A Second Chance

 “For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.”  Proverbs 24:16

I like that proverb.  It's all about not giving up.  It's about rising after you've fallen (everyone falls), dusting yourself off and moving forward, learning from your mistakes and trusting in God.  God uses imperfect instruments to accomplish His purposes.  He uses the foolish and weak so that He gets the glory and not man.

Second Chances.  I'm glad God is a God of second chances.  Many times things don't work out the way you planned, but we trust in Him that He has the best plan.  I was thinking about this today and how this plays out in nature as well as in our lives.

On January 1 of each year, I plant tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant from seed into little six pack seed pots.  I plant them into a seed starting mix that I make with equal parts topsoil, composted wood chips, and composted chicken litter.  As the seedlings grow, I water them with diluted fish emulsion.  I plant two seeds in each pot and as they grow, I separate them into individual pots prior to transplanting in the soil.

Some of the seeds don't germinate.  That is to be expected, especially when I'm using saved seed or seed that's a few years old.  I dump all the rich dirt from those pots in which the seeds didn't germinate into a bigger pot to reuse later.  In fact, here's one now:

I'll use that dirt for planting other crops in.  In six pots, I've got some herbs growing, specifically French Sorrel.  The leaves on this plant are so tasty!  This afternoon while watering the sorrel, something caught my eye.  I'm pointing at it, in case you don't see it.

It's a tomato seedling!  And it's doggone healthy.  These were seeds that were planted on January 1 and for whatever reason, didn't germinate.  But here we are almost six months later and conditions changed that allowed the seed to germinate.  And it's growing!  And here's another one:

And another!:

And two more!:

All in all there are seven tomato seedlings of unknow variety that were unsuccessful in growing the first time they had a chance.  Their peers passed them by, seasons changed, their time was up...  And yet, they got a second chance and by golly, they're growing.  A new lease on life.  There's a lesson there for us.  Maybe we're late bloomers, maybe we have failure after failure, but don't give up.  Stay rooted in the fertile soil (of God's Word) and grow!

I'm going to re-pot these tomato plants and nurture them.  It is a little early for the fall crop of tomatoes.  If nighttime temperatures are above 75 degrees, you run the risk of the pollen being sterile and the fruit won't set.  I generally plant my fall crop about a month or so later.  But these plants want to grow.  We'll use this as an experiment and see how our "Second Chance" variety of heirloom tomatoes fare.

Broody Hens

We have 8 nesting boxes in our hen house.  Nine if you count the milkcrate with hay in it on the floor.  It's an overflow nesting box, and it's a good thing we have it.  Right now we have 5 hens that are broody.  Here are four of them right here:

Broody hens have gotten the motherly instincts.  They want to sit on their eggs and incubate them.  The incubation period is 21 days.  Broody hens, during this time, may stop laying eggs.  The trouble is, we have 40-something laying hens right now, with another 13 in a chicken tractor that we hatched out in our incubator from our fertilized eggs.  We don't need additional chicks at this time, so I reach under these hens each afternoon and snatch the eggs from beneath them.  They are very protective of their clutch of eggs during this stage, and they always fluff their bodies up and peck my fingers as I reach underneath them.  They don't like this at all!

They sit on their nests all day long in the sweltering heat.  I've moved water tubs into the hen house so that they can have water when they need it.  Most things I've read say that a hen will "break" her broodiness after 21 days, but we don't always see this happen.  Their biological clock is ticking and they desire to hatch out some babies.  Some of the broody hens sit on NO eggs.  Others are sitting on a chalk egg that we have in the box to deal with rat snake problems.  They don't know what they are sitting on.  They just want to sit.

This would be a perfect time to just put 8 or so eggs underneath each one, but we don't need anymore baby chicks for our flock.  We are gathering, on average, about 22 eggs each day.  We eat all we can, keep our kids and family members stocked with fresh eggs and sell the rest.  One of the things we've been eating for lunch is egg salad sandwiches.  I'm not a big fan of mayonnaise, but my wife makes homemade mayonnaise that is good, so she'll boil some eggs, cut them up, add olive salad mix and salt and pepper and serve over some toasted sourdough bread for an open-faced sandwich.  We enjoy that for lunch.

Hopefully, at some point soon, the broody hens will be broken and will once again be out on the pasture foraging in the grass for bugs and worms.

Picking Tomatoes at the Breaker Stage

I've been gardening for a long time, but learn new things virtually every day.  I'm going to share something with you that has made a big difference in our tomato quality.  For too long, I was snookered into believing that the best tomatoes are those that ripen on the vine.  You see all the marketing on canned tomato labels that say "Vine Ripened Tomatoes."  So naturally, I would leave my tomatoes on the vine to ripen.

