Mosquitoes - The Pesky Plague

 Ouch!  Slap, slap, slap...

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As summertime winds down slowly in South Louisiana, the heat and humidity is gradually getting bearable with morning temperatures in the upper 60's and highs only getting to around 90 degrees.  We welcome that!  One of the problems we still have is mosquitoes.  With the lack of rainfall we've had around here, you would think the population would drop off, since they need water to lay eggs but surprisingly they haven't.

There are several reasons for this, in my estimation.  We are surrounded by rice fields and crawfish ponds that are kept flooded by deep water wells.  The mosquitoes, despite the drought, still have plenty of places to lay their eggs.  Another reason is our water catchment project.  On the back side of the house for aesthetic reason, we have water barrels situated underneath the drip line of the roof and especially underneath the eaves.  With a minimal rainfall we can harvest hundreds of gallons of rainwater that we use to keep the animal's water troughs full.  Some of this is used to irrigate the garden and fruit trees and some of it the honeybees locate and line the barrels to drink water and bring it back to the hives.  They use a form of evaporative cooling to keep the temperature regulated in the hives.

In our parish, part of our property taxes go to fund the mosquito abatement project.  It is a two-phased approach to keeping the mosquito population in check.  First, they have mosquito trucks with a fogger on the back that drive on every road and back up down people's driveways and spray the chemical fog across the landscape.  They are supposed to do this only after nightfall.  Since honeybees don't fly at night, the thinking is that they are all in the hive and safe from the chemicals.  The problem is, the mosquito truck drivers want to get back home early, so many of them start fogging BEFORE its dark.  We've had to chase them off the property several times.  For that reason, we've gone to their offices and put our address on a NO SPRAY list.  Good in theory, but the drivers, covering miles every night aren't always diligent in checking addresses.  As you would assume, we don't want our honeybees killed by the chemicals and we don't want it getting into our honey either!

The second phase of this project is mosquito planes that fly overhead at night spraying over hundreds of acres with chemicals to kill the pesky pests.  They always fly at night and there is no real way to stop them from spraying overhead.  The mosquitoes are still really bad and one wonders how many there would be if they weren't spraying.  I often think about how difficult it was for the early settlers in Louisiana and how they dealt with the mosquitoes.  I guess they just slapped a lot as the pesky insects sucked their blood.  Screened in porches were a necessity.

People always say, "I can't wait for the cold weather to come in and kill these mosquitoes!"  I'm sure there is some truth to this, but I've been to Alaska and remember being in Anchorage and was surprised at how bad the mosquitoes were up there.  Cold weather must slow them down, but it doesn't stop them.  People sometimes say that hurricanes will blow all the mosquitoes away, but we've learned firsthand that this is simply not true.  Some of the worst times for mosquitoes are after hurricanes.  You're trying to clean up debris in your yard and those pesky critters just don't give you a break.

I'll be thankful for mosquito season to be over when it will be peaceful and relaxing to sit outside or work in the garden.

2026 Meat Birds - Week Three

It's weigh-in Wednesday!  Let's talk about our Cornish Cross meat birds.  There have been lots of changes going on since last week.  First, I removed the brooder to give them more room.  They are growing exponentially and the protective brooder while ideal for chicks, didn't leave them with enough elbow room once they start putting on weight.  I rolled it up and stored it back in the barn and now the birds have plenty of space to move around and eat grass and bugs inside the chicken tractor.

They bunched up at first, unfamiliar with their new-found freedom, but soon moved around liking the new surroundings and space.  They'll clip down the grass in the tractor with the quickness, so I'll roll the tractor to fresh grass each day.

You can see the second and third changes in the photo below.  First, I moved out the three small feeders that are designed for baby chicks.  While perfect at first, there is no longer room for them to gather around at the supper table at the little chick feeders.  To replace the small feeders, I moved in a 12 foot span of PVC gutters.  The gutter will be the new feeder and you can scroll up to the top photo to see the chicks breaking bread around the gutter.  There's now room, but I'll move in a second gutter in the upcoming weeks to give them even more room.

