Killing Time

This morning Benjamin and I woke up at 5 am and headed off to Oberlin to go duck hunting.  It is a curious phenomenon and a spectacle to see.  I'm talking about seeing a young man who is hard to get out of bed at 6 am to go to school was up in a skinny minute at 5 am to go hunting!  It is teal season and wood duck season right now.  We went to the store and bought our hunting license and duck stamp.  A good friend of mine had set up the duck blind on a levee in the bottom cut of a rice field that was holding some water.  He was unable to join us as he had to work, so it was just Benjamin and I on this trip. 

It has been really dry for the past month so there's not a lot of water.  Coupled with the clear "blue-bird" days we have had with no rain and no clouds, I prepared Benjamin that we might come up empty handed as we drove the 30 minute drive to the farm.  I told him that even if we didn't kill anything but time, we'd make some good memories, watch a beautiful sunrise, and see some sights.  And we'd try again... and again...

We arrived at the blind before daylight.  There were ducks in the pond that we scared up unfortunately, but you can't shoot before sunrise.  It was 38 degrees as we settled into the blind.  Note to self: bring a bucket to sit on next time.


Camouflaged Benjamin with a beautiful dawning day

Here's a peek out of the blind in front of us.  You can see a mallard drake decoy floating somewhat, trying unsuccessfully to lure a duck to land within range.  If you look in the foreground, you can see full heads of ripened rice on some of the unharvested stalks.


Quack Quack

This is a shot out of the back of the duck blind.  You can't see it because the camera focused on the pine needles instead of the blurry object I was trying to focus on right in the center of the photo.  That object is a coyote that was checking Benjamin and I out.  I told Benjamin that next time I'm bringing my rifle.  I mentioned in an earlier posting my dislike for coyotes.


Wile E. Coyote

Patient Benjamin.


Where's the ducks, Pop?

As Benjamin and I had our eyes peeled for wood ducks or teal, a chicken hawk flew over, then a red tailed hawk, followed by some cattle egrets, some snipe and even a lone snow goose, but no ducks.  We did, however, as I told Benjamin earlier, see a breath-taking sunrise:


Peeking over a treeline of pines



Psalm 113:3 From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the LORD's name is to be praised.

 

Oh glorious day

So we talked and waited and talked and waited and finally decided that all we would kill would be time and both agreed that it was a good thing that mom has some leftover homemade soup for us to eat instead of relying on meat from our hunt for lunch today.  Here is Benjamin exiting the blind.  It is made with some pine limbs that are stuck in the mud near the edge of the pond.


Here's a picture of the blind from the backside.  We'll add some more camouflage to it.  As the winter progresses and the weather gets nastier and pushes more ducks down South, we'll need to hide from the ducks.  Today?  Not many ducks to hide from.

And here's a look walking into the blind.  Hopefully, we'll get some rain to fill our pond up better so the decoys will float better.


A couple of salient points, here:

1. A bad day hunting is far better than a good day at work.
2. Making memories getting up early and going hunting with your son and seeing beautiful sights of nature outweigh any amount of wild game that you can put in your freezer.

We're persistent, though.  We'll keep at it until we're successful.  That's why they call it "hunting."  You don't always find them!

Beautiful Sunday

This morning we woke up to an absolutely gorgeous day.  I'm telling you it was cool, crisp - a red letter day.  A little chilly so we thought it was a good day to make a "Kitchen Sink" Soup.  So before heading off to church, we took one of our chickens out of the freezer, put it in a pot with some water and started it boiling.  Once it reached a boil, we turned it down to low and let it simmer for an hour.  Before leaving for church, we turned it off.

When we returned we removed the chicken from the dutch oven, deboned it, and put it all back in with the delicious broth.  I went to the garden and picked a handful of kale and some bok choi (Chinese cabbage), chopped them up and added to the broth and chicken.  We added some minced ginger, onion, garlic, criolla sella ground pepper, green onion, pasta and cubed sweet potato.  We also added some leftover rice from the night before and brought it back to a boil and then simmered until the sweet potato was soft.  Time to eat!  It was so very hearty and healthy.  You can't go wrong with this soup - simply throw whatever you've got in with some good broth and you have a great, quick meal.

Okay switching to something not so appetizing - from talking about soup to talking about poop.  Here is the beginning of the manure pile for the winter.  In the Spring and Summer, the chickens scratch up and distribute all the cow patties in the pasture.  For some reason in the winter, they don't.  No problem, I pick them up and throw them in the corner of the garden.  Each day as I go out to feed and water the pullets in the chicken tractor, I carry a bucket and scoop up the cow manure and add to the pile.  I'll mix hay and leaves with it eventually and as it decomposes and breaks down, it makes a nice soil amendment to the garden.


