Road Kill Reminiscences

Yesterday I was traveling slowly to an appointment south and east of Lake Charles.  It was down a two-lane blacktop road bordered by rice fields and cattle pastures.  Something caught my eye and I slowed down, checking my rear view mirror for anyone following me.  The road was clear in both directions.  I put the vehicle in Park in the middle of the road and opened my door.  There was a marvelous creature in the middle of the road, dead.  The blood was fresh.  The beast had been struck by a motorist early this morning, probably around daybreak.

A bobcat!  Much larger than the common housecat, it's fur was beautiful, with spots running down the legs and underside.  You can see it's short tail and understand why it's called a bobcat.  This cat wasn't skinny.  It was agile and muscular and fit, probably fattened on rabbits, rats, squirrels and maybe even a chicken from a farmer's pen.

I was sad that this ferocious feline was dead.  As I looked at the teeth on this cat, I shivered to think that if this thing would come to life, he'd tear me to pieces.

It reminded me of a time twenty five years ago when I was crawfishing.  A part of the 120 acres that I was crawfishing on bordered some woods on the north and east corner of a small patch my Dad rented from my Aunt Ida.  It was from this patch of woods that raccoons would come out at night and feed on my crawfish.  They would knock the traps over when robbing the crawfish out of them.  The turned over traps sunk beneath the water and since you couldn't see them, you'd run over them with the boat, crushing the trap.  Each trap cost $8.  With each ruined trap, my anger toward the raccoons intensified.

In the mornings, I would walk through the woods with my Marlin lever action .22 rifle.  Fat raccoons filled from their all-you-can-eat crawfish buffet all night would sleep in the crook of trees.  I shot them out of the tree, relishing the loud "THUMP" of the raccoon as he'd hit the forest floor.  But the population of raccoons exceeded my skill of killing them.  I began setting traps.  In talking to people, I had learned that raccoons are very curious critters.  I was told that if you put some aluminum foil, shiny side up, on the trigger pan of a snap trap, the curious raccoon would reach his hand to touch the shiny part and SNAP! - you'd catch him.  You did have to check traps often as they have been known to chew their leg off to avoid getting caught.

Within the next day or so, I came around the corner in my boat and heard quite the commotion going on.  There was a shrieking sound, followed by a tumbling motion with dust clouds arising from the water's edge.  I got a raccoon!  But as I got closer, I realized I was wrong.  I had caught a bobcat.  I killed the cat and ended up giving him to a relative that sold furs.  It was a beautiful animal, and I was sad that I had to kill it.  That cat wasn't eating my crawfish.  He was just in the wrong place at the right time.  Curiosity had indeed killed the cat.

Lache Pas La Patate

That phrase translated from Cajun French to English means, "Don't drop the potato!"  That phrase also means "Don't give up!" or "Hang in There!"  We won't be dropping any potatoes - at least not today.  Our phone rang right before 5pm and the caller id said, "Parsley's Feed."  I knew immediately what they were calling about.  Mrs. Johnette confirmed it when she said, "Your seed potatoes are in."  I told her I'd be over directly to pick them up.  A couple of weeks back I had put our names on an order list at our local feed store for 10 pounds of LaSoda seed potatoes.  Today they came in and we hopped in the car and drove over to get them.   

At the feed store, they had a notebook with several pages of names and numbers and how many pounds of seed potatoes the customer wanted.  As customers were called today, people were driving up to pick up their potatoes before closing time at 5pm.  A gentleman from our church that just turned 90 years old had ordered 50 pounds of seed potatoes!  (You read that right)  I hope in 31 years when I'm 90 I'm still planting potatoes!

I always have the same exact thought every year when I open the box and look at the potatoes:  "Should we just eat them?"  It's going to get chilly tonight and a potato soup with bacon, green onions and fresh parsley would hit the spot.  What if the yield on our potato crop is such that we harvest less than we plant?  That's always a possibility, but hope springs eternal.  We'll get these in the ground.

But something has to be done first.  We cut the potatoes and let them scab over.  You see the potato has a number of eyes.  From out of these eyes, a plant will grow.  Hopefully, each potato plant will grow numerous potatoes.  I use a knife to cut each potato in half, being careful (not to drop it!), but also not to cut through an eye.

When I finished the task, I had an entire tray of cut up seed potatoes.  I'll put the tray in a warm room and let the cuts scab over for about a week and then I'll put them in the ground in 10 days or so.

