this is a tasty dish.  Yum!

Harvesting Dixie Speckled Butter Peas

This morning it was nice and cool and I was weeding the garden and saw that I needed to do some harvesting of some Dixie Speckled Butterpeas.  These are some baby limas that are really good.  You can see in the photo that there are numerous blooms on them, showing that there are more on the way.

Blooms on the baby limas

I zoomed in to show how they really load up with pods.  The pods will have anywhere from 1 to 4 peas in them.

Pods on the baby limas

I have a whole row of them that I had planted in the Spring, but because of the hot, dry summer, this is the first harvest I've gotten off of them, which is odd since they are supposed to thrive in hot weather.

These butter beans are really plump and they are very easy to shell.  In no time I had shelled the entire bucket of butter beans.

Plump, tasty, Butter beans

As I shelled them, I threw the pods into the compost bucket, of course, so that I can go incorporate it into the compost pile in the garden.  Much like marriage, your soil gets better with what you put into it.

The compost bucket

You've got to put in more that what you take out to achieve success!

There's a Fungus Among Us

Our beekeeping friend occasionally blesses us with edible delicacies other than local honey.  Just last week he brought us a paper bag with some fresh mushrooms that he had just foraged.  They can typically be found after a rain and they like to grow on dying hardwood trees.  We see them most on willows.  In a previous post, I showed you how we went hunting for them and then cooked them.  Due to the generosity of our friend, all we had to do was cook these.  Although we know what oyster mushrooms look like and positively identify them before eating, we like to joke around with him:

Tricia: "Warren, are you sure these are safe to eat?"
Warren: "I'll call tomorrow and if you don't answer, I'll know I killed ya'll." or "If you wake up dead tomorrow, you'll know they weren't oyster mushrooms."

A brown paper bag containing oyster mushrooms

These 'shrooms are so big and meaty.  Just look at the picture below and look at my hand for perspective.  I read that in World War I, oyster mushrooms were grown for food and today they are cultivated around the world as a food source.  Oyster mushrooms are good for you from a medicinal purpose as they contain statins that reduce cholesterol.

Food from the forest

We dusted them off and washed them and then Tricia sliced them up nicely and put a cast iron skilled on the stovetop with a pat or three of butter to start melting.

Slicing the mushrooms

Then we dropped the chopped oyster mushrooms in the skillet to saute.

Sauteeing 'shrooms

They were done in no time and we gobbled them up.  Delicious!

Suppertime

As if that wasn't enough, the very next day he brought us a bag with a couple of handfuls of Chanterelle mushrooms that he found.  As tasty as Oyster mushrooms are, Chanterelles are even better - they are truly a culinary delicacy with a rich, hard to describe taste.  Tricia sauteed them with some onions and we ate a lot of them straight from the pot!  Oh, my, were they ever great tasting.

Chanterelles sauteeing with sliced onions and butter

Chanterelles, at least the ones we're eating, have a yellowish-gold color to them and they are 'funnel-shaped.' 

Yellow Chanterelles

One thing we learned when we went foraging for mushrooms is that what we know as the mushroom is the fruiting part of the fungus.  The mycelium is the thread-like, vegetative part of the fungus.  You don't want to disturb this, so it is better to cut, instead of pull, the mushroom.  By doing so, you ensure that you'll have more mushrooms next time in that location.  Just don't forget where you found them and check back in that same location for more!

Mushrooms are produce from a garden that you don't have to tend to.  Nice.  Oh, we didn't "wake up dead," so Warren's mushroom identification skills are excellent.

Hand to the Plow

The photo in my post the other day that showed the farmer with his team pulling the plow got me thinking - thinking about work.  Actually, thinking about work ethic and some good rules to live by.  Rules, if implemented, that will not necessarily guarantee success, but will definitely get you going in the right direction. Now I am a Christian and I firmly believe that the Bible is God's Holy Word, written by mere men, but who were inspired by the Holy Spirit. That is where I go first in order to get the rules that I try to live by.

Hard work

But Jesus said to him, "No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." - Luke 9:62

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Commitment

In our spiritual lives as well as our everyday life dealing with work issues, financial issues, parenting issues, etc., we must be committed.  We must stay focused on the true task at hand and not be distracted by 'shiny objects' that compete for our attention.  In looking at the photo above, determination and sticking with something to the end was key in getting the field plowed.  If you didn't finish, the crop didn't get planted and you didn't eat!

Likewise, if we start off in our Christian walk (notice the person originally put his hand to the plow) and then look back, we aren't really devoted or committed to Him in the first place and Jesus says we're not fit for His Kingdom.  Before we do anything else, we must examine ourselves to determine if we are truly of the Faith.  

Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you-- unless indeed you fail the test? - 2 Corinthians 13:5

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Once we've gotten our spiritual house in order we can look to other areas.  I heard Dr. Walter E. Williams give a 5 Step Plan on "How not to be Poor" and it has stuck with me for years:

1) Graduate from high school

2) Get married before you have children
3) Stay married
4) Work at any kind of job
5) Avoid engaging in criminal behavior

We try to make it so difficult, but if you distill it down to those 5 things, you've definitely got some good momentum going for you.  The thing, however, that can throw a monkey wrench in all that is debt.  

Abraham Lincoln, back on January 1, 1863, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, an Executive Order that freed the slaves.  That was a bright spot in our Country's history and righted the evil of owning another human being, but you know what?  Many people willingly submit themselves to slavery each and every day. Hard to believe, I know.

The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower becomes the lender's slave.  - Proverbs 22:7

When we purchase goods and services with money that we do not have, we become a slave to the person or institution that loaned us that money.  We should aim to budget and never let our expenditures exceed our receipts.  Yes, this involves sacrifice and the foregoing of things that you want until you have funds for it, but this will ensure your FREEDOM, your emancipation from financial servitude to JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, etc. etc.  I am debt averse.  

Owe no man any thing, but to love one another... Romans 13:8

We try very, very hard to avoid debt.  If you have debt, your security is in question.  You worry about losing everything if you lose your job and you wonder how you are going to pay the bills if someone gets sick. Being debt-free means that you may not drive the newest car, have the latest phone, or wear the trendiest fashions, but with a lack of debt, you've purchased peace of mind and freedom.  We have ratified a Balanced Budget Amendment at our house.  Is it asking too much that our politicians grasp this concept too?

Another good practice is to set goals and write them down.  According to Dave Kohl, a professor at Virginia Tech, "People who write down their goals earn nine times as much over their lifetimes than those who don't."  Further, a study by Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University, "People who wrote down their goals, shared this information with a friend, and sent weekly updates to that friend were on average 33% more successful in accomplishing their stated goals than those who merely formulated goals."

Finally, we're not afraid of a little hard work.  We try to be self-sufficient and try to view life as a classroom and are always curious about learning new things, particularly things that enable us to be less dependent upon the worldly system.  

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We certainly haven't figured it all out and there are chapters left to be written, but we aim to keep our 'Hand to the Plow' and will not look back.