The Dreaded Tomato Hornworm

Jonah 4:7  But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered.

The context of the verse above is that Jonah was sent to the city of Nineveh to tell the people to repent of their wickedness or their city would be destroyed.  When the inhabitants of Nineveh turned from their wicked ways and repented, God spared the city.  This angered Jonah.

Jonah found a plant (not a tomato plant, but a castor oil plant) and sat under it. This plant provided shade for Jonah and he enjoyed it.  Then comes the verse highlighted above.  Without the plant, Jonah was in great discomfort and longed for death.

God spoke to Jonah and questioned why Jonah could muster compassion for a mere plant that he did not tend nor cause to grow, but he could not show compassion for 120,000 people that God created, loved and desired His best for their lives?

The chapter ends there.  How could Jonah answer that?  Yes people are far more important than plants.

The photo above is one I took yesterday of a tomato hornworm.  He looks pretty ferocious, doesn't he?  He is about as big around and as long as your index finger, with "V" shaped markings along his side and with a scary looking spike on his rear end.  He has an appetite as ferocious as his appearance, too.  He is able to eat all the upper leaves off of a tomato plant faster than poop through a goose.  His coloration camouflages him so that he can do his dirty work for a while. Pretty soon, though, the leafless tomato plant, along with big caterpillar poop on the leaves below, alerts you to yet another nemesis in the garden.

I just pull them off with my fingers.  They aren't easy to pry off the tomato vine.  It is as if they have suction cups on their feet.  Finally, I pull him free from the fence and toss him over the fence to 100 hens waiting with bated breath for the fat, juicy, tomato nourished, delicious morsel.  The early bird does indeed get the worm and scurries off to try to gobble the caterpillar down without having to share it with another hen.  If I would have allowed him to grow, he would have eventually turned into a hawkmoth, but if I did that, I wouldn't have much of a tomato plant left, would I?  I pulled 3 off yesterday and another two the day prior.  One must be vigilant with caterpillars around, not to mention the squirrels we mentioned yesterday.

I have tended for the tomato plants since January of this year.  Right now I am battling squirrels, tomato hornworms, and stink bugs for a harvest.  It is not easy.  I do have compassion for the tomato plant (and contempt for the squirrels, hornworms, and stink bugs).  But it is just a plant.  People need compassion and need grace extended.  Just like Jonah at the end of Chapter 4, I need to examine my heart.

Of Course You know, This Means War

When we plant those tiny tomato seeds in the cold winter, we anticipate pulling those red, ripe tomatoes to make fresh salsa, putting up tomato sauce, making caprese salad, or simply cutting some up with banana peppers and jalapenos as an appetizer.

A Nice appetizer plate of homegrown goodness

You spot a big bodacious heirloom tomato, bulging with flavor and beautiful green shoulders and red fruit.  You reach out and grab it and give it a twist and a pull off of the vine.

Suddenly, you feel something is not quite right.  Your hand is moist and sticky. You flip the huge tomato over to find...

Durned Squirrels!!

Just yesterday that big beautiful tomato caught my eye and I thought, "Tomorrow, I'm gonna pick you!"  No doubt, at the very same time, from the safety of his nest up in a sprawling live oak tree, a fox squirrel saw the same tomato and thought, "Tomorrow, I'm gonna pick you!"  Problem is, I work for a living.  The squirrel does not.  He stays home and pilfers the product of another man's labors.

Well, I thought, I see another tomato that is almost ripe.  I'll pick that one.

Same song, second verse.  When you flip this tomato over, you see the same damage - just not as bad.

Dad-gum squirrels!

So what do we do?  Well, although it may seem a little gross, I bring the tomatoes inside and we wash them and cut off the squirrel-eaten on pieces and we eat the pieces of tomato that the squirrels have been so generous to leave us - the leftovers, if you will.  Well, I'm not gonna take it, anymore.

Of course you know, this means war.  In the first battle, I have a two pronged attack:
1.  Beat the squirrels to the tomatoes.  I'll pick them when they are pinkish-red and let them ripen inside, safely away from those pesky critters.  We started doing this yesterday.  Hopefully they will continue to ripen to peak ripeness and taste even though they aren't out in the sunshine on the vine.

