Southern Lights

Patsy Cline, in her signature emotional voice, sang "Walkin' After Midnight."  So smooth.  Most nights I am out walking, but I don't do any walking after midnight.  I'm in bed.  Walking at night here in the country is peaceful and quiet.  There is less traffic.  But my favorite part of walking at night is the sky.  You can see, over the course of the month, all the phases of the moon.  On certain nights, because we're away from most light pollution, you can see the magnificent stars and even planets in the sky.  

Most nights, I see numerous planes crossing the sky and often wonder who is on the planes and where are they going.  I've seen satellites and shooting stars.  But what I saw the other night is something that I've never seen before.  There is a little course, a trail that I walk each night.  One lap is about 1,000 steps in working toward my 10,000 step a day goal.  Barely had I gotten started when I noticed that something was odd, different.  Was I going crazy?  The sky in the north was red!

It was after 10 pm, and I ran in to get Tricia to come look and confirm that I was not losing my mind.  She was in bed in her jammies.  I told her, "I think you're going to want to come see this."  After much coaxing, I was successful in getting her to come out in the front yard.  She didn't have shoes on, so she jumped on my back and I carried her out near the road and out from under the trees.  I pointed it out to her.  She saw it too!

What could it be?  She got on a Jersey cow website, of all places, in which people from all over the United States were posting pictures of the Northern Lights.  Northern Lights in South Louisiana?  Could it be?  Yes.  We learned that there was a massive geomagnetic storm caused by a solar flare that impacted the earth's magnetic field allowing people like yours truly to witness something that we may never see again.

I quickly got on the phone and called Mom.  She had on her bucket list to see the Northern Lights and even went to Iceland to see them.  She didn't have success.  But lo and behold, she was able to see them here in South Louisiana.  Go figure.  I captured the photo above to prove that if you can't go see the Northern Lights, sometimes they'll come see you.

First Frost 2025

Sometimes the weather forecast is right on the money.  And then other times, they totally miss it.  I can understand.  Weather has a lot of variables and conditions that affect it.  In planting crops, I like to have a pretty good idea of when to plant things in advance of a rain, so that the crop will be watered in.  It hasn't rained in several weeks now, so I'm a little concerned about the crimson clover that I planted.  The ground is as hard as a basketball court.  I don't know how the crimson clover will germinate and grown on that!

I also like to know when high winds are coming and, of course, when a freeze or frost is coming.  We have lots of tomatoes on the vine that I'd pull if a freeze was coming.

But frosts...  What about those?  Frost won't damage most of the stuff still growing in the garden from the spring, like tomatoes and peppers.  I looked up the Farmer's Almanac for the first frost date for our location.  I put in our zip code and it said: "The average first frost date is November 9"  November 9th came and went with no frost, but...

We woke up on the morning of November 11th to this:

It was a good first frost.  Not enough to damage anything in the garden, but enough to slow down any new grass growth in the pasture.

The cows, goats, and chickens will continue to clean up the last remaining grass and then it will be time to start supplementing with hay.  Last year we rolled out the first round bale on January 1st.  I'm thinking this year will be sooner to hay the cows.  At the bee club meeting, some of the beekeepers were saying that the bees were completely stopping up all the holes in their bee boxes with propolis, and they are reading that as a prediction that a cold winter is on the way.  Who knows?  Weather forecasters, Farmer's Almanacs, and beekeepers can all be wrong.  We'll have to wait to find out.

Jalapeno Peppers for Nachos

We have one jalapeno pepper plant this year, but it's been a big producer.  We've cut and seeded and frozen a whole bunch of them for making jalapeno poppers - perhaps our favorite guilty pleasure appetizer.  With the colder weather coming, we wanted to pull a bunch more off of the plant and water bath can some pickled jalapeno slices for nachos.  Here's a little mess of them.  I like the red sprinkled in with the green for color.

On a cutting board, we slice them up in quarter inch width rounds.  Here's the part where most people will remind you to put on gloves.  I don't do this, but I repeat to myself over and over to not get my hands anywhere near my eyes.  I've learned my lesson the hard way.

Since we'll be eating these on nachos, a pint jar is about the right size.  What you don't eat at first, you can just screw the lid on and put back in the ice box.  Maybe a half pint would work out better?  I pack the jars so that I can calculate how much pickling brine to make up.  Today I'm making 3 pints.

For each pint jar you'll need to calculate 1/2 cup plus 1 TBS white vinegar, 1/2 cup plus 1 TBS water.  I heat this on the stove until its about to boil then I pour in each jar.  To each jar I added 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt, 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds, 1 teaspoon pickling spice, 1 bay leaf, and 1 clove garlic.  I screw the lids on ensuring I have 1/2 inch headspace.