Pure manure for sure

Here is Stryker, the bull.  He broke his halter somehow so we'll have to get him a new one.  I think I'll have to get him a nose plate as well.  We've had him separated from Daisy, his momma, for months.  Don't you know just when we think he's weaned and it's safe to put them back together, he starts trying to nurse on her again, the big galoot. 

Stryker still wants his momma's milk

The rye grass paddock is showing a little bit of green, but not much.  It has been very dry the last two months.  A nice, slow, soaking rain would certainly help the grass grow. 

The rye grass is thirsty

Here is an item on my to do list as soon as it rains and softens up the soil.  You see the two orange trees underneath the live oak tree below?  I'll need to dig them up and move them.   They really haven't grown at all.  I think it has a lot do do with where they are located.  They currently complete with the live oak for sunshine, water and nutrients and unfortunately for them, the live oak wins the battle.  I'll move them to a more favorable spot.


Time to move these citrus trees to a more favorable location



The sacrifice pasture

Yesterday we saw how the cows are moving through our inventory of hay faster than poop through a goose.  You can see the round bale we rolled out a week ago this morning is pretty much gone.

The hay disappearing act

We do have another trick we use to stretch the hay.  We call it the sacrifice pasture.  All Spring and Summer and part of the fall, we leave the animals on the main pasture and they do a good job of keeping it mowed down.  We have a small pasture behind the barn that we let grow up tall in grass.  We put up a temporary fence in it and will turn the animals into it every once in a while.  Think of it like the canned goods in your pantry.  Normally you eat fresh grown produce.  But when the fresh produce isn't available, you reach into your pantry and pull out the stored items to supplement your diet.  Same principle here.  We're giving the cows a pasture we've stored up for them and it gives us a little more time so that we save the hay for when we really need it.


The sacrifice pasture

The picture above was taken from the sacrifice pasture looking back to the barn.  You can see how tall the grass is in there.  The cows can't wait to get in there!  You can see how Daisy, Rosie and Maggie rush into the pasture we've saved for them. 


An open gate to more food on their plate

Immediately, you can see that their heads are down and they are enjoying the new grass.


Thanks for opening that gate!

One thing we want to be sure of is to electrify the temporary fence that borders the new pasture.  This is done by taking the jump wire, attaching it to the perimeter hot wire and then running it to the temporary fence and attaching it so that the electricity conducts around that fence as well.  You can follow this in the picture below.  If you look on the bottom right, the red clip takes the electricity, runs it through the black wire and then clips into the temporary fence on the upper left. 

Jumping the electricity to the other fence

Here below, Tricia is applying our 'electric fence tester' to the wire to test to see if it is "hot."  This homemade tester is simply a blade of grass that we touch to the wire.  If it is electrified, you can feel the pulses hitting the blade of grass and confirm it is working without hurting yourself.  If it is not, you can troubleshoot and fix the problem.


Is the fence hot, Tricia?

The answer is yes.  We feel safe to let the cows in the sacrifice pasture now.  Cows respect electricity.  They are 1000 pound creatures that could run through that little wire like a hot knife through butter, but they don't because they've been shocked before and don't like the feeling.  For the record, I don't like being shocked either! 

A Disappearing Act

Proverbs 14:4 says, "Where there are no oxen, the stalls are clean, and the abundance of crops is by the power of the ox.

Action steps: 1) Devour hay, 2) Poop, and 3) Lay

That Bible verse is kinda funny if you think about it, huh?  Yeah, you don't have to worry about cow poop and mess and working and cleaning up after cows if you don't have them, BUT you miss out on the milk and other dairy products and the experiences associated with having them.  In a non-agricultural context, we can live sheltered, safe, antiseptic lives if we don't truly get out there and live, right?  Interacting with people, taking risks, putting yourself out there is part of what living is all about.  The old risk - reward ratio, right?

Amazing how fast they are making the hay disappear.  We just rolled the bale out Saturday morning.  The cows are making quick work of the hay and making me wonder if I have enough stored away for the next several months...  I still have the sacrifice pasture.  I'll show that to you tomorrow.

Benjamin called to me, "Dad, you gotta come see this!"  So I came running.  "What's up, man!" I said.  "Look Dad!!  There is a leaf floating in the air!"  Check it out.  Actually a single strand of a spider's web caught a pecan leaf as it was falling and the leaf was suspended, dangling in mid air like magic.



Gravity defying leaf

Here is another close-up shot of the leaf.   I think we have good weather in store for this weekend.  We have a full agenda of pecan picking, football watching, and duck hunting planned.  Sounds like a winner to me!