2.   My animal loving friends may take umbrage to phase 2 in my arsenal.  I bring out the arsenal.  I load up my Marlin .22 rifle with .22 Long Rifle bullets.  I don't shoot them to scare them.  I shoot to kill.  These squirrels are thieves and will pay dearly for their stealing.  Just yesterday I ran inside, grabbed my .22 and dropped a big, fat squirrel that was in the fork of a live oak tree.  He fell to the ground and I made sure that his tomato-thieving days had come to an end.  If I was closer and had delivered a fatal head-shot, we would have skinned him and put him in the freezer for a meal. Unfortunately, I was shooting at a long distance and delivered a gut shot that exited his leg.  One down.  Hundreds to go.

We decided that the bullet had torn up too much of the meat to be able to eat it. Instead, dispatching the squirrel with a head-shot, I carried the dead squirrel to the garden and buried it.  Hopefully the squirrel will feed back some nutrients into the soil and, much like the pilgrims and the Indians burying a fish in the garden, grow some great produce.

The war is on.  So far, it remains to be seen who'll win.  I'm winning the arms race. The squirrels have engaged in guerrilla warfare, and are winning in terms of stealth and surprise.  So far they have eaten more tomatoes than we have.   I don't give up easily, though.  Be afraid, squirrels.  Be very afraid.

The Old Broody Hen

We have right at 100 hens that roam Our Maker's Acres Farm.  They scratch for bugs and worms, and they scratch through the cow patties in the pasture, distributing fertilizer across the pasture better than a fertilizer spreader.  As they roam, they too, drop fertilizer, contributing to a wonderful cycle that keeps the grass growing for the cows and goats.

I like our chickens.  I like to watch them chase down roaches when I'm splitting wood.  They are so focused on their meal that I often have to stop my ax in mid-swing so as not to decapitate a hen intent on her mid-day roach snack.  They are not very watchful.  Ever so often we have hens that get caught underfoot of one of our Jersey cows.  Due to this run-in, they will limp for many days and weeks after learning an expensive lesson on not tangling up with something bigger than you. Others die due to these injuries.  I can't tell you how many chickens I have buried in the garden.

Our hens also lay beautiful eggs for us each morning.  They'll rush to one of many nesting boxes an plop down in the hay and lay an egg.  Then, in a remarkable show of pride, they'll sing a little song letting all the other hens know that they've laid an egg.  One of these days I'll tape the "Happy Egg Song" for you and play it for you so that you can see what I mean.  Most of the time after they sing this song, they'll jump up out of the nesting box and head out to the pasture and clock-in for a full day's work of doing what I explained in the first paragraph.

But there are certain times when they don't get up.  They become 'broody,' meaning that they go through some hormonal changes that make them want to set on her eggs and hatch out some babies. Broody hens are easy to spot because they become very territorial.  If you come near to her nesting box, she'll fluff out her feathers so that she looks twice as large.  Then she'll make a very angry sound that is meant to frighten you away.

Although there are times when we let a broody hen set, right now we have enough hens.  I don't want her to hatch out any chicks.  So each day we ignore the broody hen's bad temper and reach underneath her and remove the eggs she is sitting on. One must be brave to do this, because you will get your hand pecked by a truly angry bird!

She means business!  In the end though, the smallest creature loses the battle of the will and I exit the hen house with a basket full of eggs.

One of these days, I'll want some more additional baby chicks and I hope at that time this old broody hen or another one like her will oblige to setting on some fertilized eggs.  These protective mommas do their duty well.  I have a friend from church who has some broody hens right now and he asked me to bring him some fertilized eggs.  I brought him two dozen so far and his broody hens have hatched out a bunch of baby chicks for him.  There is absolutely no need for an incubator if you have a broody hen.