The third change is the waterers.  Up to now I have had two 1 gallon waterers in with the chicks, but these chickens drink a lot of water and I find myself filling the 1 gallon containers several times a day.  I installed a bell waterer to alleviate this.  You can see it hanging from the top of the tractor.  You can see a cascade of water flowing down from the top.

The water flows into the bell waterer from a plastic tube feeding off of a 5 gallon bucket filled with water.  I have the 5 gallon bucket full of water sitting atop 2 buckets to use gravity to flow the water through the tube and down into the bell waterer.  This year I have the buckets in a wagon so that when I roll the tractor, I'll just roll the water in the wagon as well.  This keeps me from having to enter the tractor to fill water.  I simply fill the yellow bucket with fresh water from outside.

Time to weigh!  Each Wednesday I grab one bird out of the flock - an average bird, not the biggest, not the smallest.  I think this gives us a good idea of their overall growth.  I carry it into the garage and place it on the kitchen scale.  It's not a little cute chick anymore.  It's a monster.  Big feet.  Ugly.  Sorry, but it's true.  Around Easter time, people give kids cute baby chicks.  You wouldn't want to give something that looks like this to a child.  It just looks mean.

Here is the bird looking at me warily standing on top of the scale.  The glare blocks the weight so scroll down to the next photo to see this week's weight.

At the end of week three, our bird weighs 2 pounds 1 ounce or 33 ounces.  That is a weight gain of 13 ounces over last week - almost a pound weight gain.

At the end of week three of last year, the bird weighed 29 ounces, so we're 4 ounces ahead of where we were same time last year.

We're right on track!  We still have 50 healthy birds 38% toward their projected slaughter date.  Everything is progressing nicely.  Tune in next Wednesday for the next weigh-in.

Breaking Betsy

The long hot summer and competing priorities have kept me from working with Betsy.  She'll be three months old in a few days and it's high time that I get the show on the road while I still can.  What I'm talking about is halter breaking her.  She's wild as a March hare and doesn't let us get near her.  When we do try, she runs with reckless abandon with her tail high in the air, kicking her feet.  So much energy!

One person can't corner her, but if there's two of us, we can kind of act like a cutting horse and get her cornered in the corral and catch her.  The other trick I've learned if I'm alone and she's sitting on the ground is to walk nonchalantly by her without making eye contact and then suddenly move to the side and catch her.  I then work the breaking halter on her and pull her to a post under the barn and tie her off.

She struggles and pulls.  The tighter she pulls, the more uncomfortable the halter gets.  Over time, she'll learn that it is futile to pull against an immovable object.  This is not a new thing.  In the Bible in Acts 26:14 it says: 

And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

Kicking against the goads was a figure of speech that meant that you're only hurting yourself by struggling against a stronger force.  Saul, in that passage, was being told that he was fighting a losing battle by trying to stop the message of Jesus.  Saul relented and trusted and was changed!  We're working on little Betsy in hopes that she gets the message. 

I'll leave her tied up for 30 minutes or so to pull to her little heart's content.  I always keep a close eye on her.  We have a friend that lost a calf doing this when the calf circled the post and choked herself!  After 30 minutes, I'll gently walk up to her, talking in a kind way.  She pulls hard and tries to get away, but it's no use. 

I'll continue talking to her and get a brush and begin to brush her on the neck, sides and belly.  She likes this!  I'm trying to gain her trust, for her to see that I'm not a threat to her.  I was going to bring her a handful of feed to build a positive association with me, but the other animals were around and that wasn't going to work today.  I'll try it at another time when the goats and other cows are out grazing.

The key to this is persistence.  Keep doing this daily and be patient.  Maybe I'll learn something in this process too!  After doing this for a while, I'll advance to untying from the pole and try to lead her.  She'll inevitably pull against me, but we'll keep working at it until she learns that it is easier to just walk along with me than fighting against me.  