Lighter pine

In continuing the discussion we had yesterday about chopping firewood, I omitted describing something that we collect, split and use that really helps in starting a fire in the fireplace: Lighter Pine.  It is also called kindling, fat pine, pine knot, or heart pine.   This is the heart or center of a pine tree in which the sap or resin has concentrated.  The resin is rot resistant and hard.  It will last forever, even in our moist, humid rot-prone environment in South Louisiana.  The resin will light easily and burn quickly.

Every chance we get, we look for this in the woods and bring it home to stockpile it.  We split it up in real skinny pieces and use it to get the fires started in our fireplace instead of natural gas.  It is a fast fire-starter and only requires one match to catch - even if it is wet.  One of the downsides, though, is the thick, black, oily smoke it produces.  As a result we have a chimney sweep come and clean our chimney.

Here are some lighter pine logs we have stored between two trees, ready for splitting when we need it.  No telling how old the trees are that those logs came from. 


Heart pine logs

Here are a few heart pine posts that we haven't cut up into logs yet.  You can see the one in the middle must have been used as the post supporting a gate at one time as there are rusty hinges nailed to it. 


This stuff does not rot

So I take my trusty axe and cut a sliver of the pine.  I wish you could smell the rich aroma - smells just like the disinfectant, Pine-Sol.  It smells so clean and fragrant.  Benjamin kept smelling it over and over as we split it up last night. 


Split Lighter Pine

Then I just split small slivers of this stuff and put in a pile for use in getting the fireplace burning.  In Boy Scouts, they teach you to take a small stick of this and notch out several cuts along the edges with your pocketknife to serve as an effective fire starter for a campfire.  One thing to keep in mind, however, is to wait until the pine has completely burned before you cook over the fire.  Pine flavored chicken or beans probably isn't in any recipe books for good reason.

When I'm done, I have a nice little pile of lighter pine kindling.  I put 3 or 4 of these sticks at the bottom of the fireplace grate and then stack split up oak on top of it and with one match and five minutes, you have a roaring fire.


Nifty fire starters - heart pine.

Here is a visual representation of the ability of this to start a fire quickly.  You can also see the black smoke from the burning terpene, tar or pitch in the lighter pine.   


Nice fire that we'll settle down by for the evening

We're very careful to put the screen in front of the fire as the wood pops and embers can pop out of the fireplace and onto the carpet.  We learned this lesson the hard way.  Fortunately, we were around to put out the fire before it caused much damage.  Tricia is like a miracle worker.  She cut some pieces of carpet off of a remnant, glued it in the burned out hole and, voila, it looks as good as new.  I couldn't find it if you paid me to.  The key is to use the lighter pine to light your firewood - not your carpet.

Like peas and carrots

Chilly nights and Kyle sitting in front of the fireplace goes together like peas and carrots.  Man, I tell you, I could sit in front of the fireplace and shell pecans or watch college football for hours on end.  There is a lot of work beforehand in order to get you to that point of relaxation (or laziness).

Last Fall a large water oak died in our front yard and we had a gentleman with a bucket truck and some serious chain saws come and lay it on the ground.  I rented a chainsaw and cut it up one Saturday.  A neighbor let me borrow his log splitter.  This is a handy device that uses hydraulic power to split logs.  The machine pretty much does all the work for you.  We split over 3 cords of firewood that I'll use and give a bunch to my dad.  At our house, we like to use the heater as little as possible and have a fire in the fireplace burning most nights.  I love the smell of a fire burning in the fireplace.  I'm crazy like that.

Here is a shot of all the oak we have stockpiled for the winter:


A nice inventory of firewood

As a boy, I used to split firewood for the fireplace at Mom & Dad's house.  I didn't have the benefit of a hydraulic log splitter.  I'm not going to give you the old "I walked to school uphill in the snow" bit, but I wasn't dependent upon hydraulic power, I used an axe, one just like this bad boy right here:


Tool of the trade

I began to wonder what my boys would do if they didn't have access to a log-splitter and figured it was time for a little lumberjack training so that they would know how to get the job done.  A friend had come by and cut up the large pecan branch that fell out of our tree and also gave us some pecan wood.  This was exactly what we needed for our first class in Wood Splitting 101.  The picture below shows the task that lay before us (not Daisy or the chickens - the pecan logs).  Daisy is there because she's curious and the hay ring is just to the right.  I'll show you why the chickens are around in just a minute.



Some nice pecan logs ready for splitting

In addition to an axe, there are some tools to the trade that you'll need: eye protection and gloves for safety and comfort.  The real work is done by the following: a sledge hammer (on the right), a wedge (in the middle on the log), and a axe/wedge combination (on the left).  This nifty tool was lent to us by a friend.  It has a pipe handle so you don't ever have to worry about breaking the handle.  You'll want to have a wedge in the event that you get your axe stuck in the wood.  The wedge will enable you to get it un-stuck.


