Giants in the Earth

 

My Mom by a new sign erected honoring my grandfather

Giants in the Earth is the name of a novel written in 1924 that recounts the struggles faced in 1887 by several immigrant families from Norway that settled in the Dakota Territory.  The book is hard to read with many heart-breaking tragedies and pitfalls, but showcases a strong work ethic and resolute persistence in striving to build a new life in a new and unforgiving land.  It is a story of man versus nature.  I recommend reading this book, but with a warning.  This is a sad book.  If you are looking for a bright, cheerful, uplifting book, this may not be one to put on your reading list.

This blog post is about another Giant in the Earth, in my opinion - My Grandfather, whom we affectionately called Poppy.  He was of Norwegian descent and in the story I'll tell you, he settled in the strange new land of Louisiana after moving down from the (South) Dakota Territory.  

It was 1941 and our nation was preparing young men for war.  Hitler's war machine was gobbling up land and the freedom of people across the world was threatened.  America could not sit on her hands any longer.  A young man named Orlando Sneve who was raised in South Dakota was sent down to Camp Claiborne, near Glenmora, Louisiana for training.  This camp had swelled to a bustling place that would have been the third largest city in Louisiana if it was a city.  For a young man like Orlando, this must have been quite a change with temperatures in the 90's, humidity higher than that and mosquitoes that flew in clouds.

This story would have stopped right there except for the fact that there was a young woman named Katherine Baker, that lived in a nearby town called Oakdale, Louisiana. A USO dance was organized and a group of young women from Oakdale motored to Camp Claiborne to the dance.  The rest is history.  There was something about Katherine that influenced him to become a "transplanted Yankee."  Orlando's hometown was 1,122 miles north and the climate and customs of the South were as different as crawfish is to lutefisk.  Nevertheless, he quickly embraced the people of South Louisiana, calling Louisiana his home.  Orlando completed his tour of duty overseas, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge in the European theater, and ending his military career with the rank of Major.

Back stateside, in 1948, Orlando was excited to begin a new chapter in his life and went into the grocery business in Kinder, commuting each day from his home in Oakdale, 25 miles north.  He began working with the Kinder Lion’s Club and as he served the public in his grocery store, a connection with the Town of Kinder began to grow.  He came to be affectionately known by young and old in the community as Mr. Orlando.

In June of 1954, Mr. Orlando moved his wife Katherine and his two kids, Kay and John from Oakdale to Kinder.  He joined the First Congregational Church in Kinder and served as deacon and trustee of the church, growing as a Christian under the influence of Rev. Paul Leeds and deeply concerned with the welfare of the congregation.  His faith and Christian principles were driving forces in the management of the Kinder Supermarket.  He treated people fairly and ran his business with integrity.  He truly cared for people.

He loved service organizations and spent many days and nights meeting with the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, and Allen Parish Library Board, among others.  He met with the Governor and Legislators in effort to seek funds for a new library in Allen Parish.  Due to his even-tempered nature and conservatism, friends jokingly called him “The Peacemaker” at some of those meetings.

In the 1960’s, Mr. Orlando wanted to try to give the community something back and ran for Town Council.  He won the election, serving from 1965 until 1981 when his illness prevented him from further civic duty.  He truly wanted to make Kinder a better place to live.  He was instrumental in planning the Sr. Citizen building at City Park so the elderly in town to eat and gather.

As a living memorial to him, his family planted trees in various places in the community, so that even though he is gone, memory of him can live on, grow and flourish, as a reminder of a giant of a man who loved his town and made his mark upon it.  The family wishes to deeply thank the Park Board who recently erected a beautiful sign at the Park in Mr. Orlando’s honor, dedicating the “Orlando Sneve Walking Trail.” 

From Peppers to Pesto

While half of the garden is finishing up in the summer heat, the other portion is still producing.  Peppers is one of those items.  We have several varieties going right now: Jalapenos.  These are probably my favorite, followed by Anaheims.  This year I planted a new variety (for us) called Shishito Peppers.  They are delicious, roasted and blistered.  I'll plant these from here on out.  We have a bunch of Banana Peppers that continue to produce.  We eat them raw.  We pickle a bunch of them, too.

There is a local meat market in our town called Cormier's Specialty Meats.  They sell boudin mixed with cream cheese for making poppers.  One afternoon last week I cut the banana peppers in half and seeded them.  Using a spoon, Tricia and I filled each pepper half with the boudin cream cheese and broiled in the oven.  Mighty good!

One of the other things we're making is pesto.  Plenty of pesto!  We have a lot of basil that popped up volunteer in the garden.  We've given away many seedlings and have a bunch more.  If you're in the area and would like some, get in touch and I'll pot one or two up for you.  We'll pick 8 cups of pesto leaves packed to make a big batch of pesto.  