Millennial Migration

I was at a conference this past week in Orlando, Florida.  It had nothing to do with agriculture, actually the discussion was about trends in home buying, but since farming is one of my passions, I view many things through the lens of agriculture. I share with you one of the slides that caught my attention:

Image Credit

Although the above photo that I took with my phone by be unclear, the trend is crystal clear that young people (24-34 year olds) are increasingly attracted to urban living according to census data from 2010. Here's a quote from the source data:

The Takeaway: More Young Adult Urban Growth is Coming
The number of 25- to 34-year-olds—the key group driving urban living—will not decline, but will grow between now and 2024. The urban wave we’ve experienced starting in the 1990s, and accelerating in the past decade, wasn’t propelled by generational growth so much as by a growing preference for urban living by young adults. The shift of young adults to cities, drawn by urban amenities, is increasingly confirmed by academic researchers, and is borne out by the latest Census data.

I really like country living.  I like the slower pace, the simplicity, the elbow room, the wide open spaces.  We live close enough to the city to enjoy shopping, dining, and cultural events, if we wish, but rural living is attractive to us.  To each his own, I guess.

The takeaway that I get from the millennial migration is concerning to me in more ways than one.  I think as more and more young people flock to urban centers, our rural areas are increasingly left vacated by the young as they move off to seek opportunity and adventure.  As this occurs, fewer jobs and opportunity are left in small towns and on family farms.  "Water tower" towns with boarded up Main Street buildings and aging populations and few entertainment venues aren't attractive to the younger generations.  This is not a new occurrence, but Census data shows the frequency of the migration is increasing.  Will the last one leaving town please turn out the lights?

THIS LINK lists some leading factors that pull people to cities and similarly push them out of rural locales:

Pull factors

• more and better jobs
• better hospitals and health care
• better living standards
• cities are social and financial centres
• better education—schools and universities

Push factors

• too many people in the countryside
• low income
• not enough raw materials (water, wood etc..)
• the quality of farming land is getting worse

We are losing our connection to the land.  More and more people are becoming dependent upon fewer and fewer people to grow their food.  Something as simple as a natural disaster that would disrupt our supply chain, could turn urban centers to chaos or societal collapse as grocery store shelves empty.  Food and water shortages in high population density centers with people unable to feed themselves seem to be the theme of many apocalyptic books and movies, but it is not too far-fetched, if you think about it, especially considering the trend discussed above.

What can we do to stem the tide?  How can we maintain the fertile fabric of rural America?  By addressing the issues highlighted in the bullet points.

Support local business in your communities.  That is a starter.  Spend less at the big box store and more at the Mom & Pop shop.

Encourage young people.  Support your local 4-H club and FFA chapter.

Grow your own food OR support your local farmer's market.  Share your garden produce with your neighbor and build close relationships in your very own "Mayberry."

None of these is a magic bullet or miracle cure.  Perhaps nostalgia, or other reasons of necessity will reverse the migration.  Until then, I will remain in my garden as the sun goes down each day, eating crisp banana peppers right off the plant without washing them (gasp!) and breathing in fresh country air and enjoying the simplicity of pastoral living.  I might even drink water straight from the garden hose (Oh, the humanity!).

“An economy genuinely local and neighborly

offers to localities a measure of security

that they cannot derive from a national or a

global economy controlled by people who, by

principle, have no local commitment.”

—WENDELL BERRY

The Graduate - Our Graduate

In the 1967 movie, "The Graduate," Mr. Maguire pulls young, Benjamin Braddock aside and the following dialogue takes place:

Mr. Maguire: There is a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it? 

          Benjamin Braddock: Yes, I will.

To be honest, if Benjamin Braddock took his advice, he probably was met with great economic success as plastics took off.

We have our own recent graduate, our middle son, Russ, who recently graduated from LSU in Baton Rouge with a B.S. in Agriculture.  He won't be going into the field of plastics, but we pray he finds success in his field of Plant and Soil Systems with a concentration in Environmental Horticulture.

We met for his graduation on a rainy Friday morning at 11 a.m. in the Field House for the ceremony.

We took our seats in the crowded field house where indoor track is run among a crowd of proud parents and family members.  They marched in to Pomp & Circumstance and many had their mortar boards decorated.

When I graduated from LSU in December of 1988, the person who gave the keynote address was Senator John Breaux.  It was in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center and poor Senator Breaux had difficulty getting through his speech as he was dodging champagne corks.  Things have changed since then.  Not one champagne cork went off during Russ' ceremony.  One other change was that the graduates all got their names called and got to walk across the stage and received their diplomas.

