A Country Parade

Life is full of rhythms.  A continuous cycle of repeated events.  Like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, like taxes on April 15th, or like the mail box primarily containing junk mail. You can almost set your watch to certain events.  On March 1st, a spectacular Saturday dawned to the loud, reverberating sounds of accordion and fiddle.  Yep, it's Mardi Gras time.

A guy down the road has a Mardi Gras float and was getting started early, pulling his float with a tractor trailer containing a band of boisterous revelers.  I hadn't even had my morning cup of coffee yet and this crew were already imbibing in something a little stronger.  They were heading into town where they'd assemble and spend the day parading through the countryside.

Long about noon, I heard the music again.  I sat out on the front porch in the rocking chair to watch the festivities.  It's not St. Charles Avenue or Canal Street in New Orleans, but our house is on the parade route, and we don't even have to drive anywhere to go to the parade.  It comes to us, each and every year.  

I didn't take photos of every float, but captured a few.  The floats aren't as ornate as the ones in New Orleans.  They are more simple, with country Cajun flair.  Here's "Dat Krewe."  They were playing some Merle Haggard.

Here's "Krewe Da Short Bus" with flags flying, Trump, Mardi Gras, Saints and Old Glory, covering all the bases.  They had a Port-a-Potty on the back.

The revelers waved and threw beads in the yard.  I went and picked up the green, yellow, and purple beads after they passed by.

Most of the floats, like this one, had BBQ pits on the back, fragrant smoke billowing out behind them.  I'm sure they had some homemade sausage on there.  I wished they would've thrown me a link of that.

A load of people were on the Krewe de Foo float, with the ubiquitous port-a-potty tied on back.

Along came Krewe de Bayou with their float resembling an Acadian shack.

Old school buses are popular.  They fit a lot of people and you don't need a truck to pull it.  

These merry people cut holes in the side of an 18-wheeler trailer.  They must have had 50 people in there.

Music blaring, people dancing.  I got tired of waving at all of them, ha ha.

Here's "Maison des Cooyon Kajans."  Loosely translated: The crazy Cajun house.

Both Jennings town cops and Jeff Davis Parish cops led the way, blocked LA 26 to allow the parade to pass.  There was a LOOONNNGGG line of motorists on the highway backed up while the parade passed.  Then the police followed the parade route out into the country.

Tricia came out and said, "Did you count how many floats?"  Sadly, I didn't.  It was a bunch of them, though.  Long after the parade passed, you could hear the music echoing across the countryside.  I was thankful they didn't come ask me for a chicken.  They are in short supply.  It was a nice day for a parade.  That evening, we headed down the road to Mermentau to C'est Bon Restaurant where we had fried shrimp, fried catfish, boiled shrimp, and Shrimp Étouffée to close out the day.  Yum!!

That's Just Nuts!

We have three pecan trees on our property that we pick from.  There's a couple more in the back that the squirrels claim.  We don't get a single pecan off of those.  Then our neighbors directly east of us have three pecan trees.  Those pecans are huge!  Ours are very small.  In fact, most people wouldn't bother shelling them.  The thing about our pecans is this: although they are small, they are oily and very rich.  This makes them delicious!  So in our brief winters here in South Louisiana, I spend nice relaxing times in front of the fireplace shelling pecans.  It is a satisfying pastime while listening to music or visiting with family.  The only downside is the mess I make.  I keep the vacuum cleaner close and try to clean up after myself when I'm done.

Pecans freeze very well.  So we pack them in gallon-sized zip loc bags and put them in the freezer once shelled.  Some years the trees produce lots and some years, they make absolutely nothing.  That's why it's a good idea to store some in the freezer during the "fat" years to be prepared for the "lean" years.  I think that's what ol' Joseph did back in the Book of Genesis.  Here are 9 gallons of pecans in our deep freeze in the house:

And here are four more on the door of the stand-up freezer out in the garage.

And six more gallons on the shelves in the same freezer.

If my math is right, that's 19 gallons of shelled pecans this year.  I think we gave some away, so it's more like 20 or 21 gallons.  For the bigger pecans from our neighbor's tree, we crack them ourselves with our "Reed's Rocket" pecan cracker.  For the smaller pecans?  Forget about it!  We bring onion sacks of whole pecans to our local feed store.

