The First Fire Pit Fire of the Season

The morning sun stretched its rays across the yard early this morning, welcoming a beautiful, glorious day.  By mid-day winds were whipping across the landscape, ushering in the coolest weather we've seen this fall.  After we picked up eggs, fed the animals and milked LuLu, I took the tarp off of the fire pit.  It seemed like the perfect evening to build a fire.

We have quite a few trees in the yard, mostly live oak, with some water oak and pecan thrown in there for good measure.  With each passing storm, the trees drop numerous branches, some small and some quite large that have to be cut into pieces.  Throughout the year, we gather up all the debris and pile it beside a big live oak next to the fire pit.  This pile serves as fuel for the fire pit as well as the barbecue pit.   

I started a roaring fire as I checked the temperature.  It was 54 degrees out, cool enough for a fire.  Overnight, the weather app we use said it'll get down to 39.  I tossed in a bunch of sticks and pulled the bench up close to the fire.  Tricia came and sat with me as we stared into the fire and talked.  The fire cracked and embers flew high up into the night sky.  Even Belle came up and visited us.  Her thick white coat keeps her warm on cold nights, and we thought fire scared her, but her desire for an ear rub outweighed her fear of fire.

The sticks and logs burned down and a nice bed of red hot coals glowed in the fire pit, reminding me that I should have picked up some sausage.  The fire pit has a grille that swings over the is perfect for cooking.  As I stared into the fire, I began to remember being a young boy in Boy Scouts.  We'd cook over campfires all the time.  As a side note, why does food cooked over a campfire always taste better?

In Scouts, one of the more popular meals we cooked was a dish called "Foil Meals."  Foil meals were simple to prepare and clean up.  You simply tore a square of foil and put a big patty of hamburger meat, heavily seasoned in the middle of the foil.  Then you'd slice onions, potatoes, carrots and anything else you wanted in there and you'd fold up the foil around the meat/vegetables in the middle and seal.

There were often arguments about whether to put the shiny side in or the shiny side of the foil facing out.  I think it cooks both ways.  You'd gently set the foil meal directly on the coals.  After about 10-15 minutes, a delicious aroma would waft across the campsite and it would beckon us to circle around the fire and pull our meals out.  We'd carefully unwrap them and eat the delicious meat and potatoes and vegetables directly out of the foil with a fork.  When you were finished, you balled up the foil and threw it away.  Good memories of meals eaten around a campfire!

After a while the fire burned down and we reluctantly went inside.  Before leaving, we vowed to enjoy many more evenings seated around the fire, weather permitting.  Next time we'll cook while we're sitting around it, though!

The Husbandman

Image Credit

 Husbandman: noun    1. One whose occupation is husbandry, a farmer.

                                    2. The master of a family.

                                    3. A farmer; a cultivator or tiller of the ground.

I happened to read a recent post from Joel Salatin's blog HERE and was pleased to learn that he was asked to be one of six "Advisor the the Secretary" spots under the new Secretary of Agriculture.  This is huge!  Joel Salatin is a champion for the small farmer.  He stands diametrically opposed to the policies started under Earl Butz, Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture from 1971-1976.  Those policies incentivized large-scale corporate farming and an end to the small family farm.  It was dubbed, "Get big or Get Out!" and signaled the beginning of the end for rural American farming families.

Growing up on a farm was truly the 'good ole days.'  There's not a day that passes that I don't think about it.  Sure, it was hard work, but there was something about it that was noble, satisfying even uplifting for your soul.  It made men out of boys.  I was in a town about 15 miles north of our family farm last week and ran into a fellow that now owns a construction company.  He reminded me that 45 years ago we used to pull red rice at the farm together when we were boys.  We laughed and told the shop owner about how hard it was, that it was hotter than a two dollar pistol on those humid July mornings when the air hung over you like a wet blanket.  We lamented that we didn't know about Gold Bond Medicated powder back then to cure the chafing caused by walking in wet blue jeans, rubbing your inner thighs raw.  After a while, we hugged each other said goodbye, and I drove off.