When it was over and before we went out to eat, we took a family photo with Russ in front of a blooming magnolia tree.

My Dad, Mom, and brother were also there to celebrate Russ' big day.

Here is Russ with my brother and parents in front of some stately oaks.  In the background, you can see the Huey P. Long Fieldhouse and pool.  The pool is now in disrepair, but I took a swimming class in college (we had to take a PE class) there. If you saw the movie, Pitch Perfect, one of the singing competitions was in the Huey P. Long pool.  It was empty, of course.

To commemorate the happy occasion, we got a nice Commencement program that had all the graduates names in it.  While sitting down and thumbing through the book, we were very surprised!

Russ hadn't told us about something very important.  Okay, I apologize in advance for boasting about my son, but we were in shock to see on page 5 that Russ graduated Summa Cum Laude.  He was the only male to do so.  In fact, 75% of the graduates in the College of Agriculture were female.

Russ will be starting his career in June, working for Doug Young Nursery in Forest Hill, Louisiana. I told him that if he can find something to do that he is passionate about, he'll never work a day in his life as it will be a labor of love.  We are proud of the old fellow and wish him the absolute best that life has to offer.  He will do great things, I am sure of it.  May God Bless our graduate!

LSU ALMA MATER 

Where stately oaks and broad magnolias 

shade inspiring halls, 

There stands our dear Old Alma Mater 

who to us recalls 

Fond memories that waken in our hearts 

a tender glow, 

And make us happy for the love 

that we have learned to know. 

All hail to thee our Alma Mater, 

molder of mankind, 

May greater glory, love unending 

be forever thine. 

Our worth in life will be thy worth we pray to keep it true, 

And may thy spirit live in us, forever L-S-U. 

Drying Sweet Potatoes

We are approaching the end of our inventory of sweet potatoes that we harvested back in the fall. There's only a portion of a milk crate left.  Naturally, the biggest ones get eaten first as they are easier to peel.  We like to roast them, make mashed sweet potatoes, make sweet potato fries, bake them, and make sweet potato latkes out of them.  What else can we do with two medium sweet potatoes and a long, skinny one?

Well, let's get the dehydrator out and dry some sweet potatoes.  First, we have to get the food processor out and put on the slicing blade.  It takes no time to transform the sweet potatoes into something that resembles orange potato chips.  In about 12 hours they'll look even more like potato chips except they won't be fried.

Once they are sliced, you soak them in a bowl of water for a couple of hours.  This draws the excess starch out of them.  Make sure they are all wet by stirring them around from time to time while you wait.

After an hour and a half or two hours, take them out of the water bowl and shake the excess water off of them and then put them on a dish towel and pat dry.

Place them on the dehydrator trays and brush them with a light coating of coconut oil.  I'm wondering if this step could be sped up by putting them in a container and shaking them with coconut oil, but maybe the time saved would be offset by the time it takes to clean the container?

Then sprinkle the sliced sweet potatoes with cinnamon and flip them over and do likewise on the other side.

Put the trays on the dehydrator and turn the setting to 145 degrees Fahrenheit and allow them to dry for 10-12 hours.  You'll be surprised at how much they've shrunk, but all the flavor has condensed into sweet sweet potato chips.

We store them in a mason jar.  (But we don't have to store them for long!)

Checking to See if the Cows are Bred

Tricia called our veterinarian to make a farm call.  None of the cows were sick.  In this case the farm call was to palpate the cows.  Palpation involves examining the cows' bodies by touch in this case to see if they are carrying calves.  We needed to have Dr. Fontenot palpate Daisy, Rosie, and Clarabelle.  He put on his plastic 'gloves' that go all the way up to his shoulder and poured a lubricant on them and then began his examination right there in our barn in the milking stall.

He felt around inside of the cows and could feel the fetus, sizing it up from experience and let Tricia know how old the calf was.  Since we chart the days of the month that we see the cows in standing heat, we could count backwards to determine when they were bred.  Here is the verdict:

Rose was bred on December 8th.  That means she'll calve somewhere around September 8th.