Constructing the Garden Sink

I've admitted many times before, I'm not a carpenter.  Sometimes, however, I get a hankering to complete a project that needs doing.  Wouldn't a garden sink be marvelous?  Tricia's old cast iron sink that was in the kitchen was removed after 25 years of service.  Although not a hoarder, I do like to save things that I think I may be able to repurpose.  I threw the old sink in the very back of the garden where it sat under the sugarcane patiently for over a year for me to make the decision to attempt the project that I had earmarked for it upon removal.  Last week, I pulled it from the garden and looked at it.  It didn't look good, but if I squinted my eyes, I could see potential there.  It's as if the old sink desired to be useful again.  Can we make that happen?

A garden sink would be so useful.  No more bringing in vegetables indoors for processing.  Vegetables that were dirty from harvest would get dirt and mud all over the place in Tricia's kitchen.  Vegetables that had stink bugs, spiders, slugs and snails clinging to them that would now be in the kitchen.  I searched and searched for plans online that would direct me on how to build it.  Oh, there were numerous plans and videos, but none were exactly what I saw in my mind's eye.  So I decided to build it without official plans.  I'd play it by ear, I'd fly by the seat of my pants, so to speak, in its construction.

The goal was to build it with lumber I had laying around.  This is what I roughed in.  As you can see, it's supported by a solid 4x4 frame supported by 2x4's, braced for sturdiness.  It would have a hardware cloth area for draining the cleaned vegetables.  I originally had ideas for a cutting board, but since this is going into the garden, I had a last-minute plan change to keep the garden sink reasonable in size.  I'll show you the workaround cutting board in a minute.

I was pleased with how this thing was taking shape.  Tricia liked that this would keep her kitchen cleaner.

I purchased the cheapest kitchen sink with sprayer from the local hardware store for fifty dollars.  Russ, my plumber son, helped me to pipe it all in.  The water run-off from the sink was plumbed to be caught in a blue tub.  That water that contained precious topsoil would be returned to the garden.  Either that or I would add chopped vegetable greens and stalks to the water and a little manure to manufacture my own fertilizer.  I'll show you that in another blog post sometime later.  The water source comes from a water hose connected by fittings to the sink.  It's not hard-piped in.  Since there's no hot water, I capped off the hot water portion of it.  I also added some 2x2 slats the have a shelf of sorts on the bottom for storage.  Doing so also added more stability to the garden sink.  We moved it out to the garden.

Time to test it out.  We had some Danvers carrots, Cosmic Purple Carrots, Detroit Red beets, and Chioggia beets ready for pickin'.  I pulled them, put them in the sink and washed and scrubbed them real good.

Using a makeshift cutting board that I placed over one of the sinks, I cut the greens off.  Of course with cows and goats nosing around, I fed the greens to them.

Chioggia beets remind me of Brach's Starlight Mints, one of my favorite mints, especially good to pop in your mouth when you are about to leave church in order to combat "church breath."  Church breath is a dreaded affliction one gets from sitting in church singing hymns and listening to the sermon, and starlight mints is the cure for it, I've found.  Chioggia beets, unlike starlight mints, aren't minty, but they are tasty.

The garden sink worked in splendid fashion to wash up the vegetables.  Total cost of the garden sink was less than $100.  As a result of having the sink, we were able to bring cleaned veggies into the house that were ready to be processed further without making a mess indoors.

Inside, we sliced these root vegetables into 1/4 inch slices, tossed them in olive oil and roasted them in the oven with butter and salt and pepper.  It was a good day and I've got to give the roasted vegetables AND the new garden sink good reviews.  The vegetables for taste and the garden sink for functionality.

Three New Hens

Since our oft talked about chicken catastrophe last year in which minks killed off half of our flock until I was able to trap them, our flock was cut in half.  We have 25 hens remaining.  So it was with great joy last week when our neighbor's grandson walked over and asked if we'd be interested in adopting three hens.  What a good neighbor!

His sister lives in town and purchased three hens at Tractor Supply.  At first her three hens seemed neat.  The newness quickly wore off and the hens wouldn't stay where they were supposed to stay.  They roamed around causing trouble and made lots of noise in the neighborhood and they laid eggs in different hiding places all around the yard.  Before long, it was determined that the 3 hens needed to be re-homed.

