Lost and Found

Ginger

I don't talk much about our cat, Ginger.  Most of the time, we talk about cows or goats or chickens or honeybees, so Ginger doesn't get a lot of attention on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm blog.  I'll take a moment tonight to introduce her to you.  She's an outside cat but one very well taken care of.  She's very finicky and likes her food "fresh."  We put her dry cat food in a bowl and she nibbles on it and won't eat any more because it's gone 'stale.'  I try to fool her by dumping the stale food back in the bucket, shaking it up and pouring some of the fresh/stale cat food in her bowl.  She doesn't appreciate this.  I don't appreciate her wastefulness.  To be honest, I can't be described as a 'cat person,' but she's our cat and I'll admit I like her.

Ginger supplements her cat food menu by hunting.  We find mice, rats, birds, squirrels and rabbits (or parts of their uneaten carcasses) on the back door welcome mat that she brings to prove to us that she is no domesticated animal but is a proud lioness feeding on wild prey.  You've got to really watch your step when you walk out the back door as her prey is not whole but in pieces.  Yuck!

In addition to hunting nocturnally, she primarily sleeps on top of our vehicles during the day.  We have to wake this lazy cat up when we want to drive off.  She'll stretch and slowly hop off of the car.  She does get affection from the whole family, although we seldom bring her into the house - maybe on very cold days.  She has very thick fur and sheds, and I don't want that foolishness inside the house.

She has been with us since 2017, and if my math is right, that makes her around 9 years old.  That makes her somewhat of a fixture around our place.  Tricia and I laughed at her sleeping on top of Tricia's car Friday afternoon.  She had her paw curled around the top of the hood enjoying a cat nap.  When I went out Saturday morning to feed her, oddly - no Ginger.  Tricia noticed and we began calling for her, walking around looking.  No Ginger.  Same thing that evening.  We saw hide nor hair of her.

Saturday morning came.  No Ginger.  Saturday night came and again, she didn't show her face.  Her absence is almost unprecedented.  One other time, years ago, she disappeared for a couple of days and returned all beat up.  She had been in a fight.  Maybe the same thing happened?  You might think this weird, but we prayed for Ginger.  Nothing is too small or inconsequential for God.  Sunday morning came and Ginger was still AWOL.  I saw an animal carcass on the road a bit down the road and cautiously went to inspect.  It was a possum!  Russ came over and patrolled in the woods behind the barn when we told her she was missing.  Still no Ginger.  She's not looking for a tom cat because she's fixed.  Although we retained hope, we were sad.  Things were different without Ginger around the house.

This morning I walked outside at 6 AM and... Ginger was in the garage!  She returned home.  We gave thanks to God for answering our prayer.  The prodigal had returned.  Now, she wouldn't let me get near her.  I checked her out from a distance.  She looked unscathed except for her right eye.  It was filled with water, maybe scratched by something.  I think she can still see out of it.  She was acting real reclusive and jumped on top of the freezer in the garage and hid behind the propane tanks.  To celebrate her return, we killed the fatted calf.  Well, sort of... Tricia fed her a can of 'real' cat food from a can, rather than the dry stuff, and she ate it.  We think she got into a fight with (maybe) a mink or another varmint and is scared, gun shy and prefers solitude while she convalesces.  Perhaps the family members of the raccoon and mink I killed last week are looking for revenge, taking out their vengeance on Ginger?  Who knows, but Ginger is back!  Meow, meow...

Putting Things Off 'Til the Last Minute

I'm talking about the fall tomato crop.  Last fall we had a tremendous fall harvest of tomatoes.  Tricia informed me today that she used the last of the frozen tomatoes in our lunch.  As I looked out on our back patio, I see the seed pots containing 56 tomato plants.  Actually, the photo below shows 32 plants because I transplanted 24 of them into the garden yesterday on a very hot afternoon.

See, that's the main reason for the procrastination - the hot, dry summer we're experiencing.  The month of August and so far, September have proven to be so hot and dry, everything is just baking out there.  It is a terrible time to plant anything in the garden, except a cactus, maybe.  I kept hoping we'd get a good soaking rain or a cool front, but none seems to be coming.  The tomatoes are getting so long and leggy.  It's time to get them in the ground.

So yesterday I got a post hole digger and 12 Cherokee Purple tomato plants and 12 Pink Brandywine tomato plants and headed out to the garden.  I picked a space between two garden rows I planted in the spring.  In this way, it's sort of like rotational planting in that you're not planting the same type plant in the same soil year after year.

I dug holes with the post hole digger and dug them deep.  You can plant tomatoes real deep and the stem sends out roots.  This eliminates the "leggy" problem.  Once I put the plant in the hole, I backfill the hole with soil and composted chicken litter.  I put mulch around the soil at the base of the plant to combat evaporation and then I watered each plant in real good.  Finally, I started the sprinkler going to really soak the soil to give the plants a good chance at making it.

