I May Be Silent for a Few Days

I wanted to let you know that we haven't fallen off the face of the earth.  Hopefully, we will be back in contact soon.  Hurricane Laura will be visiting us, making landfall in the early morning hours of Thursday.

If projections hold, we'll be affected.  I'm not worried so much about the water, but the wind concerns me.  We're protecting things as best we can.  I have a job that keeps me away from home, especially in dire weather situations.  Benjamin helped Tricia move the baby chicks in the garage to safety and helped her batten down the hatches.

We'll likely be out of power for a while, so I will post as soon as I can.  We will be praying and I covet your prayers for all in the way of this storm.  Reminds me of this:

Matthew 8:24-27

24 And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with the waves; but Jesus Himself was asleep. 25 And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” 26 He said to them, “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. 27 The men were amazed, and said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”

Regardless the outcome, we place our trust in Him.  He is the Master of the Sea.  In this world, we are never promised a life without calamity.  In fact, quite the opposite.  But He does promise never to leave us or forsake us.  And He'll help us weather whatever storm we're facing.

Adding to the Flock

Our flock is getting OLD.  Chickens, on average, will live about 8 years.  We've had chickens for many years now.  In the past, each year I would purchase 25 pullets (baby females) to replace any that had died the previous year to old age, predator, or accident.  At one point we counted them all and had around 110 chickens.  That's really too many for us.  In order to reduce the size of our flock, we just didn't replace them.  It has been maybe four years ago since we've ordered pullets and raised them.

Our flock is down to 55-60 laying hens now, primarily due to predators (possums, hawks, owls, and minks), but old age, too.  I decided it was time to add to the flock.  My bride was not pleased with my decision!  Since we've dried off the cows, she has enjoyed the carefree days that allow for weekends away, trips, etc.  Chickens aren't as demanding and labor-intensive as milk cows.  I assured her that these babies would (pretty much) take care of themselves. 

Our day old chicks arrived in the mail on Thursday.  They come via USPS and Tricia got a call from the Post Office to go pick them up.  I ordered 30 pullets.  When Tricia opened the lid, she found that 9 of them had died in transit.  It was not a nice sight to behold.  The remaining 21 pullets were feasting on their dead sisters.  We attribute the deaths to the heat in shipping.  The poultry company will make them good, so I am working with them to re-ship 9 live chicks to make up for the deceased ones.

Tricia has them all set up in the brooder with a heat lamp, feeders and waterers.  The other birds, except for one, seem to be perfect.  One of them acts strangely, almost as if it has a neurological problem.

The baby birds are very happy, running around, eating, drinking, pooping and doing what chicks do.  We watched them tonight running around the brooder and jumping up with their little plump bodies to eat mosquitoes that they catch mid-flight as they come into contact with the sides of the brooder.

The chicks were $2.15 a piece.  I purchased all pullets, because we want all females to lay eggs.  We currently have three distinct breeds, so I ordered 10 of each.  The first one, shown below, is the Barred Rock.  This hen, in adulthood, is a beautiful fat hen that lays brown eggs and is a good producer for us.  

Barred Rock

The next is the Rhode Island Red.  She'll be our most productive egg-layer and is also a brown egg layer.

Rhode Island Red

And finally, the Easter Eggers.  This is a new type of chicken for us.  We currently have Aracaunas.  I could not find Aracaunas in the breed list that the poultry company had, but they did have Easter Eggers and they fit the bill.  Easter Eggers lay blue, green and pink eggs.  Here is one of the Easter Eggers:

We'll take care of these girls and in about 18-20 weeks, they'll begin to lay eggs.  In the meantime, I will work hard to reduce the predator population.  I'll show some of my tactics in future posts to accomplish this mission.  I can remember how exciting it was when we first got chicks.  The kids were small and each day we would all go check to see if the hens had begun to lay.  It was truly an exciting day when the kids came running into the house with a big brown egg!