Clarabelle was bred on January 25th.  That means she'll calve somewhere around October 25th. This will be Clarabelle's first calf.

Daisy, on the other hand, is not bred.  Dr. Fontenot checked out the one ovary that he could reach and everything was normal.  He was going to do some research to see what the problem could be that is keeping her from getting pregnant.  In the meantime, we know that she'll be coming in heat again in about a week.  We will keep our eyes on her and the bull.  We know that Chuck, the bull, is "hot" and perhaps this go-around she will get pregnant.

Checking In On the Muscadines

Back in May 2014 we planted a muscadine vine out in the side yard.  It has grown and we pick muscadines off of it each year.  The yield seems to increase every year. Last year Russ taught me how to effectively prune it to maximize production.  It seems to be pretty happy despite the fact that the soil in the side yard is poor and compacted.  If you dig with a shovel, it is like digging in a parking lot - hard and packed earth.  I've been amending the soil and will continue to do so until I get it where I want it to be.

Meanwhile we are still going to get a nice crop.  I like to make jelly with the muscadines.  Tricia likes to come out to the "vineyard" on late summer afternoons and eat muscadines right off the vine when the fruit is sun-warmed.  Delicious!  I guess if there is a downside to these, it would be that they have many seeds and you have to spit a lot.  Back in THIS POST FROM 2013 I chronicled how we made new wine with some grapes from our neighbors.  If we have a nice enough harvest, I'd like to try to make a batch of new wine with muscadines and see how it would turn out.

This year I've found a recipe to make muscadine syrup and I'm going to try that.  It seems like topping a homemade blueberry and pecan pancake with muscadine syrup.  Forget Wheaties.   That, my friends, is the breakfast of champions!

Clusters of Muscadines

Stay tuned and later this summer, I'll post how the muscadine syrup making experiment goes.

The Sign

"I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign / Life is demanding without understanding..." - Ace of Base

"This is the sign you have been waiting for"

I was stopped at a red light on North University Avenue in Lafayette, Louisiana the other day and took the picture you see above.  I like the fact that someone made a homemade sign with a bed sheet, climbed up on the balcony and hung this sign for passersby to ponder.

In reading through the Bible, it says a lot about signs.

In Genesis 9:13-15 God says:

"I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.  It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud,  and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh."

God used the rainbow to communicate a sign to His people.  Signs are a good thing when communicated by God to people of faith.

In Matthew 16:1-4, the Gospel of Matthew tells us the following:

"The Pharisees and Sadducees came up, and testing Jesus, they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven.  But He replied to them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’  And in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times? An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.” And He left them and went away."

This tells us, I think, that the religious leaders of the time were not people of faith. They had hard hearts.  They weren't really looking for a sign.  In fact they were blind to the signs all around them.  The Messiah was in their midst, doing miracles right in front of them.  The Kingdom of Heaven was at hand and they could not see it.  As Matthew 13:16 says, "they needed eyes to see and ears to hear."

They would, however, get one more sign - the sign of Jonah.  Just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for 3 days before being vomited out onto land, so would Jesus be killed, buried and be resurrected from the dead.  That was the sign.  Would they get it?  Do we get it?  That should be the SIGN WE'RE LOOKING FOR...  

The Great Divide

This is not a political blog.  Although I have my opinions, at least in this forum, I try to keep them to myself.  Here's why:  One would have to say in terms of division, the only time that our nation has been split like it is now was during the Civil War. These days there seems to be no civil discourse. You can't simply agree to disagree. Those with differing opinions often resort to name-calling, yelling, rioting, and violence.  Often those with opposing viewpoints have their speech censored.  Urban versus Rural, Black versus White, Christian versus non-Christian, Left versus Right, et cetera, et cetera.  When those from "different walks of life" mix, trouble ensues.

I find that it is no different in the garden.  Below you can see a lush jungle consisting of two different varieties of sweet potatoes (Beauregard and Golden Wonder) that come up every year in the north part of the garden.  No one has to plant sweet potato slips, they just sprout up every year and keep us stocked up with bins of sweet potatoes.  Also in the jungle of vines below are two other things that came up volunteer (without being intentionally planted) - a Jack-Be-Little pumpkin and a New England Sugar Pie pumpkin.

