Checking In On the Recently Planted Fall Garden

This past week I put a lot of work in so that we could get the fall garden in.  Starting from the front, I cleared out some sweet potato vines and got a full row of broccoli and a row beside it of cauliflower. Just to the south of that, we planted Russian Red Kale, Siberian Kale, Dinosaur Kale and Rainbow Swiss Chard.  A little to the west of those rows, we put in a row of Detroit Dark Red Beets, Chioggia Beets and Bull's Blood Beets.

It is Very Dry for September in our area, so I was careful to get everything watered in and then kept the soil moist to aid in germination.

I almost forgot to tell you that in pulling up the youngest sweet potato vines in order to make room for the broccoli and cauliflower, I unearthed some Golden Wonder Sweet Potatoes.  I'll let these cure and we'll eat these first while waiting on the main sweet potato harvest coming up in about a month.

I made some room on the 16 foot trellis by removing the cucumber vines which had been decimated by army worms.  This enabled me to get the sugar snap peas planted.  They responded with a germination rate that approaches 99%.

We always like to have fresh green beans for Thanksgiving.  To achieve that, we got a row of snap beans that are up and thriving.  About 1/3 of the row is a variety called Calima.  The remaining 2/3 of the row is planted with Blue Lake Bush Green Beans.

Further to the south, we planted a row of kohlrabi and cabbage.  In the upcoming weeks, we'll get garlic in and then lettuce, mustard greens, turnips and radishes, amount other items.  The fall garden is about all planted.  Good weather's on the way.

A Crafty Beast in the Garden

It's that time of year where we're picking muscadines off our vine in the side yard garden.  Muscadines are a type of grapevine that grow in these parts.  They have thick skin and a lot of seeds, but the grape itself is very tasty.  I like to eat them sun-warmed right off the vine and spit the seeds on the ground.  We have many young muscadine vines coming up all over the place now.  Russ took one with him to his home and is adding to his vineyard.  He has his vines growing on a hurricane fence.  Our vine gets bigger every year and it is trellised on a cattle panel supported by two t-posts on the ends.  Russ was a horticulture major and explained to me that if we had pruned our vine properly, it would have made more grapes this year.  When the plant goes dormant, we'll give it a haircut so that we have a more abundant harvest next year.

I keep a watchful eye when picking muscadines.  Red wasps love to build their nests under the canopy of grape leaves.  They are hard to see and then when you reach in to pull some grapes off the vine, they fly out and sting you.  Last year I was fortunate to see the nest before they got me.  It was as big as a belt buckle and full of angry aggressive wasps.  In the old days, I'd cut a Dr. Pepper can in half and fill the bottom with gasoline and douse the nest with the gas.  It 'freezes' them instantly.  This method is a no-go for killing wasps around things we're going to eat.  It would not only kill the wasps, but would kill part of the muscadine vine, too.  So I put a generous amount of Dawn dishwashing liquid into a cup and swirled some hot water in the cup.  I through that on the nest and the wasps fell to the ground, unable to fly.  My leather boot put them out of their misery and I plucked the nest off the vine and stepped on it, too.

As I was searching for ripe muscadines and keeping my eyes peeled for wasps, I spotted this dude:

It's only a harmless garter snake, but it made me immediately think of Genesis 3:1 that says, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.  And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"

We have numerous garter snakes all over the place.  They're small and slither under the French doors.  We have to constantly pick them up and throw them back outside.  They eat frogs, lizards, geckos, and worms.  All their favorite foods are around our house, so we're constantly in contact with them.  Sometimes, their desire to get into the house gets them in trouble.  Last week one got slammed in the French door by accident, suffering an injury not unlike the one mentioned in Genesis 3:15.

The serpent I saw in the muscadine vine, fortunately, did not speak to me!  I am under no restrictions from which tree (or vine) in the garden from which I can eat, so I continued picking a bowlful of delicious muscadines.

Discovered Some Serious Tomato Plant Damage

I check on the tomato plants daily.  Despite the afternoons still in the low to mid 90's, the tomato plants have done quite well.  In fact, I was concerned that due to the heat, they wouldn't set fruit.  I had read that they will have problems setting fruit if temperatures exceed 85 degrees Fahrenheit.  Well, that rule isn't set in stone as I'm seeing fruit all over the place.

But I'm seeing something else, too.  I walked down the tomato rows this afternoon and spotted this!

And here is it's neighbor!  What in the wide world of sports is going on?