Peter Rabbit in "Mr. McGregor's" Garden

A couple of weeks ago, I planted most of the fall crop with the exception of garlic, spinach and turnips.  Most everything except the lettuce has germinated.  It's still too early to determine if I'll need to replant anything.  Correction: I do need to re-plant an entire row of green beans.  Poor germination from saved seed, you ask?  No sir.

I had a whole row of green beans that popped up out of the ground.  I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that we had a 99% germination rate.  Green beans are one of my favorite garden crops due to the taste and the abundant harvest that you can have from a small piece of real estate.  As I surveyed the young plants, I licked my lips thinking about eating fresh green beans this fall.

Little did I know that there was someone else in the garden licking their lips, thinking about eating fresh green beans right now!  The next morning when I went out, good golly, something had eaten all but seven of our green bean plants

You can see where the creature snipped off every beanstalk on the row except the seven survivors.  I don't know whether he left those seven to mock me or if he just got full...

But I know full well who did it.  In the very back of the garden, I have a big compost pile.  I alternate throwing wood chips, cow poop, and garden trimmings on the pile and over time, it generates some good compost that I amend into the garden.  Unfortunately, our heirloom Louisiana sugar cane also grows back there and during the summer, the back portion gets overgrown.  Even though we have 4x4 wire fencing, Tricia and I noticed a little cottontail rabbit gaining entrance into the garden, hiding in the back near the compost pile.

I had to act fast to hope to save our garden.  Pretty soon, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, broccoli and a whole host of other crops will be springing forth from the ground and will be high on the menu choices for a hungry bunny.  First I cleaned up the jungle area, chopping most of the sugar cane and removing the louffa gourd vines.  I made a bunch of racket - my goal was to frighten the rabbit OUT of his hideout in the garden and back into the woods.  As soon as I was 100% positive he was evicted, I moved to phase II of the rabbit eradication plan.

My wife felt that I should set traps to catch him, but my counterpoint was that in the garden, there is a lot for a rabbit to eat.  I don't know how successful I'd be attracting him into a cage when he lines up at an All You Can Eat buffet on the green bean aisle every day.

I determined that I would build a wall, so to speak, to block entry of all undocumented rabbits into my garden.  In this case, the wall is a three foot high roll of chicken wire.  The plant was to run it around the outer perimeter fence of the garden, wiring it to the existing fence to hold it securely.

You can see how a young rabbit could fit through the 4x4 openings of the old garden fence.  You can also see how overlaying chicken wire on top of it presents a formidable obstacle for rabbits to continue with their nocturnal incursions into the garden.

It took me about half of a day to get the chicken wire in place and fastened.  Guess what?  This morning, the same seven green bean plants are still standing tall.  Not to be defeated, I replanted the remainder of the green bean row and watered it in.  I hope it worked!  No doubt, the rabbit is scheming and strategizing, plotting and planning new means of entry to the food sources in our garden.  What Peter Rabbit may not know is that rabbit season opened on October 3rd and I have no qualms about putting a little fat rabbit on our smoker.

Eyes Too Big For Your Stomach

Sitting at the supper table with a plate full of food that I couldn't finish, my Dad would tell me, "Your eyes too big for your stomach?"  What it means is that you thought you could eat more than you really could.  It was then that you would feel really guilty because you'd be told that "You're leaving all that food on your plate and there are starving kids in China."  I totally get it that you don't want to waste food, but if I finish all the food on my plate (or not), it's not going to help or hurt that hungry child in Beijing.  For the record, I now serve large quantities of food on my plate and always finish it all off.

On the back patio this morning, I ran into someone whose eyes were truly too big for his stomach.  There was a little garter snake, maybe 14 inches long, that approached the buffet table and picked out something that he just couldn't get down.  But he didn't give up!