Harvested a Moon & Stars Yellow Flesh Watermelon

This year when I planted the spring garden, I made a point of going through my saved seeds stash.  These are seeds that I've saved over the years and stored for safe-keeping in vitamin bottles.  Each year I try to plant as much as I can, but inevitably, I have more seeds saved than I have time or land to plant them on.

As the seeds get older, the germination drops.  At some point only a few (or none) of the seeds sprout.  This spring I pulled out an old ibuprofen bottle labeled "Moon & Stars Yellow Flesh Watermelon" that contained seeds I saved back in 2012.  No chance they would be any good, right?  Well, they sprouted!  The plants were real weak.  It took from early spring until late summer, but the plants finally yielded a melon we could eat.

The melon is called Moon and Stars because it is supposed to have a big yellow moon and many yellow stars on its dark green color.  Except on this melon, the moon wasn't a defined circle and the dark green color was actually a medium-light green color.  I don't know if perhaps it didn't cross with another watermelon I had growing in the garden.  Oh well...

One of the ways to tell when a melon is ripe is to look at the tendrils closest to the melon.  When it has turned brown, the melon is telling you that it is finished growing.  It can be picked, put in the fridge, chilled, cut up and eaten on a hot day.  It is perfectly fine to let the stickiness run down your forearms and drip from your elbows as you enjoy the sweet taste of summer.

Brown tendril says, "Pick me, I'm ripe!"

The next afternoon, we pulled the watermelon out and sliced it in two.  Just as I had remembered from 2012, the flesh in this watermelon is yellow-light orange color and the seeds are white.  My son Russ cubed it up.  We began to eat some and it was nice and sweet.

After we enjoyed eating, Russ brought some home for him to eat later and I packed some to bring to work as a mid-day snack.  I finished it off today.  We have at least one more that is ripening in the garden that we will eat, thankful that even old seeds can germinate and produce.

When "That'll Do" Doesn't Do

In THIS POST from July, I put forward a tactic we many times employ of not necessarily going to all the expense, time, and trouble of doing things perfectly on our little farm.  Sometimes, a quick and dirty fix works just fine... and sometimes it doesn't.

In that previous post we showed how a Chinaberry tree fell across a fence that separate the bulls from our cows.  When it is not breeding time, we like to keep the bulls in the 'bull pen.'  There are just too much hormones and rough-housing going on to have the bulls together with the cows.  When the tree fell across the fence, it was hot, humid, wet, muddy, and I didn't feel like fixing the fence properly.  Instead, I got some tie wire (there is nothing that can't be fixed with tie wire, duct tape, a cheater pipe and a big hammer!) and simply tied the fencing to the fence post with the wire.  There.  Done.

Except it wasn't.  We arrived home from vacation and the first thing we noticed was one of the goats (Matilda) had wire wrapped around both back legs (she's fine now) and the second thing was that the bulls were with the cows.  They broke down the fence in its weakest point - where I patched it with tie wire.

This weekend I had to fix it right.  I did have a problem.  I got my come-along and tried to pull the hog-wire fencing to the post.  No matter how tight I pulled it, I couldn't get it to a point where I could staple the fencing to the existing post.  I thought of several options.  Should I put a gate there?  No, I don't need another gate.  Should I splice in some fence?  No, it would be weak, and I wouldn't be able to pull it tight.

I decided on putting another post in the ground, pull the fence tight to the new post and staple it.  Then I made a ladder.  It fixes my problem.  It is cheaper/easier than erecting a gate.  It provides a tight, strong fence, with quick access to the bull pen. 

I kind of like the gate fix/ladder.  Clarabull isn't enamored by it.  You can see him looking at it with disdain in the photo above after I moved him back into the bull pen.

Aussie will join Clarabull in the bull pen shortly as soon as we can either determine that the cows are bred by seeing them NOT come into heat during their cycle, or if we decide on having them palpated to confirm pregnancy.  Aussie is staring at the new ladder, too, possibly scheming the next jail break.  I don't think they'll be able to break out again.