They have a pecan cracking machine.  They pour the pecans in the machine and it cracks them.  You can hear the noise in the warehouse with the machine going, "Crack, Crack, Crack."  They charge $0.33 per pound before the government takes their share of it in taxes.  The machine is ancient and I figure they've probably paid for it many times over.  I think it is worth it for our small pecans.  The paperwork below shows that we brought them 109 pounds of pecans and paid $39.77 for the cracking.

We like to eat them to snack on.  Tricia will oven roast them in butter and Worcestershire sauce.  That's pretty addictive.  My favorite way to eat pecans, though, is in pecan pies.  I love pecan pies.  We like this Recipe right here that uses Steen's Pure Cane Syrup.  What can be better than a slice of homemade pecan pie and a cup of coffee?

Keeping It Together

The live oak tree in the left hand side of the photo below is OLD.  If we were to give our trees names, I'd call this one Methuselah.  Methuselah in the Bible lived to the ripe, old age of 969.  No, I don't believe this one is that old, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn it is around 200 years old.  I want it to be around for many more years.  Twenty-something years ago, we almost lost her.  A hurricane blew through with tornados following and the old tree split!

Not one to give up, my neighbor (who is now deceased) and I devised a plan.  In that barn you see in the background above, he had every sort of tool you could imagine.  One of those were some drill bits that were two feet long.  He was in his early -70's at the time, I suppose.  We climbed up high into the tree with a drill and began drilling holes in four of the large branches.

Once the holes were drilled, we inserted some threaded rod with a homemade washer made from some iron plate and a big nut on the back.  To the other side we screwed an eye bolt.  Then we did the same exact thing on the other three and ran cables through to connect them.  We joined them using turnbuckles and tightened the turnbuckles until the tree was pulled back together.  If you look closely in the photo below, you can see our "shade tree arborist" handiwork.

Would you believe me if I told you it worked?  It did!  The tree over the years, pulled together by the turnbuckle and cabling, began to heal.  Notice the scar on the south side of the tree:

And here is the one on the north side.  Prior to fixing it, you could put your hand in the 'cut' and feel it pulse as the wind would blow.  But it is all healed up.

But earlier this week we had a problem brewing.  The weather forecast predicted very strong winds coming in. I had already checked on one of the old turnbuckles and the hook on one end was almost straightened out!  The winds and the weight of the tree had damaged the turnbuckle to the extent that I didn't trust it anymore.

So I found a different type of turnbuckle without hooks.  This one, hopefully, won't straighten out or break.  I extended a ladder and climbed way up into the crown of the tree with wrenches and the new turnbuckle in hand.  Tricia gets a little worried when I do things like this, but I wanted to save old Methuselah.  If I could accomplish that without falling, that would be a victory for sure.  I disassembled the old turnbuckle and replaced it with the new one.  I tightened everything up, too. 

The strong winds did blow.  I kept passing by the window as the winds howled to check on Methuselah, and you know what?  Everything held!  The turnbuckle and cable did its job.  Perhaps the old tree will make it another 200 years?  What stories this tree could tell if it could talk!

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.

A Strange Vegetable, Indeed

Yesterday we talked about a medley of root vegetables that we've been roasting in the oven.  We just can't get enough of them.  But our carrots are coming to an end.  As discussed yesterday, I'm not a fan of turnip roots.  I like turnip greens, but the turnip roots I mainly give away and also feed to the cows.  However, I have found a relative to the turnip family that I like.

Kohlrabi!  I had never heard of this vegetable.  We certainly never grew up eating it.  The kohlrabi is NOT a root vegetable.  It is actually the swollen stem of a vegetable that grows above ground and is a brassica.  That means it is related to cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.  The name "kohlrabi" is German for 'cabbage turnip.'

I would have never thought to plant this in our garden.  We got it as one of the free seeds sent out by Baker Creek Heirloom seeds orders.  The seeds we got were Purple Kohlrabi.  The seed looked exactly like any other brassica seed.  When it grew... wow!  Look at this vegetable.  It looks like something cultivated on Mars or Saturn.