Well, I have a pretty good idea.  It looks like damage from a tomato horn worm.  I decided I would carefully inspect each plant.  The tomato horn worm's appetite rivals mine.  It can eat a lot in just a short sitting.  The plants weren't like this yesterday.  So I started at the first plant, looking all over.  And then I spotted the perpetrator!  Can you see how camouflaged it is?  It blends right in to the stalk and leaves.

I snatched the hornworm off the plant with the quickness.  You can see how it got it's name.  It has a red barb on his rear end.  I read somewhere that they don't sting or bite, but I wasn't taking any chances.  It wasn't happy with me for removing it from it's lunch.

I'm sure there are more, so I began to go through the plants one by one.  Here's another one!

And another!

And yet still another.  In all, I picked seven of them off the plants, all except one were as fat as my index finger.

Tomato hornworms feed on members of the nightshade family, namely tomatoes and eggplant.  Speaking of names, the hornworm's scientific name is Manduca quinquemaculata.  But I can't pronounce that name.  I choose to simply call them... Chicken food!  I tossed each one over the fence and watched the birds quickly devour them.  Please be assured I watched until they were digested.  I don't want them to make their way back into the garden.

I'll check the plants again tomorrow for any fresh signs of damage.

Clipping Wings

Although we have three acres for our chickens to roam around on, the old saying that "the grass is always greener on the other side" rings true for chickens as well as cows and goats.  Even though I have the wings clipped on my chickens, I have a couple of chickens that squeeze themselves out between the hog wire perimeter fence.  Pro-tip: When you clip their wings, you only need to clip one of them.  They can't fly with feathers on only one wing.

Our new neighbors put in a chicken yard.  More and more people are getting 'backyard chickens.'  There's nothing quite like picking fresh eggs every day.  The neighbor's birds are young and not quite laying eggs yet.  They quickly ate all the grass in the new chicken yard and would fly up on top of their hen house and then jump down over the fence.  About 15 birds would come into our yard and were scratching in the landscape and got into the garden.  They also devoured our persimmons that had fallen from the tree, before we had a chance to pick them up.  We had to do something quickly!

Tricia and I got our old net that we use when we go crabbing, and I also picked up my tin snips.  We had some chickens' wings to clip.  With both of us working together over two days, we cornered the chickens one by one and gave them a haircut.  You just take one wing and using the sharp tin snips, cut the wing feathers way back.  Then we gently tossed them back over the fence to their home.

The chickens squawked to express their displeasure, but at the end of the ordeal, no one was worse for wear.  Except, I broke a cardinal rule of neighborliness.  I didn't let my neighbor know what we had done.  I remedied that situation this afternoon.  I talked to him about it and he was thankful, saying that we saved him a lot of time, energy, and work.  So everything is smoothed out.  Everyone is happy... except for the chickens that have lost their freedom!  I'll have to do something to remedy the problem of two of our forty something hens that get out as I don't want them getting into their yard.  It's been more peaceful over the past few days without a flock of chickens in the yard.  There are two guinea fowl, though, that we couldn't catch, but I haven't given up.  We'll get 'em yet.

A New Shed for the Bullpen

I started to tell you last week about our new construction project in the back pasture that we call the "bullpen."  It's where we keep the males of the bovine and goat persuasion segregated from the females in order to control breeding times so that the babies come when we want them to come.  The bullpen has no barn, no enclosure to get out of the rain.  It is bordered by woods that provide overhanging shade.  We can and do run them into the barn through a gate that's adjacent if weather gets too bad.

For Nicky the bull, it's not a big deal.  For Popcorn, the billy, he doesn't like the rain and is prone to getting hoof rot.  Tricia asked that we build a small lean-to or shed to provide protection from the elements to the animals in the bullpen.  That project has been on the list for a couple of months and this week, we decided to begin so that we would have it done before the north wind starts to blow and weather deteriorates.

Four 4x4 posts were set in the corners and cemented in.  Curious onlookers supervised the process and got in the way.  I had to move them out of the bullpen after my patience ran a little thin.

I looked at several plans, but none were exactly what I was looking for.  I ended up having no plans and would just play in by ear, wing it, and see how it comes out.  I took measurements and composed my materials list and drove to Stine Lumber to get necessary supplies - about $300 worth, although I did use some lumber I had stashed away in the barn rafters.  Side supports went up.  These add support but also will anchor the tin sides of the shed.

I'm no carpenter - not even on my best day.  I just kind of throw things together.  I used a level and tried my best to make things square.  Experience has taught me that the animals don't care about quality construction as long as it is functional.  The remainder of the walls go up as well as the boards that will support the sloping roof.

The roof rafters, I guess you'd call them are now on, supported by 3 inch screws.  The roof will open to the south, providing protection from the north winds of winter.

The roof is up and now the walls start going in.