Well, several things happen.  It rains a torrential downpour and by the time you go to pick them, they've split.  Or worse than that, we have huge problems in our area with stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs.  If you leave your tomatoes on the vine, the tomatoes get damaged by these pesky pests.  Here are some of those dreaded stink bugs here:

So what's a gardener to do?  You pick them at the breaker, or break-over, stage.  Right when the tomatoes start to "blush," pick them and bring them inside.

Is it tricky?  Absolutely.  Sometimes you leave them one extra day and they've ripened past the optimal point of picking.  It's not an exact science, but an art.  I don't always get it right.  

I bring them inside and put them on big trays where they'll continue to ripen to perfection.  One day they look like this:

And the next, they're ALMOST to perfection.  As you can tell with the tomato at the 6 o'clock position, I waited a day too long and the rains came and the tomato split open.

What we've seen since implementing this, is higher quality tomatoes and we haven't sacrificed any taste.  The tomatoes ripen on their own off of the vine.  If you want to call them vine ripened tomatoes, that probably falls in the little white lie category, although you might argue that they were ripening on the vine, you just picked them before they were totally ripe.  Research tomato breaker stage and aim to start picking them when they start to blush.  If you don't already do this, I think you'll be pleased with the results.

Walk-around Wednesday

We had Worship Service this afternoon at one of the nursing homes in town.  It was a nice time.  Our little church always enjoys visiting there, singing old hymns, praying, and opening the Word of God.  It was a 'sweet' time.  The Bible compares the Word of God to being priceless and sweet:

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.  Psalm 19:10

Speaking of honeycomb, one of our milk customers dropped by to pick up his milk and had a sweet treat for us.  He had just returned from Mittie, Louisiana, where he got some honeycomb just dripping with honey.  We are eating this by the spoonful, and it's not gonna last too long.

The second thing I saw today is that the two rows of cowpeas I planted are popping up nicely.  I have one row of purple hull peas and one row of black-eyed peas that we planted in the garden in the side yard where we had just harvested Irish Potatoes.  They seem to thrive in the heat and humidity.  The only thing that affects them are aphids, but I've got some neem oil ready to go when I see them on the plants.  I've bordered the pea patch with sunflowers.

Just to the north of the peas, I planted Cinderella pumpkins, Peanut Pumpkins and New England Sugar Pie Pumpkins along with some assorted gourds.  They aren't up yet.  This planting is an experiment because the seeds are old (2017) and were saved from some pumpkins my parents brought back from a trip to South Dakota.  I planted a lot of seeds on each hill, assuming that since they're old, the germination might not be too good.  We'll watch and see what happens.

Finally, I wanted to show you a basket of peppers we picked.  It is my new favorite variety.  They're called Shishito Peppers.  I'll show you next week a delicious recipe that we found for them.  

We'll talk again tomorrow night.

If Tomatillos Aren't Your Thing...

Last night we talked about tomatillos and a salsita we make with it.  Tonight I'll show you something for chips you just can't go wrong with: Pico de Gallo.  Pico de Gallo means "the rooster's beak" in Spanish.  Why is it called that?  No one really knows.  I used the Google machine that told me that people used to eat it with their thumb and forefinger, which made the hand look like a rooster's head and you'd eat it with the "beak."

We've been getting lots of heirloom tomatoes in of all different varieties.  The colors are beautiful and the taste is scrumptious.  We've been eating lots of them fresh.  We've canned some and then Tricia has made lots of pico de gallo, too.

Back in the early 90's we'd go to the Folk Music Festival in Kerrville, Texas.  There was a band playing there called "Trout Fishing in America."  I know, strange name for a band, but they sang a catchy little tune that we would sing.  As a bonus, it helped you learn the recipe for Pico de Gallo.  The lyrics go like this:

Pico de Gallo, you oughta give it a try-o,
Even if you're from Ohio, it'll get you by-o,
Don't get it in your eye-o, unless you wanna cry-o,
So, come on don't be shy-o, eat some pico de gallo.

It's got jalapenos. I reckon y'all have seen those
They're kinda hot for gringos and probably flamingos.
Just add some tomatillos, onions and cilantro
Lime juice and tomato, you got pico de gallo!

Here you go!:

A bag of chips with this stuff around never sees the next day.  We'll finish off the bag and the whole bowl of pico de gallo.  I like to crush up the crumbs of chips in the bottom of the bag and pour it in the bottom of the pico and eat it up with a spoon like you'd do cereal and milk!

Eat some Pico de Gallo!