Of course, we'll take them.  Bring them on over.  They were wild and he had lots of trouble catching them.  I told him to wait until they're roosting at night and then he'd be able to grab them.  Sure enough, it worked.  He called me the next morning and told me that he had caught them the night before when they were roosting and he was bringing them over.

I asked him to put them in the cattle trailer and I'd introduce them to the rest of the flock when I got home.  The three birds are very healthy and will be a welcome addition to our dwindling flock.

Before putting them with the rest of the chickens, I used some tin snips to clip one of their wings.  This keeps them off balance should they decide to try to fly up and over the exterior fence.  After cutting the feathers off, I gently set the hens down with the rest of the flock.

It generally takes a while for new birds to get acclimated to the rest of the flock.  They tend to be standoffish.  The new birds don't know the routine.  Last night, they didn't go into the henhouse before the door closed.  That resulted in them being out exposed in a very dangerous place.  Mink and raccoons and possums prowl about at night on their nocturnal maneuvers.  We lost one hen just last year that didn't get into the henhouse before the door closed and a big barn owl was eating the hen when I went out the next morning to do the chores.

Last night I went  out after dark to see if the new hens made it into the hen house.  Nope.  They didn't.  I used a headlamp to find them out in the pasture, huddled in a little group.  I caught one by hand and put her locked up securely in the hen house.  The other two were wise to my plans and were wild by then and were having nothing doing with me.  No amount of telling them that it was for their own good would help.  I went and got the net we normally use when we go crabbing and used it to scoop up the other two hens.  Believe it or not, I had to run out tonight and catch those 3 hens once again.  They just don't realize the danger they are in.  After I secured them in the hen house, I locked the door.  I hope they figure out the routine.  I don't want to have to go chasing hens every stinking night to safely secure them.  After losing so many hens and then being gifted three to make up for that, I want to keep the hens happy, healthy and laying many eggs for us.                           

Empty Nesters - Remember When

Today our youngest turned 25 years old.  I can't believe.  Where did the time go?  Not only that, but he bought a home.  It's about 35 miles away from us, but it is close to his work.  He was living in Welsh with his brother, Russ, but now he's on his own.  We helped move him in.  His Momma has been helping him clean and get everything in order.  We are proud of him and all of our kids.  Here he is standing by his front door:

I am positive that many of you who are reading this have experienced the same bittersweet feelings I'm trying to express.  Since welcoming them into the world, you try to do your dead level best to introduce them to Jesus, parent them properly, instill values and teach them skills so that they can make it on their own in a dog eat dog world.  You think you have all the time in the world.  But you don't!

And then the day comes when they pack up and leave.  And the house becomes big and quiet.  You are left painfully aware of the mistakes you made in parenting and wishing that you might have done things differently or better.  We are frail and faulty, right?  You've shot your quiver of arrows out into the world.  You pray for your kids who are forging their own way in a cruel world.

You are left with silence and memories of their childhood.  Time marches on.  It waits for no one.  It's a stark reminder that I should be a better steward of it.  Looking back I remember Benjamin as a young boy out in the side yard with his rifle and Confederate Kepi hat reenacting Pickett's charge.  He'd get shot by a sharpshooter and lay writhing on the ground.  We watched from a distance as he imagined various combat situations.  He and Russ fought many battles against the enemy and each other with Air-soft guns.  In fact, look what I found years later in the side yard:

Look right in the center of the photo

Can you see the bright orange air soft pellet?  I think decades from now someone will find one of these and wonder what it is.  Years ago in digging up the bed in our garden in the side yard to plant Irish potatoes, I unearthed an old blue porcelain marble.  Years and years ago, in the same place where Benjamin and Russ battled it out, another young man played marbles, enjoying times of imagination and fun, with parents looking on at the innocence and vivid imagination you have in childhood.

In that same general location, eighteen years prior I constructed a simple swing for Laura Lee and hung it in a live oak tree.  She'd swing and I'd push her.  Good times!  She (and Russ) have homes of their own now, and the swing sits dormant, swaying only when a swift breeze pushes it.

Alan Jackson sings a song called "Remember When," and it gets me in the 'feels' whenever I hear it.  