A day later, I checked in on them.  Two don't look too good and one had all the leaves eaten off of it by some critter.  Hopefully, they'll make it, but we have 56 plants in total.  I always plan to lose some.  I'll plant the remainder maybe tomorrow or the next day.    

Copper for the Goats

Goats can be tough to manage.  Around this time of the year, you can notice their coat becomes dull instead of its normal shiny appearance.  It also has a coarse feel to it.  Then they get a "bottle jaw" look to them and diarrhea which indicates the presence of parasites.  They are quite prevalent in our locale.  In addition to treating with Ivermectin, Safeguard and Valbazen, we give them copper boluses.

When I say copper, I mean copper.  The heavy metal comes in the container and you make up capsules by measuring out prescribed amounts.  They feel heavy in your hands.

The trick is to get the goats to take the copper boluses.  I use a device that's normally used to worm cattle and horses.  I first coat the capsules of copper with peanut butter and put in in the wormer gun followed by a generous helping of peanut butter as the chaser.

We straddle the goat, pulling their heads back.  Then I gently insert the worming gun as far down her throat as I can get it and push in on the plunger.  This pushes the two copper capsules down their throats.  We hold their heads back until they've swallowed it all.  We did have cases in which two of the goats recognized something was up and spit it out.  We just do it again until they swallow it.

Copper has a life of 4 - 6 months.  Perhaps this will do the trick and will say farewell to the parasites.  We'll keep monitoring the goats daily.

Waiting on Fall to Get Here

As I was out walking yesterday evening, I was doing some thinking.  I don't know if it's like it where you live, but this summer has been long, hot, and dry.  Summer is always like that, you might say, but this one seems worse.  Is it that I'm getting older?  I don't know.  I like to have lots of projects to work on, but the hot humid weather just saps all the strength out of me.  

I am looking forward to Fall!  I can't wait until we're not sitting at 80 degrees at 8 in the morning, with temperatures in the mid-90's and the doggone heat index saying "feels like 105."  When that first cool front comes in, we will be so very happy!  Perhaps the cooler temps will give me some energy to get some things done.

1. Get the tomatoes transplanted into the garden.

2. Plant all the cole crops (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels Sprouts, etc.)

3. Our fall crop of meat bird chicks (50 of them) get mailed to us on Sept 16th.  I need to get the chicken tractor checked out and brooder ready to go.

4. Betsy is getting bigger.  Time to put a breaking halter on her so she'll walk with a rope.

5. Insulation in the attic.  The old fiberglass batt insulation is 26 years old.  It's fallen down and there is no remaining insulation upstairs.  Need to install new batts.  This is DEFINITELY a job for cooler weather!

6. Cooler weather will get LuLu out of heat stress and enable us to begin milking her again.

Hopefully, a reprieve from the heat is on its way.  So tired of the dog days of summer!  

Soil Cover - An Important Consideration in Soil Health

Covering the soil is one of the most basic things you can do in soil conservation.  If you walk in the woods, you always see the ground covered with decomposing logs, leaves and understory.  Small trees thrive under the canopy followed by grasses.  Bugs and worms thrive beneath the rotting organic matter as rich moist topsoil is being formed.

The photo below just west of our barn was taken five years ago.  There is one tiny patch of grass seen on the bottom right.  What Happened?!  This entire area was once covered with bahia grass and bermuda grass and now this...  It's all dirt.  In the summer, the sun heats up the dirt and dries it out.  When rains come, the soil is washed away.  When winds blow, the dust (our topsoil) is blown away.

In trying to figure the genesis of this problem out, I think it all started with bonfires.  When winds would blow limbs out of the trees, I would stack up a big burn pile.  The pile would continue to grow, and when it got HUGE, especially in the winter, I would light it up and we'd sit around it and enjoy its warmth.  The fires were so big, one time the neighbors called the fire department thinking that our barn was on fire!

I love sitting around a fire, staring into the coals, but the fires killed the grass, exposing the dirt.  The chickens scratched holes in the exposed dirt to take their dust baths.  When tiny grasses started to grow, they dried up quickly in the heat and chickens plucked out the grasses to eat.  The situation went from bad to worse.  I had to change this!

A barren wasteland

We have cows, goats and chickens all grazing on 3 acres.  Soil health aside, this barren wasteland needs to have grass growing on it to feed all the hungry barnyard critters.  I stopped burning the big bonfires and then planted sprigs of bermuda grass in the dirt taken from cuttings.  Our chicken population, due to the minks, was cut in half, taking pressure off of the barren area and allowing the grass to take root and grow.  Moreover, and I can't quite explain it, but for some reason the spring after a very hard freeze, the grass started coming back - first gradually and then quickly.

I took a photo of the same area yesterday.  Although there is still work to be done in bringing this area back to its former glory, a good start has been made.  Grass almost completely covers the old desert-like area.  The animals and the humans are happy with the progress.  Imagine how it would look if we hadn't been in a drought!