Making New Wine

In this post from earlier this month we talked about picking 32 pounds of grapes from our neighbor's grape arbor.  That's a lotta grapes!  I realized in that post, I promised to let you know what we were gonna do with all the grapes and never did.  Well, I'll make good on my promise tonight.

We've been picking and eating muscadines from our own vines, but with all these, we have a plan.  We decided to make New Wine.  New Wine is a non-alcoholic wine made with fresh grapes.  New wine contains the nutrients of grapes with many enzymes, but none of the alcohol.  We've done this years ago and decided to do it again.  We'll show you how we do it.  We use Jordan Rubin's book, The Maker's Diet, for directions.

We washed the grapes and then ran them through our old juicer.  It is an old contraption, but it does the job.  Tricia fed grapes into the hopper and the juicer juiced the grapes, sending juice out of one spigot and the pulp and skins out another.  It can get quite messy and requires a concerted effort to clean up the sticky kitchen afterward!

I ran the food mill, further processing the pulp and skins to get more juice out of them.  I theorize that this is where a lot of the flavor comes from.  The mill works good, but I bet that if you washed your feet and stomped them in a big vat, that would do the job as well.  (Except that no one would drink the wine).

Here is a look at the grape juice once we were done:

Once we've finished processing, we have a lot of seeds, pulp, and skins left over.  We feed all this to the chickens.  Nothing goes to waste!

The 32 pounds of grapes yielded 2 and 1/2 gallons of juice.  It kind of looks like split pea soup.

To make new wine, you need whey.  Tricia had just made some kefir, so she had some.  She measured out 1 cup of whey for the juice of 32 pounds of grapes.

 and split it up accordingly and poured it into each jar.

Then a Tablespoon of kosher salt total is divided up between the 2 1/2 gallons of juice.

Once this is done, stir to mix in the grape juice, whey and salt.  Cover the jars and leave at room temperature for 3 days.

After two days, cover and move into the refrigerator.  Flavors will develop and get better over time.  It may not be pretty.  It is actually quite an ugly looking drink.  However, it is refreshing and tasty!

To The Mountains - Part 4 (The Final Day)

While we were gone, we still had lots of animals to take care of: A dog (Belle), A cat (Ginger), Five Cows (Rosie, Clarabelle, Luna, Aussie, and Clarabull),  Four Goats (Annie, Buckwheat, Agnes, Matilda), and Seventy-something Chickens (We don't name all of them!  We call them all Sally Henny Penny).  Our neighbor's grandson agreed to feed and water them each day, and he did a good job.

The night before we were to leave to head back home, we planned to hike down from our mountain cabin to the creek that you could see from the deck out back on the following morning.  We rented the cabin from Fireside Retreats in Mountain View, Arkansas, and I have to put in a very favorable review.  What a fantastic get-away!  Our cabin was an A-frame that was very modern and had all the amenities that you are looking for on a vacation.

The deck out back had an incredible view.  We spent a lot of time out here just soaking in the sights.  It was so VERY quiet.  The cabin is secluded and away from any traffic.  You could really take in all the wonders of God's creation out here.

The A-frame sleeps 6 people and has a loft up top.  That's where the boys stayed.  Down the hall to the front door was the bathroom on the right and master bedroom on the left, with access to each through barn doors.

The bathroom had interesting and cool fixtures.

The kitchen was modern and stocked with anything and everything you'd need.  We cooked every single day.

So the final night of our stay, we were awakened by gentle, rolling thunder and then rainfall.  We could hear the rain hitting the roof right over our heads.  It was relaxing, soothing, and restful.  That's exactly what you want in a vacation, right?  We woke up in the morning, had coffee and a devotion and looked out on the deck.  It was still raining.  The hike down to the creek was off.