At least initially, the sweet potato vines and the pumpkin vines stay in their own locale, growing happily, and minding their own business.  There is a clear division where the sweet potatoes grow and where other crops can grow.  The rows to the right in the photo below are where the potatoes were just harvested.  I'm planning on planting purple hull peas, blackeyed peas, and some pole beans in the now empty rows once occupied by the potatoes.

But the sweet potatoes have other thoughts.  As seen in the photo below, a Beauregard Sweet Potato vine has decided to encroach upon the space reserved for beans and peas.  You can see it testing the waters, reaching out its vine southward to populate and over-run areas intended for peas and beans.  Sweet potato vines don't respect other crops growing in the garden. If it meets no resistance, it will put down roots and send out more vines and soon will over-run the entire garden, crowding out anything and everything in its path.

But it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.  The sweet potato winning doesn't have to come at the expense of the peas and beans.  Both can respect the other and win. Rather than having an entire garden of sweet potatoes, we can have a healthy plot of sweet potatoes, a few rows of peas and beans as well as all other types of vegetables and herbs we grow.  Although I love sweet potatoes, how boring it would be if that's all that I grew!

So it is with the division in our nation.  We should respect one another - even when we have differences.  We should not try to over-run or crowd out those who may differ with us in some fashion or another.  We can all live together and thrive where we are planted.  In so doing, our harvest will be a healthy one, containing a diverse crop of all shapes and colors.

Happy Mother's Day!

Image Credit

Today is a day to honor Moms.  I've been blessed to have a GREAT mom.  I've also been blessed to have a wife who's been a GREAT mom to our children.  Here's a poem that I found online to put in our Church Bulletin that pretty much sums up how I feel about my Mom and my wife on this special day:

Thank God for Mother's Love – Anonymous

A mother's patience of a saint could only be by the hand of God.

There is no love, like a mother's love,
no stronger bond on earth...
like the precious bond that comes from God,
to a mother when she gives birth.

A mother's love is forever strong,
never changing for all time...
and when her children need her most,
a mother's love will shine.

God bless these special mothers,
God bless them every one...
for all the tears and heartache,
and for the special work they've done.

When her days on earth are over,
a mother's love lives on...
through many generations,
with God's blessings on each one.

Be thankful for our mothers,
for they love with a higher love...
from the power God has given,
and the strength from up above.

Making Biochar

I was reading about something useful to the soil in the garden that I had never heard of and decided to give it a shot.  Biochar.  Have you ever heard of it?  Biochar is simply charcoal that is stored in the soil and used as a soil amendment to benefit your plants.  Sounds interesting.  I'm always looking for ways to make my garden soil better.

We have tons of sticks that fall from our trees so we have the basic raw materials for making biochar readily available.  Biochar added to the soil does several things. The charcoal is full of holes and crevices that serve as a habitat for soil microorganisms.  Think of it like an artificial reef serves as a habitat for fish, biochar serves as an 'artificial reef' for soil microorganisms that benefit your plants. It also helps the soils retain nutrients and water.

Sounds good to me.  Today I'll make some.  It is easy enough to do.  First I built a fire using sticks from our live oak and pecan trees.  I kept feeding the fire with sticks that were all roughly the same size until I had a nice blaze going.

Once the fire had subsided and there was nothing left but coals in the fire pit, I did something that seemed an odd thing to do with a nice coal bed -

I put it out!  I simply sprayed down the hot coals with a water hose to stop the fire from consuming the sticks and turning them to pure ash.

After saturating the coals with water, this is what I have left.  It looks like real wood charcoal.

I loaded up the biochar in a bucket and walked it out to the garden.  I dug a hole between the bean rows and emptied the bucket of biochar into the hole.

Then I covered the biochar in the trench with dirt and that finished the job.

I will continue doing this between all the garden rows, adding biochar from our burn piles and covering with dirt.  Hopefully we'll see a difference in soil fertility. Scientists have found evidence that people living in the Amazon many years ago covered smoldering organic material with dirt and found that this is greatly improves soil productivity.