A return of our grass pasture

The grassland now gives additional grazing capacity to our animals.  The roots hold the soil together, reducing erosion.  The grass keeps the soil cooler, and gives bugs and worms a place to hide and do their work.  As organic matter decomposes, the soil and its microorganisms thrive, doing their job.  We'll continue to do our part to rehabilitate the area that I negatively affected by unwise choices.  More work to do, but I like before/after photos that show evidence of good stewardship of the land.

Bottling the Summer 2026 Honey Harvest

It was high time we get the honey out of the five gallon buckets and into jars as we're out of the 2025 summer and fall crop of honey.  The summer 2026 crop yielded 17.8 gallons of honey that we've stored in 5 gallon buckets.  We dehumidified it down to 18.5% moisture and now its ready to bottle.  We sterilized all the jars and arranged the empty jars on the island along with lids and began pouring.  You can click the arrow below to watch the video of the smooth, sweet honey coming out of the honey gate and into the jars.

We bottled the honey in 3 separate batches.  I liked the red tinge of the honey in this photo as the morning sun is shining in through the kitchen window.

As we are bottling and going from jar to jar, sometimes honey gets on the side of the jars so they must be wiped down with a dishrag with warm, soapy water on it.  No one likes getting a sticky jar of honey.  We found an online label service called VistaPrint a couple of years ago and designed some labels that we affix to all the jar lids.

Here is an up close photo of the labels that we put on each jar of honey.

In all we got 152 jars of honey ready to sell.  Last year our bees yielded 170 jars.  We attribute the lower production to a big rain event we got right smack dab in the middle of the "flow" when the Chinese Tallow trees were flowering.  This really messed things up, but we're not complaining.  In fact, if we sell all of our honey, this year (our third year as beekeepers) will be the year we get out of the red and into the black.  Beekeeping is an expensive hobby!

Last year's crop crystallized during the winter months.  This year we hope to mitigate that by storing all of our honey in our new "hot box" that was given to us by someone going out of the honey-selling business.  It's an old refrigerator fitted with a couple of light bulbs and a thermostat that helps keep the honey at a temperature high enough that it never crystallizes and low enough that the beneficial enzymes in the raw honey are not damaged.

We've already sold 36 jars and have a stockpile of honey inventory for our customers.  We're mostly on the honor-system where our loyal customers come and get jars of honey out of the garage and leave money in the box to pay for it.  We'll likely harvest honey again this fall.  The fall crop is a fraction of the summer crop.  We like to leave some honey for the bees to eat over the winter though.  It is the bees' honey, after-all.  We erected our Honey for Sale sign by the road.  We'll leave it up until we run out.

The summer 2026 honey crop is all done!

The Masked Bandit

A couple of month's ago, I re-read "Where the Red Fern Grows," a great novel about 10 year old Billy Colman and his two coon dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann.  I tell you, if you don't get choked up reading that book, you have ice water running in your veins.  Billy loves his dogs and his dogs love him.  They all love treeing coons, too.

I have a lot of bad experiences with raccoons.  They are a very smart, formidable foe.  Back when I was crawfishing for a living, they cost me lots of money.  At night they would forage through my ponds, eating crawfish out of my traps - crawfish that I could have otherwise sold.  To add insult to injury, they would turn over traps.  Being unable to see the traps, I would then run over with my boat, flattening them out at a cost of $8.50 per trap.  In the early mornings, I would walk through a patch of woods that bordered my crawfish ponds.  The coons, with bellies full of crawfish, would sleep in the crooks of trees.  I would see them and shoot them out of the treetops and they would plummet to the ground with a loud thud.  They gave me fits.

They also, I've learned, will kill your chickens.  This afternoon late, I walked to the henhouse to collect eggs.  The girls' laying has diminished.  Many are broody and the rest are just hot and tired.  I picked up 8 eggs today.  When I came out of the henhouse with my basket, I heard a rustling noise in the grass in the woods adjacent to our property.  It was a juvenile raccoon trying to get in through the fence.  I scared the rascal.

I'm unlike Billy Colman in that I don't have two redbone coonhounds.  I opened up the back gate running after the coon.  The coon did what coons do - he scampered up a tree and watched me.  Can you see him in the 'V' in the tree right in the very center of the photo below?

I ran as quick as I could to get my 12 gauge shotgun and ran back.  Without dogs like Old Dan and Little Ann at the bottom of the tree, I was worried the masked bandit might have climbed down and escaped.  But no - he was still up in the crook of the tree looking down at me.  Waiting, I'm sure, for me to leave so that he could have a nice chicken dinner.

The rascal will not be eating chicken dinner tonight, or any night in the future.  I took aim, pulled the trigger - BOOM!, and the raccoon fell to the forest floor with a resounding thud.

Tricia said he was cute and maybe she's right, but this cute fellow is a chicken eater, and I can't abide with that type of neighbor.  I have to think that Billy Colman, Old Dan and Little Ann would agree.