We set a large pot of water boiling and put the jars in, making sure that the jars a covered by 2 inches of water.  Once the water is boiling, leave them in for 12 minutes.

Take out and allow to cool.  Make sure your lids have sealed.

Now, we're ready for some nachos to snack on!

A Mink Coat for My Bride

As we've communicated, we've had one heck of a time with minks.  Last year they killed 39 hens.  When you think about the cost of the birds, the cost of the feed that we ran through them, and the cost of the eggs that we could have eaten and sold, it is mind-boggling the destruction that this little cunning, devious, blood-thirsty varmint causes.

We have since built the flock back up and protected the henhouse by pouring concrete over the entire floor which bars the mink from digging under and getting inside.  Trouble is, minks can get into any one inch square opening - and they found chinks in our "armor."  This year, the same carnage continued.  The other day I opened the henhouse to find 15 hens strewn about on the floor - dead as the proverbial door nail.

I killed 15 squirrels in the yard, gutted them, saving the guts in a bucket and caught a mink!  I thought our troubles were done, but quickly learned that where there's one, there's at least one more.  The next day, in broad daylight, the mink killed two more.  I declared war.  I reset my trap with fresh bloody squirrel guts with a sardine thrown on top for good measure, and caught another!  Here is this cursed creature:

This is a devious hellion, by any definition.  Press the arrow below on the short video and listen to his angry shriek as I walk up on him.  It's a blood-curdling noise, for sure.  No doubt about it.  He knows that he has a cruel payday coming for the violence he's meted out.

The Bible has quite a lot to say about men (and creatures) like this.

Proverbs 1:11: "If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:"

 
Proverbs 6:16-19 "These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

I instituted Old Testament eye for an eye judgment on him.

Look at those teeth that were used to end the lives of those innocent hens that laid delicious eggs for us.  Oh, the treachery!

But I wasn't done yet.  I had buried the previous mink I trapped in the garden.  At least he'd grow some good vegetables for me.  But this one, I said to myself, "I'm going to skin him and make a mink coat for my wife."  And so, I sharpened my knife, hung the mink from the barn rafters and skinned him out.  I felt like Jeremiah Johnson in the wilderness.  (I messed up the tail.  I'm still a novice furrier.)

With a sharp knife and a little effort, the job was done.  I wish I could say I felt sympathy for the beast, but I felt none.

The pelt of the mink was soft and luxurious.  I was proud of my first foray into the fur trade.

I learned about saving the glands of the mink as an attractant.  You can see them in the gruesome photo below.  I saved the carcass and guts of the mink and have rebaited the trap, using the ill-fated mink as bait to catch more of his brethren.  So far, it's been two nights and no more minks in the trap.  On the bright side, there have been no additional chicken fatalities to report.

With bated breath (pun intended), I presented my wife with her own mink coat.  I could not wait to see her exuberance, her joy, upon my presentation of the luxurious fur.

She was not as excited as I had anticipated.  I know, I know...  It's not really a mink coat.  It's too small.  I'm thinking that I could at least make mink ear muffs for her or something else like mittens.  I'll keep setting the traps to catch more minks.  I want to be vigilant and not let my guard down.  The hens are counting on us.

Matthew 5:5 says, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."  The mink, on the other hand shall NOT inherit the earth - at least not our little corner of it.

Ripping Out the Feedroom Floor

Imagine my surprise to walk out to the barn in the afternoon to gather eggs and feed the animals and find not one, but two hens, murdered by minks.  One was in just on the path by the gate to the corral and one was stuck in a hole at the bottom right of the photo below.  The mink must have been living underneath the feedroom floor and the chicken was too big to pull through a hole into its sub-floor dwelling.  It was then I decided that the raised platform floor had to go.  Saturday a got the sawzall and cut out the 2x12 flooring. It was quite a job.

There was a strong smell of urine AND many chicken heads and feathers strewn about.  I'm thinking the mink were either living underneath there or making it a daytime hideout from which they could pop out and kill our flock.

Fortunately, it was tax-free day at our local hardware store.  I made up a form around the floor.  Then, we got 21 bags of concrete and poured the concrete mix within the form, using a board to smooth out the concrete until the entire form was filled.  It's called the dry-pour concrete method and it is much easier on your back.  The photo below shows us misting the initial time in order to just turn the concrete dark grey and begin the process.  Each hour after this and for the next 4 hours, you switch from mist to shower and spray the area.  The concrete absorbs the water and sets.

In about 36-48 hours the new floor is ready to walk on.