Verse 4 says:

Remember when
The sound of little feet
Was the music we danced to week to week
Brought back the love, we found trust
Vowed we'd never give it up
Remember when

Verse 6 says:

Remember when

We said when we turned gray

When the children grow up and move away

We won't be sad, we'll be glad

For all the life we've had

And we'll remember when

I think Alan Jackson puts it in the right perspective.  Although it's sad, we'll be glad, for we shared a lot of love and life.  We often talk on this blog about raising animals and plants and honeybees, but the most important, by far, crop we raise is children.

The Fall Tomato Crop

Our fall tomato crop was producing well, not in huge abundance, but good nonetheless.  And then in December temperatures dropped for one night to the upper 20's.  There were pounds and pounds of green fruit on the tomato vines and so on the night of the freeze, Tricia and I picked baskets and baskets of green tomatoes of all varieties.  

We arranged them on trays on the table and covered them with cardboard boxes that we had flattened out.  Each morning we would sort them, moving the pink ones to a separate tray.  As they ripened we moved them into the fridge.  Almost every single one of the tomatoes ripened indoors.  We knew we had to do something quickly with all these tomatoes as we barely had room for anything else in the ice box.  So we pulled them all out.  Here is an overhead shot of some of them:

And here is a big heaping basket full of Chadwick Cherry Tomatoes.  These tomatoes right here produce and produce!

Tricia likes to cook with these.  We bagged up all of the Chadwick Cherry tomatoes and put them in the freezer.  There were exactly 10 pounds of cherry tomatoes!

With some of the bigger tomatoes, we made pico de gallo.  Actually, I made it.  I call it Gringo Pico.  Simple, simple, simple.  Cut tomatoes, cut onions, cut peppers cilantro, salt and pepper and lime juice.  Good stuff!  We like to put it in the fridge overnight and let the flavors "percolate."

Here's the money shot: 

That's a little over 5 pounds of pico de gallo!  Tricia and I almost finished this off for lunch today with some chips.

For the rest of the tomatoes, we decided to can the cut up tomatoes into pint jars.  First we scalded the tomatoes, cored them, and removed the skins.  Then we roughly cut up the tomatoes so that they would cook uniformly.

After adding salt and pepper, we put the cut tomatoes in a pot and let them cook.

Tricia added salt and citric acid to each jar and then ladled the cooked tomatoes into the canning jars.

We put these jars in a water bath canner when the water was boiling.  When the time was up, we removed them and ensured that the jars sealed.  They were placed on the kitchen counter to cool.  Once cool, we'll remove the rings and stack the 12 jars of tomatoes to the pantry.

Between freezing, making pico de gallo, and canning, we put up 30 pounds of tomatoes!  That doesn't count all the fresh tomatoes that we ate or cooked with prior to preserving the harvest.  It was actually a better crop than the spring toms.  That's to be expected.  Less heat and humidity and less bug pressure.

As soon as we got all these tomatoes put away, we got all the tomatoes started from seed.  They should be germinating shortly and we'll see if we can have a good spring crop as well as what we just experienced in the fall.

Egg Production Data - 2025

On Friday we posted the 2025 Rainfall Data.  It was a look back at the entire year precipitation totals, by day and by month.  Today we'll look at egg production.  The first chart, shown below, is the daily log.  We actually keep a handwritten log and transfer it at year end to tally up the numbers in Excel.  I'm sure it would be easier to just log it into Excel each day, but this 'old school' system seems to work for us.  It's a total of 4,350 eggs for the year.  

Let's see how that stacks up against previous years.  We've kept egg production records since 2013.  I'm sad to report that at 4,350 eggs, 2025 was the lowest egg production year on record.  We still produced 362.50 dozen eggs.  The highest month for eggs was June and the lowest was December.  If you total up the numbers, May is historically the best month and December the worst.

It's kind of amazing to see that since 2013 98,030 eggs or 8,169 dozen eggs have been produced off of 3 acres of pasture.

This table simply shows the data in a different format and adds in the number of hens below to help estimate the average eggs per day and how often they lay.

It's interesting, but there are some variables that skew the data, namely predation.  In September, a couple of mink began murdering our hens.  You can see the fall-off in the chart above during that period.  By the time that the dust (and feathers) settled and I had caught the two mink in our trap and settled the score in Old Testament fashion, our flock was cut in half.  Our numbers would have been more in line with prior years.  Those mink really sunk any profitability in eggs this year.  We did, however, have enough eggs produced off the land that we never had to buy eggs and had enough left over to sell some too.  At some point this spring, we may incubate some more chicks to build the flock's numbers back up.