It boggles my mind how this even happened.  Poor Kermit the Frog was likely napping and this harmless garter snake slithers up and, opening his mouth just as wide as it would go, attempted to eat him.  I've heard it said that snakes dislocate their jaws to fit things in their mouth, but that's not true.  Their jaws aren't fused like humans and instead are attached by ligaments that stretch to allow them to fit things in their mouths that seem physically impossible.

I know it's rude to watch someone while they are eating, but I was fascinated by this little snake's 'can-do' spirit.  I wish I could have caught the whole thing on camera until he had the entire frog in his stomach, but I had to go to work.  

I hope the snake was able to finally get Kermit in his stomach.  I've felt full after eating Thanksgiving dinner, but nowhere near as full as this snake is going to feel if he was successful in swallowing it.  He'll likely need to now eat a roll of Tums.

2026 Meat Birds - Week Two

Our birds experienced a few changes this week, namely growth.  They are getting bigger and as a result, I've expanded out the size of the brooder.  It is now double the circumference that it was last week.  The chicks are eating more and as a result, they are pooping more.  They quickly foul the ground and I don't want them standing in that mess, so I push the chicken tractor and move them to fresh grass twice a day.

I still feed them morning, noon and night.  I've added a third feed trough so they can all get around it and eat.  I also added a second gallon-sized waterer.  Although the coolest night we have so far has been 69 degrees, I turn the heat lamp on at night.  The light attracts mosquitoes and bugs and you can hear the chicks' beaks tapping against the sides of the brooder as they catch and eat bugs.  Good!

On Wednesdays, we call it weigh-in Wednesday.  I indiscriminately pick one bird out of the 50 that are there and bring him or her into the garage where I have our kitchen scale temporarily sitting on my workbench.  As you can see, more feathers are coming in and the only real peach fuzz remaining is on the bird's head and neck.

The fat little bird doesn't quite know what to think about this, but he behaved himself and didn't hop off or poop on Tricia's scale.

So let's see what the scale shows us:

At the end of week two, the bird weighed 1 pound 4 ounces or 20 oz.  Last week the birds weighed 8 ounces.  That's a weight gain of 12 oz in 7 days.

At the end of week two last year, the bird weighed 1 pound 2 ounces or 18 oz.  So we're ahead of last year's birds by two ounces.

Next Wednesday, we'll convene again for the Wednesday weigh-in.

Rotating the Onions

You know, it's about time to make our order with Dixondale Farms to order onion sets for the 2027 Onion crop.  I'm planning on getting the Short Day Sampler and Yellow Granex.  Once we get them in, we'll plant in January.  For the past several years, we've had bumper crops and Tricia has asked me to scale down my orders from 3 bunches to 2 bunches.  One bunch has a minimum of 48 onions in it.

Once we harvest and cure the onions inside, we eat a lot of them.  Lately we've enjoyed hamburger steaks smothered in onions, mushrooms and brown gravy!  Even as hot as it was today, we enjoyed a French Onion soup.  We chopped up gallons and gallons of them and froze them to cook with later.  We also slice them up and dehydrate them and then vacuum seal them in jars.

Getting toward the end of the 2026 onion crop

Here are some sliced onions that were dehydrated and then vacuum packed in jars.  We'll use the fresh and frozen ones first, but when we're out of those, we just rehydrate these.  They keep well.

Here are some dehydrated onions from 2021.  They're still sealed tightly.  It's always a good idea, I think, to rotate out your stock.  Our rule is to eat fresh first, then frozen, and then canned.  Our problem, if you want to call it that, is that we generally have so much coming in fresh, that we never get around to eating the canned.  So recently, we've made a concerted effort to rotate out the canned stuff.

It just so happens that Tricia was out of onion powder in her spice cabinet.  Well, not any longer.  She opened the vacuum-sealed jar and poured the dehydrated onions into the food processor and ran it until it was ground into a powder.

We'll go through all this at about the same time we get the onion sets in to plant in the garden.  Then we'll start the whole thing over again.