We love to make pesto and freeze it in 16 ounce sour cream containers.  It makes the perfect lunch!  You simply start some pasta going on the stove, thaw out a container of pesto, drain your pasta and stir in the pesto and you have a delicious, easy meal.  The whole family loves it.  We even like to snack on it by spreading it on toast.  One word of warning:  Check your teeth before you go in public.  Pesto notoriously gets stuck between your teeth.  It's pretty embarrassing going out in town with big, green pieces of pesto in your teeth.  (That's experience speaking, right there!)

This week I planted a couple more rows of Purple Hull Peas and two rows of Black Turtle Beans.  Also, we got three varieties of pumpkins in the ground.  I got out my LSU Vegetable Planting Guide and looked at what I can begin planting in early August.  Time to get additional things in the ground!

Another Way to Preserve the Harvest

At certain times of the year, we have more vegetables coming in than we know what to do with.  We eat all we can, and it is fun to look for new recipes.  We've found some things that are fantastic, like zucchini bundt cake!  We give away a lot to our neighbors and our church family.  We blanch and freeze some.  We dehydrate some.  We pickle some.  Another way of preserving is lacto-fermentation.  

Lacto-fermentation uses whey and salt and the lacto-bacillus bacteria in the vegetables.  The bacteria converts the sugars in the vegetables to lactic acid and thus, preserves or ferments the vegetables, preserving their shelf life and giving you some healthy probiotics to populate your gut.  They are delicious, too!

When we milk LuLu, our Jersey in milk right now, or our goats, Tricia makes kefir.  She strains off the whey, and we use the whey for lacto-fermentation.  Below you see a gallon jar of fermented pickles and banana peppers.  The recipe is real simple.  You fill the container with vegetables and add 1/4 cup of whey to the quart jar.  Then add 1 Tablespoon of salt.  Finally, fill the rest of the jar with water, put a cap on it and sit at room temperature for two days.  At the end of two days, put in the fridge. (By the way, why does fridge have a "d" in it, but refrigerator doesn't?)  We find that if you leave it in the fridge for a month or two, the flavor gets better.

Here is a quart of cut up yellow squash that we lacto-fermented.  There's no end to what type of vegetable you can try.  We tried beets several years and made beet kvass using the same recipe.

Now if you pound the shredded vegetables and they make their own juice, you can do this without using water.  Just add the whey and the salt and use a glass weight to keep the shredded vegetables beneath the liquid line.  Here is some sauerkraut that we made back in early spring when the cabbage came in.

And here is a quart of ginger carrots that we made back in February.

Any of the above is cool, tangy, tasty, and refreshing for lunch on a hot, summer day.

The Art Barn

When I'm driving out and about, I like observing things off the beaten path.  I love Americana or things that have Southern charm, unique architecture, or country style.  A lot of country folk are confident in who they are, regardless of the fact that most of the coastal elites look way down their noses at us.  We may be a little different, but we've learned to lean in to it and embrace it.

I see lots of patriotism.  American flags are displayed all over the countryside.  People love the red, white and blue.  On Louisiana Highway 26, heading north between Hathaway and Elton, something changed, and it caught my eye.  I did a double take and pulled to the side of the road.  There is a barn just west of the road that I had blogged about back in 2018.  This barn had a big rooster painted on the western side of it.  Well, now the painting has been updated.

If you are thinking that it now has "See Rock City" painted on it, well, that is a really good guess, but that isn't on the barn.  The rooster that was previously on the barn is out and has been replaced with a huge painting of Old Glory!  The painter did a remarkable job on the mural.

You have to admire the artistic flair and craftsmanship.  That took thought and follow-through to get out there and get that done.  I have a hard enough time painting my barn red.  It either needs to be pressure washed or another coat of paint, but that isn't even on my radar.  This gentleman here loves his country.  He loves freedom and what our country stands for.

May God bless the USA and Americans that value freedom, justice, and Godly principles on which she was founded.

Independence Day 2024

Happy Independence Day, everyone!  Freedom is a wonderful thing.  Last night we drove to town.  Our town has a population of 9,375 people and I think every last one of them was in town preparing to watch a fireworks display put on on the 3rd of July.  In the past, fireworks were set off by the fire department in the Oil & Gas Park.  They now set them off at the Jennings airport at 9PM.  At 8:45 crowds of people filled the park, facing south ready for the show.  There was a live band on the stage playing.  

The park was so full of people, we were afraid we wouldn't find a parking spot.  Right next door, though, there is a nursing home.  Our church has services there for the resident on the third Wednesday each month.  We decided to pull in the parking lot there and park to watch the fireworks display.  It was a touching sight.  The nurses had the residents in the parking lot in their wheelchairs all lined up to see the show!  Beautiful!  After twenty minutes of oohs and ahhs and a grand finale, we headed home.

On the Fourth of July we drove to Kinder for hot dogs, hamburgers, sausage and snacks with my Mom and Dad and Jenny and Brett and their whole family.  Before eating, we did what we always do.  We held hands in a big circle that stretched across two rooms and Dad returned thanks to the Almighty for our great country, our family, our health and all the many blessings He has bestowed upon us.