Biochar isn't new, but it is new to us.  We'll see if we can tell a differennce.

What's Kosher About Kosher Salt?

We use Kosher salt a lot.  We hardly ever use regular table salt to season with.  As we were sitting around the island in the kitchen the other day pondering life's enigmatic and weighty issues, we began to wonder, "Why is Kosher Salt kosher?" and "How can a mineral be kosher or non-kosher?"

These are the times that it is nice to fire up Google and ask it those questions. Google will provide answers - pretty quickly.  In this case, Google had 1,850,000 answers for me in 0.84 seconds.  That is a little quicker than getting the Encyclopedia Britannica out.

Anyway Wikipedia tells us everything that we want to know about kosher salt. Kosher salt, as we all know, has a larger grain than regular table salt.  Kosher salt usually contains no added iodine. Surprisingly, nearly all salt is kosher, including normal table salt.  On the other hand, salt can be called Kosher Salt and not be kosher at all!  Confused yet?  Me too.  But then it goes on to tell you that Kosher Salt should really be called Koshering Salt.  The adjective Kosher isn't describing what it is.  It is describing what it does.

Jews aren't supposed to eat anything with blood in it, and it all comes from these verses in Genesis:

Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant.  Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.  Genesis 9:3-4

So this is where Kosher Salt or, better, Koshering Salt is used.  Wikipedia describes it as such:

The traditional use of kosher salt is for removing surface blood from meat by desiccation, as part of the koshering process for meat. The meat is soaked in cool water, drained, covered with a thin layer of salt, then allowed to stand on a rack or board for an hour. The salt remains on the surface of the meat, for the most part undissolved, and absorbs fluids from the meat. The salt grains are then washed off and discarded, carrying away the fluids absorbed.

I like learning little tidbits of information like this.  Thanks Google.

Digging Potatoes On a Perfect Day

This weekend the weather was absolutely perfect.  It was a nice time to get outdoors and get some things done that needed doing.  You know how that goes, right? Growing vegetables can be hit or miss.  Some years things grow great.  On other years, you can do everything the same and experience crop failure.  Sometimes it is pest pressure, Sometimes it is the weather.  Sometimes you don't have a clue!

After going through a week in which we saw AT LEAST 10 inches of rain, I was concerned about our potato crop.  I say "at least" 10 inches because my rain gauge topped out at 5 both days and I know rain splashed out of the top of the gauge. Potatoes don't take too kindly to sitting in the mud. They begin to rot and when you dig them up and try to grab them, they disintegrate in your hands, leaving a stinky goo behind.  Rotten potatoes don't smell too good.

I told Benjamin we had to get those potatoes out of the ground before they all rot, so we got my digging fork and teamed up to get the job done.  I would insert the fork into the ground about 5 inches away from the plant and pry upwards while Benjamin tugged gently on the potato plant.

If you work it just so, you can get to where you pull the entire plant and all the clinging potatoes out of the ground.  There will be potatoes of all sizes.  We eat them all.

Russ was at a Nascar race in Talladega so Benjamin and I attacked the potato rows with a vengeance, digging, grabbing, tossing the spuds into our garden wagon.  We, unfortunately, noticed quite a few potatoes that were either rotten or were soft or had white spots all over them - all results of too much rainfall.  I threw quite a few to the chickens.  Rotten, stinky potatoes don't seem to bother the chickens at all. They aren't picky and will eat them up and come running back for more.  When all was said and done, we had a nice haul of potatoes.

Benjamin posed by the garden wagon with the 2017 potato harvest.  I remember when I was young, we went on a family vacation to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.  There was an exhibit about spy satellites that zoomed in in several photos from a view of the earth from space, to what appeared to be a city, to a man sitting on a park bench, to the headlines on the newspaper he was reading.  That seemed very intrusive to me.  Big brother watching, you know.

I thought I'd have a little fun with the next photographs and spy on our 2017 potato crop..

Benjamin and the Potato Crop

Zooming in, you can see that they are all red potatoes, Pontiac variety to be exact.