The south side will remain wide open, but the other three sides will be closed off.  I assume later on we could gate off the opening, if the need arises.

Russ came by the house Saturday afternoon and helped me cut the tin into 5 foot sections and begin hanging the walls.  I couldn't have done this part alone.

Here's our completed shed.  It's small, yet it will provide a respite from cold winds and rain in the winter.

Here's a look from the west side.  A west side story, you might call it.

The project is complete.  Now it's time to get in the garden and start working on the fall/winter planting.

The Worm Turns

The worm turns is an idiom used to explain a situation that changes suddenly and abruptly.  It's appropriate to use that expression when talking about today's topic.  Cucumbers.  Our spring/summer cucumber crop was stellar, stupendous, and superlative.  Each day we'd harvest all we could carry.  We ate them every lunch, gave lots away at church and to family and friends and lacto-fermented many pickles in gallon and quart-sized jars.  

When the cucumbers in that garden petered out, I planted another row of them on the same trellis, while working some compost into the soil for nutrients.  You never want to take more out of the soil than you put into it.  The cucumbers quickly grew, attached themselves to the trellis, bloomed and set fruit. In fact, just as we ate the last pickle from the pickle jar, the cucumber harvest began to come in again.  We were just starting to bring in a half dozen a day and enjoying them cut up with some salt and pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then...

And then in one stinking day things turned south.  Worms descended on our cucumbers like the plagues in Egypt.   I guess had I been more vigilant and observant, I could have tried some neem oil on them, but it was not to be.

Just look at the destruction.  A few days prior, the leaves were broad and bright green, tendrils gripping the trellis as hopeful vines inched skyward.  Today we're left with webs, poop and the remnants of formerly productive vines.  

I scratched through the rubble of the failed crop and found the perpetrator, in fact three of them feasting on the last remaining cucumber.  I tossed it over the fence where many hens were waiting and watched with delight as I witnessed the worms got their comeuppance.

But no long faces here,  tomorrow I'll work some fresh compost and some chicken litter into the soil beneath the trellis and I'll plant our fall crop of Sugar Snap Peas.  Things turned quickly with the cucumbers - from abundance to abhorrent.  But things can turn quickly again with our crop of sugar snap peas hopefully and prayerfully planted.  If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Red Sky At Night

 I ran out to the road the other day and captured this beautiful red sunset.  What a sight!

It reminded me of the old saying, "Red sky in morning, sailor's take warning.  Red sky at night, sailor's delight."  I'm not going sailing, but if the saying is true, tonight would be the night to do it.  Did you know that this old saying is mentioned in the Bible?  It is found in Matthew 16:2-3, mentioned by our Lord.

2 He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.  3 And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

The Sadducees and Pharisees were two rival parties, but their hatred for Jesus caused them to be in agreement.  That brings up another old saying, by the way: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."  These religious leaders were looking for a sign.  They wanted Him to work a miracle in order that they might believe He is the Christ.  They were always looking for signs and wonders.  These people had the Son of God sitting before them.  Prophecy was being fulfilled before their very eyes and yet they were blind.  No one is as blind as he who just won't see.

Here's the thing:  A miracle or sign or wonder will not convict you to turn from your unbelief to salvation.  Why did Jesus bring up the weather?  He was making the point that their blindness was deliberate.  He was telling them that they had no problems looking at Creation that HE created and draw conclusions to guide them, yet they were confronted by evidence that He had shown them repeatedly and couldn't connect the dots.  Their own Scripture pointed prophecies of the Messiah coming that they should have recognized, but their eyes seemed to be closed to the truth.

Their eyes were closed.  Their hearts were hardened.  In verse 4 Jesus called them an adulterous generation.  Now some of them may have been committing adultery in terms of not being faithful to their wives, but Jesus was speaking more of spiritual adultery.  They were God's chosen people and they were not faithful to Him.  Instead, they were trusting in a set of rules and laws that they had manufactured.  They were worshipping a god they had constructed.  If they were following God, they would have recognized the Messiah in their midst.

Have you recognized the Messiah?  Do you know Jesus?  Have you manufactured a god or a system that you're trusting to get you to Heaven?  Jesus is the One foretold by the Old Testament prophets.  He is the promised Messiah that solved the "sin problem" that originated in Genesis 3.  He is the Good News that the New Testament speaks of.  Try as we might, we can't purchase salvation.  The smartest men and women can't invent a cure for our terminal sinful condition.  All it takes is faith, placing full reliance on Jesus for the remission of your sins.  Despite the weather forecast, if you trust Him, regardless the color of the sky at morning or night, you'll sail into eternity secure with Him.