One of Our Favorite Things On Chips

My wife is from South Texas and is Hispanic.  I'm from South Louisiana.  We each brought different culinary favorites into the marriage.  She's introduced me to a number of delectable dishes from her culture, and I think she'd say the exact same thing about Cajun food that she had never eaten before.  She grew up on 'Tex-Mex' food, so there are some things from Mexico that she wasn't familiar with.

She learned to cook them, because she likes to try new things, and today, I'll show you something new for both of us that we really enjoy - Roasted Tomatillo Salsita.  Some also call it Salsa Verde.  Many times on Fridays we'll sit out on the patio and eat chips and salsa.  I'm ashamed to report that we will sometimes finish an entire bag of chips along with the salsa and that will be our supper.  It's so good!

 Tomatillos are also called Mexican husk tomatoes.  They are green and are surrounded by a papery husk.  I got some seeds and planted them and have had mixed results.  They grow and the plants get large and are covered with blooms, but we don't always get a crop.  I'm thinking that they might not be accustomed to our growing zone.  Fortunately, we harvested some and made Roasted Tomatillo Salsa with items fresh from the garden, except for the garlic.  Let's do this.

You'll need some onions.  This time we used Creole Red Onions.  Add some garlic cloves and peppers to your liking.  We used a nice Anaheim.  We took the husks off the tomatillos and put it all in a cast iron skillet.

We'll then roast the entire skillet in the oven until everything is a little charred.  During this process the kitchen smells amazing.

We simply put all the hot vegetables into a wide mouth mason jar, also adding a huge handful of fresh cilantro and a teaspoon kosher salt.  We like to do this right out of the oven.  This dish can be eaten hot or cold, but we enjoy it hot.

She uses a stick blender to blend (puree) everything together.

It doesn't take long at all until you've got a mouth-watering concoction that looks just like this.

We pour the entire thing into a pottery bowl and bring it and the bag of chips to the patio.

Here's a chip with fresh, hot, delicious roasted tomatillo salsita!

It is hard to imagine or explain how fast the bag of chips and bowl of salsita disappears!  It's become one of our favorite Friday afternoon snacks.  Note to self:  Grow more tomatillos.

The Bloom is Off the Rose

The bloom is off the rose.  Have you ever used that expression?

It's an old idiom, I read, that dates back to the 19th century.  Roses were seen as a thing of beauty, perfection even.  But as everyone knows, they wither and fade.  Gradually, this fact was woven into our vernacular as an expression that means that something has lost its charm or attractiveness or luring qualities.

Bench seats in pickup trucks.  Your girlfriend could slide right next to you.  We would joke when we'd see someone sitting right next to the driver that they must be only carrying insurance on half the vehicle.  The center console and bucket seats made that romanticism disappear.  A high school boy was enamored with the fact that his girl could scoot over on the bench seat right next to him.  That just kind of withered away.  The thrill is gone.  The bloom is off the rose.

Right outside our back patio, my wife has some roses planted.  We enjoy watching their beauty.  You must take in that beauty quickly, however, because it's fleeting.  I have photographic evidence.  I tracked a rose from its hopeful beginning to its tragic end.  It takes all of six days or 144 hours for "the bloom to be off the rose."  

Let's look at exhibit A.  Here is a perfect boutonniere.  You could snip this off and stick it in the button hole on you navy blue blazer and you'd be dressed to the nines.  You'd be, as ZZ Top sang, "a sharp dressed man."

By that afternoon, the rose is just starting to open up...

And for a few days we beheld its beauty.  It fully opened and the delicate petals attracted all the attention on the back patio.  It was a show-stopper.  The talk of the town.

And yet, time keeps on ticking, and I guess, similar to our lives, its health and beauty begins to rapidly decline.  If you remember studying in school about the bell curve, or standard deviation curve, our beautiful rose is on the back side of that curve, and it's sliding down in an exponential fashion.  Those once gorgeous petals have dropped or are in the process of dropping.

And six days from the beginning of it's beauty, here we are.  The bloom is off the rose.

It reminds me of a song released in 1972 by Tanya Tucker called Delta Dawn.  It's a song about a woman, a Southern Belle, who was promised that a man was going to meet her and take her away to get married.  And he never came.  He stood her up.  The chorus goes like this:

Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on

Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?

And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today

To take you to his mansion in the sky?

She wears this faded rose - a symbol of hope and longing and good memories that went awry.  She's still waiting suitcase in hand for the man, and he'll never come.  The bloom is off the rose.  That would be a sad way to end this post, but there's a lesson in the frailty and disappointments of life:

Matthew 6:19-21  King James Version

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.