Zooming in closer to see the "headlines," you can determine that they are dirty and there are potatoes that are all different sizes.

I wheeled the wagon into the garage and removed the potatoes by bucket and weighed them on our kitchen scale. This is my summary from the harvest from LAST YEAR:

I weighed the full potato harvest, minus a few that we ate fresh out of the ground cooked with some green beans, and our Spring Potato crop yield totaled 144pounds.  We planted 10 pounds of red potatoes and 5 pounds of Yukon gold potatoes.  So a total of 15 pounds of seed potatoes yielded about 150 pounds of potatoes.  Looking at it another way, each pound of seed potatoes, on average, produces 10 pounds of potatoes to eat.  As I mentioned earlier, we planted 168 "pieces" of seed potatoes that yielded 144 pounds of potatoes to eat, so that tells us that that each 'seed' or piece of potato planted will yield, on average 0.85 pounds of potatoes to eat.  

This year, once again, we planted 15 pounds of seed potatoes.  The only change being last year we planted the LaSoda and Yukon Gold varieties, whereas this year we planted 15 pounds of Pontiac seed potatoes.  You can see that last year we harvested 144 pounds.  This year, unbelievably, we harvested 143 pounds!!  I probably threw about a pound of rotten potatoes over the fence to the chickens, so our yield was right smack dab on the money compared to last year.  Pretty cool how that worked out.

I bagged up our onion crop that was curing and hung them from the ceiling in the garage to continue drying.  I did this to make room.  I placed all 143 pounds of potatoes on top of the frames I constructed with 2x4s and hardware cloth.  Many of the potatoes were marginal in terms of being on the verge of being soft and beginning to rot,  and I wanted to see if I could quickly dry them and save them. We learned NOT to wash potatoes during storage and you will lengthen the time that you can store the potatoes.

Some of these potatoes may inevitably go bad, but one thing's for certain.  If they begin to go bad, we'll smell them!

Our Supper Was Hacked By The Russians!

Russians!  We have had a nice crop of beets this year.  Almost too many to eat. We've been pickling them and roasting them.  We were looking for another recipe to use up some of the bumper crop of beets and I happened to be talking to someone I work with who lived in Ukraine while she was a missionary.  She began telling me that she developed a taste for a Russian dish while there called Borscht. One of the main ingredients is beets and she promised me she would send the recipe.  Sooo....

I picked 3 medium beets.  These are bull's blood beets.

The recipe she gave me does not call for the tops so those go to the chickens.  They ate up the beet tops quickly.

I came in and peeled the beets.  I love the deep red color of beets.

I was told that there are many variations of borscht, but this one is the one that my friend got from the mission in Ukraine.  Here are the rest of the ingredients besides beets:
1 whole chicken, deboned (you can also use beef shank or pork roast)
1/2 cabbage shredded
2 large carrots
3 medium potatoes
Onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaf
1 can tomato paste
salt
sunflower oil
fresh dill chopped
sour cream

Make broth by placing the chicken in a large pot and bringing to a boil, reduce heat, cover until meat is tender, approximately 1 1/2 hours.  Debone the chicken.  Clean the beets and put in a pot with water covering them.  Boil until tender, once done grate them and set them aside.

A very important thing to do while cooking borscht is to make a zazharka (fry up). While the meat is boiling, saute in sunflower oil, grated carrots & chopped onion, adding the tomato paste to the vegetables after they are tender.

Zazharka

Chop up the chicken after de-boning and put into the pot of broth along with potatoes and cabbage.  When the cabbage is tender, add the carrot mix back to the broth, along with the grated beets.  Add bay leaf, garlic, chopped dill and salt. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

This is a VERY RED dish!

I served mine up in a white bowl.

We were told by my friend at work to add a dollop of sour cream to the bowl.  Tricia really likes sour cream, so she added it and stirred.

Borscht is a hearty, tasty soup.  We like trying new things and this helps us to use up some of our inventory of beets.  It was my first time eating borscht and I must say I was surprised and I really liked it.  It seems to get better each day.  I can see how this is a dish, like gumbo, that is extra tasty and nourishing on a very cold day.

Next beet recipe we'll try is a roasted beet hummus...