Faith, Family, Freedom and Food...

And when the prayer ended with "in Jesus' Name, Amen," we lined up to eat.  And we ate!

We had Root Beer floats and Bomb pops and cut a locally-grown watermelon and enjoyed each other's company.

We should keep our Nation and our Nation's leaders in our prayers, whether we agree with them or not.  I was thinking about the Preamble to the Constitution the other day:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense...  and the list goes on.  All honorable and laudable goals.  I realize that those things won't be realized in perfection until our Lord returns, but I pray that our constitutional republic and this experiment in liberty will continue to stand.  We lift our Nation and it's leaders up to the Lord in prayer.  May God Bless America!

 

Wednesday Observances

Each morning, the wife and I have a cup of coffee in the sunroom and read the Bible.  We finished Job and now have started back again in Genesis.  As Tricia read, I looked down at the rug.  There was a rock on the rug about the size of a pecan.  The first thing I thought of was "Where did that come from?"  I thought that maybe I had somehow carried that in on my boots.  I reached down and picked it up while we tried to figure out this mystery.

The next morning, seated at the same place, I looked down and saw a shard of glass on the rug in roughly the same area.  I picked it up and looked to the windows on the east side of the little room where the sun filters in.  And then we both saw it.  There was a large hole in both panes in the lower part of the glass!  Then it all fit together.  That rock was thrown by a lawnmower, shattering the window.  We called a glass company later that morning, and they came and measured the glass.  $450 dollars later and our window is repaired.  $450.  That was an expensive grass cutting day.

Later than night I was out walking as I normally do.  I look up at the stars and wonder how it must have been to study constellations and use the stars as navigational tools out on the open waters.  Something strange caught my eye that I've seen several times.  At first I thought it was a UFO.  Now I know that what I am seeing is SpaceX's Starlink satellites going into orbit.  They are 340 miles up and slowly march across the sky.

My phone didn't capture what it really looks like.  It is not a solid line, but in a "train" each one following closely behind the next.  In a semi-related observance from the "heavens," check this out:

This was on the lawn mower.  It is a Luna Moth or and American Moon moth.  Its wingspan is over 4 inches long!  It has "eyes" on its wings to discourage predators.  What I read on them states that they can emit a clicking noise OR can regurgitate its intestinal contents on you.  That's just lovely, isn't it?

There's all sorts of mysteries and "other-worldly" things all around us, if we dare to notice.  Have a wonderful evening!

Louisiana Long Okra

It's the first day of July and it is hot.  I picked the last two cucumbers on the trellis and pulled the tired vines down.  The plants were just worn out.  We've never made or eaten more cucumbers - ever!  What a year.  Between Boston Pickling, Suyo Long and Marketmore varieties, we brought in baskets and baskets of the crispy, crunchy refreshing cukes.  We gave lots away at church and many to the neighbors and family members.  Each and every day we had a refreshing cucumber salad and made tzatziki.  I'll plant a fall crop once the inventory in our fridge is exhausted.

Much of the other veggies in the garden are finishing up as well, but the okra...  Well, the okra is coming in.  Okra scoffs at hot weather and dares it to get hotter.  The okra grows quickly and we pick many pods each day.  For the past couple of decades, I've planted primarily Clemson Spineless okra, Burgundy okra, and Beck's Big Okra.  I like them all.

Clemson spineless is the old standby.  We've eaten many gumbos with that variety in it.  The size of the Clemson spineless is perfect for pickling.  I love pickled okra.  Once I open a jar, it doesn't last.  The cold, tangy, spicy taste is just hard to resist.  Clemson spineless has a downside though.  If you don't pick them soon enough, the pods get "woody."

What do I mean by that?  The pods get hard and inedible.  You can tell when you go to cut them up for cooking and your knife struggles to pierce the pod.  When that happens, those go directly into the compost pile.  It was happening more and more.  So I decided to try an old heirloom variety from our area - The Louisiana Long Okra.

It's called that because the pods grow long.   How long?  About 16 inches!  I have a habit that when I cut an pod off the stalk, I chop the leaf off that's directly beneath the pod and let it drop to the ground to add to the compost.

Just by looking at the length of the okra, you would think the pod would be tough and woody, but that's not the case.  Another benefit over the Clemson spineless is that the fire ants don't seem to like them as much.  Clemson spineless is always full of fire ants that climb up the stalk and eat the pods.  When you pick the pods, the ants eat you!  So far, no fire ants on the Louisiana Long Okra.

According to my best guess, the pods are averaging about 10-11 inches long.  That means the harvest is a little better than double the other varieties.  That's not too shabby.

I like this variety.  I think  they've permanently replaced Clemson spineless.  I'll save seeds and replant next year.  I can't wait to chop these up, drench them in egg and roll them in panko breadcrumbs and make oven fried okra.  That's our favorite!  The two rows of okra will go right on producing through the next few months of summer without giving up.  It's a summer garden workhorse.