I wondered, why, after all these years, do we look back on hard times with fondness?  It was like a rite of passage for a young man starting out in life.  You met difficulty head on, facing it and when the day was done, you had some fulfillment of accomplishing something that was worthwhile.  Sweat-stained shirts and caps and calloused hands were the currency used to buy the transition to adulthood.

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.  - Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson's quote above was prescient.  It seemed to be stating truth of the time while warning of what happens when you wage war against small agriculture.  Things began to change, first slowly and then quickly.  Workers became hard to find.  Today, much of the work is done by huge machines and very few people.  Those that do the manual labor are foreign labor on work visas, doing work that American's "don't want to do."  The older farmers died off and were replaced by corporations that hired farm managers.  A curious thing happened, though.

The old farmers weren't the only things dying off.  The farming communities began dying off, too.  The kids found jobs in the cities.  Subdivisions germinated and grew on fertile land where rice, soybeans and cattle once grew.  The businesses like hardware stores, feed stores, parts houses, and welding shops that once thrived by local farmers, were shuttered and replaced by vape stores, dollar stores, and lounges.  Storefronts on Main Streets were boarded up and drug abuse ran rampant.  Thieves steal what's not chained down.

On a positive note, my nephew was telling me about "Aggie Day" at their school.  I can remember how they would grease down a pig with Vaseline and boys would run through the mud and try to catch it.  The winner got to take the pig home to raise.  I also remember the pride I had when I got my blue corduroy Future Farmers of America jacket.  I'm glad to see that schools in rural America still do this.

Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state.  Thomas Jefferson

In the 80's, a popular movie taught that "Greed is Good" and we were coaxed to become a service economy - we would have an economy that was fueled by consumption.  And boy did we consume!  The trouble is, most of the producing was done overseas or by large corporate conglomerates.  The capital outlay involved in farming in this new paradigm make it prohibitive for all but a few young men and women to pursue these days.  That leaves farming to these big outfits or hirelings who don't own the land or aren't husbandmen or stewards of the land, to merely use it, stripping it of its fertility and topsoil, caring not for the generations that would follow.

I love the land.  I love our farm.  The memories that germinated and grew from those few inches of topsoil are a crop that I harvest most days when I think of the good old days on the family farm.  I pray that Joel Salatin might be able to do something to resurrect the dream of the family farm.  It just might spark a revival in rural America!

 

Elsie's BoBo

 

This is our girl, Elsie.  Elsie is a Jersey heifer and she should be a cow.  What I'm meaning by that is that she should have calved by now as she's been exposed during heat cycles to several different bulls.  It just never "took."  We had the vet look at her and it turns out she had some cysts on her ovaries.  He took care of them and supposedly, she's good to go.  We put her and Nick (our Jersey bull) together for date night while she was in standing heat, and we observed them romancing.  We marked down the date and so far, it looks like she skipped a cycle.  That means perhaps she's pregnant.

She'd better be!  She's a fat cow.  I tell her every day, "Elsie, you'd better be pregnant.  If you're not, you'd better get pregnant fast.  You are a milk cow.  Cows don't make milk unless they get pregnant.  If you don't get pregnant, we're not going to keep you around to just eat grass.  You'll go to be processed and put in our freezer."  Of course she has no clue of what I'm telling her, but it's true.

In looking her over yesterday, I noticed something.  It is a circular wound on her side, about the size of a silver dollar.  It is a nasty looking wound, yellow and festering and flies were around it.  We quickly moved into action.  We got some iodine in a sprayer from the shelf in the feed room in the barn and sprayed the area real good.  It must burn, because Elsie didn't like that one bit.  Today, it looked a little bit better.  We sprayed more iodine on it.  Tomorrow Tricia will inspect it and put either some honey (natural antibiotic) or some Neosporin.

We will continue to watch it.  Elsie is real rambunctious.  Two mornings ago, it got in the lower 50's in the morning.  It was cool and crisp and Elsie was acting frisky, running and kicking up her heels like small calves do.  She probably ran into something and that's how she got the injury.  We try to keep our eyes open for hazards like that and as soon as we see them, we try to get them corrected.

Hopefully the iodine treatments, followed by honey and Neosporin will do the trick and heal up Elsie's bobo.  We'll post an update as things change. 