We swept up the cobwebs and mess that rats make in the barn and then moved everything back in the feedroom.

At least we've removed the minks' hideout.  Now, we focus on trapping and eradicating them before they finish off our flock.

The Hot Stuff

Anaheim peppers is one of our most prolific producing peppers.  The only ones that might come close would be shishitos or bananas.  Anaheim peppers aren't as hot as a jalapeno, but aren't as sweet as a bell pepper.  I'd classify them as a mild pepper.  They're really nice-sized and they are shiny, almost waxy.  Our normal thing to do with these is to cut them in half, seed them and put them in our handy chopper and chop them into small cubes.  We then freeze them and use them in cooking most dishes.  We have a large bag in the freezer just waiting to spice up any dish.

We've given a lot of them away at church as well as to family and friends.  What else can we do with these delicious peppers?

We go through a lot of hot pepper sauce and use different sauces on different dishes.  I like the vinegary hot sauces like Tabasco on red beans and rice or over peas and rice.  I like hot sauces like Crystal or Cholula on Mexican food dishes or to pour liberally over french fries like you would do with ketchup.

With our abundance of Anaheims, I figured we'd make a batch of Anaheim Pepper hot sauce.  I cubed up 2 pounds of Anaheim peppers, seeded.  Then I diced up 2 medium onions and minced 8 cloves of garlic.  All this was added to a big pot along with 2 cups white vinegar and 2 cups water.  Two teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoons of cumin and a teaspoon of dried habanero pepper were thrown in for added spice.

This concoction was brought quickly to a boil and then simmered for 20 minutes.

The pepper mixture was removed from the heat and allowed to cool for just five or ten minutes.  Then it was ladled into a blender and blended until smooth.

For occasions such as pepper sauce making, we save empty bottles of pepper sauce to re-use with our homemade concoction.  I used a funnel to pour into the bottles.

These can be stored in the ice box for 3 months or so, but I doubt they'll last for that long.  We used the one on the far right in the half pint jar as a salsa verde for dipping tortilla chips into and almost finished it off.  We're pleased with the way it turned out.  With the first freeze approaching, we'll pull all the remaining peppers and make more hot sauce.  That will keep us away from the hot sauce aisle in the grocery store for a while.  Store-bought hot sauce is a little pricey!

The Sweet Stuff

Every year it dies back when it freezes.  And every year, it comes back with a vengeance.  I'm talking about sugar cane.  Years back, an older gentleman gave me some to plant in the event he lost his.  It was a form of insurance, you might say.  If his died, he could come get a cane from mine and replant. That's been years and years ago.  I passed by his house the other day and looked out at his sugarcane thriving.  This afternoon a neighbor from down the road pulled in and inquired about my sugarcane, asking if he could buy some from me to get it started at his house.  I told him it was given to me and I'll give some to him.  He's a welder by trade and told me he would fabricate a sugarcane crusher or press.  More on that at the end.

Here's the 2025 crop of sugarcane.  It seems to get thicker and taller every year.

As an experiment, I cut three mature canes down.  I wanted to try a different method of extracting the juice.  There is a farm in Grant, Louisiana that uses a mule to walk around as cane is fed into a grinder that crushes the cane and juice flows out and is captured in a big kettle.  I don't have a mule or a grinder like that.  

Using some pruning shears, I cut the cane at each joint.  The cane is tough.  It put my shears to a workout, that's for sure.

I got my Chicago Cutlery knife that I usually use for butchering chickens.  Not today.  Today I used the knife to remove the tough outer layer of the cane, exposing the sweet, inner portion.  You could cut it into strips at this point and chew on it.  It is sweet and tasty.

I cut the inner portion of the cane into disks.  You can see that, although fibrous, it is full of sweet sugary liquid that awaits extraction.

A couple of cups at a time, I fed it into a blender and pulsed it on the grind setting.

This yielded a pulpy, sticky mulch.

I know this is incredibly inefficient, but it is the only thing I could think of.  I used a lemon juicer and handful by handful, I squeezed the sugarcane pulp.  Juice would flow out of it as I applied pressure.  The juice was strained in a sieve.

In my experiment, three average sized canes yielded 3 cups of sugarcane juice.  We drank sips of it and also poured it into a smoothie to add some natural sweetener.

I wish you could taste the nice flavor.  I boiled some of this on the stove, allowing the water to evaporate, leaving me with some tasty syrup.

Although a very time-consuming and inefficient process, the experiment resulted in knowing that if we had a better sugarcane juice extracting process, we could make plenty of syrup.  I'm anxious to see if the device that my neighbor is fabricating will be the solution.