Tools of a wood-splitter

So let's begin.  Paul Bunyan takes the log and stands it up on one end.  He swings the axe into the center of the log where it will stick with a thud.  Now you take the sledge hammer and begin to bang the axe/wedge into the log.  You will begin to hear creaks and cracks, letting you know that you are making progress as the axe wedges itself further into the log, opening it up.  This is a good stress reliever!  Good exercise, too.


Bang, bang, bang

I can't tell you how long it will take as there are lots of variables.  I think that this task is measured in blisters rather than in minutes.  If you come across a log with a lot of knots, it takes longer and some are just impossible to split.  We throw those in a pile to try again later when we are stronger or better rested!  Some are so difficult, we end up just burning them whole.  But you'll know when you are done as the log yields a final sound letting you know it is split in two.  Simply do the same thing on each side in the thickness you desire.  Sometimes you can do it with an axe instead of the wedge.  Repeat again and again until done.


The sound of success!

 We then throw the split wood in a pile.  We like to see the split pile grow in size and the log pile shrink.  Progress!


Split Pecan wood begging for the fireplace

Here's where the chickens come into the equation.  In most every log we split, there is a large white grub-like worm that is in the middle of the wood or is between the bark and the wood.  It seems to be eating the wood.  I did some searching on the Internet and found that it is the larvae of the white oak borer beetle.  Regardless what they're called, they're called "lunch" to my chickens.  The chickens went crazy over them.  Russ and I had to shoo them away because in their zeal to get at the worms, flying wood would hit them.


Succulent, tempting, tasty morsels of goodness (from the hens' perspective)

"I'll have mine to go, please." 

Here is some immediate gratification we talked about earlier, where you can measure success.
A growing split pile:

And a shrinking un-split pile:

But the best measure of success is this:


A nice, roaring fire - the second one of the season.

Like I said earlier, Kyle and a fire go together like peas and carrots.  Also, the boys were able to get a good lesson on hard work paying off.  Kind of a real life re-enactment of Aesop's fable about the ant and the grasshopper.  If you fiddle all summer - you're going to freeze in the winter, literally. 

Cover Crop

The end of the Spring/Summer growing season marked the end of production on certain areas of our garden.  On some areas, I rotate directly into the Fall/Winter rotation, but in others I use cover-cropping.  We just harvested a bunch of sweet potatoes.  In fact, we've had our best harvest ever.  Once all the sweet potatoes were dug up, it left a pretty large open spot in the garden - one that lends itself perfectly to cover cropping.

Cover cropping (some call it 'green manure') helps improve the soil in numerous ways:

1. By having something growing, the impact of erosion is lessened from wind and rain runoff,
2. Having thick cover crops crowd out problematic winter weed growth,
3. Working the cover crop into the soil adds much needed organic matter,
4. The root system of the cover crop adds to the soil structure by opening channels for air/water movement in the soil.
5. If you cover crop with peas, you'll fix nitrogen in the soil.

The plants that you are growing are pulling nutrients from the soil.  Think about it like you're removing money from your savings account.  If you keep removing money from your account without adding or replenishing it with funds at least as much as you're withdrawing, you'll find yourself in a deficit situation.  (Exhibit A: US Federal Government)  Similarly, with your soil, you'll want to build it by adding at least as much and hopefully more nutrients than the crops used.  For health of your soil and your budget, you must not take out more than you put back in.  Simple agronomy and financial wisdom.

I mixed a bunch of cow peas and bean seeds that I saved from a couple of years ago to make my cover crop mix.  You can also plant clover, soybeans, rye grass, etc.


My cover crop mix for this year

Here is the area from which we just harvested a bunch of sweet potatoes.  Benjamin really enjoys finding the sweet potatoes after I turn over the soil.  I made some trenches lengthwise and about 2 feet apart and will plant my cover crop seed mix in it.


Cover crop plot that is ready for seeding

I'm not too particular about spacing.  I just walk along the trench and sprinkle the seed as evenly as possible.


Broadcasting the cover crop mix

  

And finally, I use a rake to put a little dirt over the seeds that I just sowed to cover the crop (ba dum bum!)  We got a nice rain shortly after planting that will hopefully germinate the seeds and produce some nice growth to cover the barren area of the garden and provide some good benefits to the soil.


Covering the newly planted seeds

One additional thing I'll do is sprinkle some radish and turnip seeds between the areas I've planted.  These root crops will open up the soil, provide cover and produce some "candy" for the cows on those cold, gray winter days.  Once the peas have grown up and just prior to them setting seed, I'll turn them under and incorporate all that good organic matter in the soil.  I think of it like my own deficit-reduction plan providing money in the bank!