An Update on Benjamin

 

Russ, Tricia & Benjamin

It's been over a year ago that Benjamin was severely injured in a terrible accident.  I don't want to replay it all, but you can go HERE to read about it.  He's made lots of progress since then and has been back at work for months.  He does, however, need another surgery on his right foot.  The reason is that the nerves and tendons on that foot have pulled tight due to the injury resulting in a curling of the toes.  With the toes curled up, he walks on them and this causes pain, especially in his work boots.  At the end of the day, he's in pain, and this causes him to walk with a limp.

We've seen a surgeon at LOS (Louisiana Orthopaedic Specialists), and Benjamin has surgery scheduled for early December, if it all works out with his job.  We pray that this will be approved by his place of employment as he needs to have this done after having it put off for a while.  Another reason to do it is because he's met his deductible for the year.  The surgeon intends to cut open the bottom of his foot and do some work releasing some of the nerves and tendons and then work on his big toe as well.  This surgery will require 3 months in a boot and he'll be non-load bearing and won't be able to drive.  He'll be back in rehab once he's load bearing again.

To be honest, it's more than we were counting on and with a longer recovery period than originally thought.  It's easy to get a little discouraged, but when I do, I think back to the night of September 4 last year when we didn't know if he would survive and if he did, if he'd be paralyzed.  God has enabled him to make a phenomenal recovery.  Praise His Name!  The surgeon told us that after recovery "his gait will be improved."  His doctor told him that he'd run again, and I am counting on that to happen by God's grace.  It's in God's Hands and we trust Him.

Birds of a Feather

 

Earlier this spring, we allowed a couple of broody hens to set.  Each of them hatched out a small brood.  As they got older, we put the mamas back in the pasture and raised the remaining chicks in the chicken tractor.  We ended up with two roosters and four hens.  We pushed them to fresh grass each day, but also fed them well.  They grew into big healthy birds and we merged them in with the rest of the flock.  At this point I don't think the pullets are laying yet, but there is an outside chance that they are laying either in a secret nest that we've been unable to find OR they are laying in the hen house with the rest of the hens.

As much as we've tried, they just haven't assimilated in with the rest of the flock.  The melting pot isn't working.  You can count them in the photo above.  Three white birds and three red birds.  The rest of the flock is out doing their thing.  These just self segregate.  Eventually, I suppose, they'll mix.  Inevitably there will come a time when the young roosters challenge the older roosters for a spot in the pecking order.  That's always an interesting, albeit brutal time.  Sometimes the roosters duel to the death.  They don't play around.  Right now there is relative peace.  

The photo above, in addition to the pending chicken commingling, shows a to do list of sorts for the fall.  The pecan tree on the left of the photo, is the one that toppled over during some very strong 80 mph straight-line winds that blew through.  Tricia and I were outside trying to hold the chicken tractor down to save our meat birds.  That experience taught me that it is not wise to risk your life to save some chickens.  Fortunately it worked out.  But the to do list for this fall involves cutting up the main trunk of the pecan tree and splitting it for firewood.  

The tree to the center of the photo above is a water oak tree that succumbed to borer beetles that killed it.  I will also cut that tree and split it for firewood.  We'll have plenty of firewood for the winter.  It's mid-November and it is still 80-something degrees in the afternoon.  Hopefully at some point it will be cool enough to light a fire in the fireplace.  We have other firewood cut and stacked and we'll use that first.

You'll also note the blue water trough sitting on the drip line of the barn's drop shed.  It's full of rain water.  We catch a lot of rainwater.  The cows make use of it.  We do have to keep a close eye on it, though.  Chickens aren't too smart.  Sometimes they fly up and sit on the edge to drink.  Some of them, from time to time, clumsily fall in, and if we aren't observant and scoop them out, they'll die of hypothermia.

One final note on the chickens.  The short daylight hours has really reduced their egg-laying.  I'm only picking up on average about a half dozen eggs each day.  We could leave lights on which would boost their egg production, but we've always just tried to do things naturally, the way God intended.  It just means that we have fewer eggs to sell until springtime.  