Mixed up in the purple kohlrabi seed envelope must have been just a regular old kohlrabi plant.  It looks just the same except for the color.

Here they are side by side in my hand to give you an idea of how big they are.  I've tried to let them grow bigger, but learned that's not a good idea.  They get tough and 'woody' if allowed to continue growing.

I tear off the leaves and give them to the cows and goats, but to be honest, kohlrabi leaves are edible for humans, too.  I use a sharp knife to peel the outer skin off and then I half them and begin slicing into thin cubes.  We'll roast those in a pan the exact same way that we did the carrots, beets, and cauliflower.  I have a good many of these that I'll be harvesting soon to make room for the spring garden.

Roasted Root Vegetables for the Win

We are not vegans.  Not by a long shot.  We love beef, chicken... all sorts of meat.  In fact, as soon as our bull, Nick, breeds the cows this spring, he's off to the processor.  We're even talking about butchering some of our goats this year.  Our herd is growing, and there's only so much grass to go around.  Bottom-line is, we like meat.

But that doesn't mean that we don't immensely enjoy some vegetables.  Often, we'll eat meals that don't contain any meat.  Lately, it's the time of year where we're harvesting a lot of root vegetables.  On the left in the photo below is an example.  It's a Bull's Blood Beet.  On the right is an Italian beet variety called the Chioggia.  More on that in a minute.

We like to cut up carrots and beets and (I know it's not a root vegetable) cauliflower to the mix.  We toss it all in olive oil and minced garlic, put it on a stoneware tray and roast in the oven.  So tasty!

I'm not a big fan of turnips.  I do like turnip greens, but primarily we grow them for the cows, BUT we diced up some smaller turnips an roasted them using the same recipe as above, and I think these were really good.

At the very beginning of the post, I talked about chioggia beets, an Italian variety that we get from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  You can find them at www.rareseeds.com.  Pictured on the cutting board below is the mature chioggia beet.  They seem to get a little larger than the Bull's Blood Beet or the Detroit Dark Red beet.

With the chioggia, you've got to brace yourself for a surprise when you slice into it.  It's not red.  Instead it is a beautiful pinkish-red and white.  I always say it looks like a Brach's Starlight Mint.

What a pretty sight to see the chioggia beets all cut up and on the roasting pan!

You may be asking, "Why don't you show the finished product like you did in the second photo in this post?"  The answer might surprise you.  It's because when you pull them OUT of the oven, they're quite ugly.  They're nothing like the beautiful photo above.  No sir, when you pull them out, they are a solid dull-white color.  They don't look appetizing.  But that doesn't bother us.  They certainly do taste good!

Setting Out A Swarm Trap

It was a beautiful spring day today with sunshine and temperatures hitting 71 degrees.  It seemed like a perfect time for honeybees to start swarming, and I didn't want to miss it.  I figured that I would get a swarm trap out.  If one of our hives swarm, I want to catch them before they leave the property.  If I catch a wild swarm, all the better.

I'll show you how we do it.  We've caught three of our four hives in this same location.  It's a "honey hole," one might say.  The first thing you need is some old frames with some drawn out comb on it.  These are some frames from the hive that we lost to wax moths.  I had cleaned them up and now they are ready to use again.

I set a bottom board atop a ladder and stack a deep box on top of it.  That's it.  You can build a special swarm trap, but I've had success just using a regular box with a few frames of drawn comb inside.  The ease comes about when you catch a swarm.  At that point all you have to do is set the box on top of some cinder blocks and you're done.

The next thing you need is an attractant.  You can use a product called Swarm Commander, but we simply us some Lemongrass Oil.  It mimics the pheremone that the queen puts out.

I'll put a couple of drops of lemongrass oil on a cotton ball.

And I'll drop it in the very back of the bee box with the frames in it.

Then I put the cover on and use a ratchet strap to secure the swarm trap to the ladder.  I don't want any winds to knock it down.

And now, we wait.  Hopefully, scout bees will search and find the box and, like an open house at a realtor's showing, the bees will tour around and decide that this would be a good "fixer upper" and move in.  We're hoping that's the case, and that they'll hang a "Home Sweet Home" sign out front.  We'll keep you posted with our progress in catching a swarm.