Belle Watching Over Her Charge

 It's Sunday Morning 7AM, just a beautiful morning already.  I step out on the back patio and observe the sights and sounds of the morning. Click on the arrow below and you will see and hear what I did while having a cup of Community Coffee Cafe Blend this morning...

Allow me to give a little background.  Belle is our Great Pyrenees Livestock Guardian Dog.  She's such a good girl.  She loves her people.  I'm going to be honest, though.  She hasn't always been real good at her job.  Belle was supposed to protect her chickens from the bloodthirsty mink that went through our flock like poop through a goose.  While Belle was asleep in our garage, the mink drained the lifeblood from our egg layers.  She likes us so much, she'd rather be around us than keeping watch over her charge.

On another occasion, a dog broke through our fence and killed a few chickens and Belle was nowhere to be seen.  I was real unfortunate.  We were feeding her.  We kept our end of the bargain and Belle was falling woefully short on her end.  And then something lately changed.  It's as if she finally got what she was hired to do.  It all suddenly clicked.  And now, she enjoys being close to the goats and chickens.  She's still a little leery of the cows.  But she'll position herself in their midst and sit at attention, scanning the horizon, searching for anything that's amiss.

Something caught Belle's attention to the west of our homestead.  You can see her standing up in the center of the photo below, observing and then barking.  The goats suddenly took notice.  They raised their ears and ran together in a pile, facing the same direction.

I zoomed in so that you could see her at her post.  When she was just a puppy, we traveled to Colfax, LA to pick her up.  The owners lived near the woods.  They told us that their adult Great Pyrenees would venture out at night and attack and kill coyotes.  They would come back in the morning with their white coats stained with (coyote) blood.  Belle is a gentle giant, but I assume she's got a killer instinct within.

Here are the goats all stacked up together once Belle began barking to warn them.  They are looking in the direction that Belle is barking.  I never could figure out what she was alarmed about.  I was in my robe and didn't want to be too immodest in the event that the neighbors were out and about.

In about 30 minutes I ventured out to show appreciation to our girl for doing her job.

What a good girl!

A Super Salad

"Too many simple green salads suffer from lack of imagination." - James Beard

Here we are at November 7th and the highs are in the mid-80's.  Looking at the bright side, the garden is flourishing.  For the supper menu tonight, we had some homemade pesto and bowtie pasta as the main course and figured that a FRESH garden salad would be the perfect accompaniment.  If you're not busy, would you come with me and gather the ingredients?

Let's stop off at the cattle panel that doubles as a trellis for the sugar snap peas.  They are healthy and climbing and are almost five feet tall right now.  Blooms are in abundance and there are already numerous pea pods.  We'll pick some of those as they are so sweet and delicious in a salad. 

Here's the lettuce patch.  There are five or six varieties going.  We've been eating a lot of salads lately.  Several years ago I learned something that I feel embarrassed to share, but here goes.  I would harvest lettuce by pulling each up by the roots.  This was dumb.  Super dumb.  Somehow I used my noggin and figured out that if you just snap off the leaves (not by the roots), your plant will continue producing and producing until next spring when it gets warm and bolts.  Then you let it flower and save the seeds.

But for now, we'll pull off the biggest, prettiest leaves from a variety of lettuces so that the salad bowl is multi-colored.  We hear a lot about "Farm to Table" and how fresh that is.  This salad will be picked, washed, tossed and eaten within 30 minutes of harvest.  Let's grab some lettuce and get going inside to put it all together.

The lettuce goes in a salad spinner where we'll wash it up real good and spin it dry.

Not all things in the salad are fresh.  Here are some lacto-fermented cucumbers that we pickled back in the spring.  I like to cube these up and throw in the salad bowl.

Even older than that is some lacto-fermented ginger carrots from February.  So cool, tangy, and tasty!  Let's put several fork-fuls on top.

This stuff here, although its not homemade is like the cherry on top.  This olive salad is the concoction that they put on a muffelleta.  It's delicious on a salad, too.  A spoonful or three on top...

All goes in a big wooden bowl.  We'll top with grated parmesan cheese, green onions, salt & pepper.

We'll add some ranch dressing and top it off with some lacto-fermented HOT banana peppers.

We'll ask a blessing over the salad and pasta and dig in.  Super salad!