But you know what?  That's okay.  Checkout time was 11 AM, and we had three hours remaining in the mountains.  We all climbed up into the loft and laid in bed, talking about the memories we made while watching the rain continue to fall.  So nice.  A perfect vacation only 8 hours away.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Arkansas - The Natural State.

Leviticus 26:4

“Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.”

To The Mountains - Part 3

No computer.  No conference calls.  No work.  No TV.  Mountain life is peaceful and refreshing.  I wish I was still there.  We woke up slowly and made our way to the deck in the back that looked down the mountains and watched the sun rise through the trees.  It was quiet.  No traffic.

On this morning we had a nice cup of coffee and leftover rainbow trout and buttered toast.  The breakfast of champions!  What's in that spray bottle, you ask?  Well, that's Tricia's homemade tick spray.  We smelled strongly of cedarwood, geranium, and citronella essential oils with apple cider vinegar and water. It seemed to keep the ticks away (along with any other people we came across).

Mornings on the deck with a mug of hot coffee and the Bible are a great way to start the day.  I highly recommend it!

We drove off to Sylamore Creek and rented kayaks and a canoe and explored the creek heading upstream.  We had to lift our watercraft over rocks in some places, but the water was nice and cool and clear.  We could see many trout swimming in the creek.  The boys had the kayaks...

Tricia & I canoed.  The canoe is the same model that we have at home.

The scenery was magnificent with rocky bluffs overhead.

Right where the Sylamore Creek empties into the White River, the boys found a rope swing and had a big time swinging out and plunging into the cooooold water.  The rope had been fastened to very small tree.  They were unsure if it would hold their weight, but it did.

We sought out a swimming hole nearby called the Rosa Hole, but there were many, many people there.  We found ourselves back at Gunner Pool.  It turned out to be our favorite swimming hole.  It is right outside of a small town called 56, Arkansas, with a population of 173.  We enjoyed stopping and shopping for snacks at a tiny Mom & Pop Old Fashioned store there.  When we got to Gunner Pool, we were excited to have the entire place to ourselves.  We jumped off the cliff from the lower area (below) and then a much higher area.

We could have stayed there all day!

Mountain View, Arkansas was founded in 1873 and is called the Folk Music Capital of the World.  They have many places to listen to great bluegrass and Gospel music.  We got coffee and ice cream and enjoyed listening to these folks play.

Then we walked across the street to the grounds of the courthouse where people set up benches and lawn chairs and listened to great bluegrass and Gospel music with banjos, mandolins, fiddles, guitar and doghouse bass.  Some got up and danced, others just listened.  The courthouse is located in the town square and old trucks with American Flags flying from the back drove around and around.  Just the best ever!

We packed up our chairs and headed back to the cabin knowing we had only one more day...

To The Mountains - Part 2

"Vacation, all I ever wanted

Vacation, had to get away..."  --  The GoGos

The next day started off with a quick drive down to the White River.  We rented a boat for four for the day to try to catch Rainbow Trout!  We asked the attendants at the dock if we could swim in the river?  His answer: "The river is too cold.  Heart attack inducing cold."  Well, heck. 

We bought bait and loaded our gear onto the boat.  We were instructed to cast upstream, let the bait sink, and reel in and the trout would hit it. As we headed upstream, it was cool.  How different the weather is just 8 hours north!  It was pleasant. 

There was a nice fog rising from the river. The mountains rose on either side with big bluffs and lots of trees right up to the river bank.  The current was strong, rushing downstream at a 6 mph clip.  The weather couldn't have been nicer.

Russ as the captain of the vessel

We looked above to see a majestic bald eagle fly overhead and land in a tree.  America!  We also saw a fawn eating at the riverside, river otters playing on the bank, and lots of turtles.  Our plan from 8 am to 5 pm involved motoring upstream for 30 minutes, turning the boat sideways, and casting our lines upstream.  The current would push us downstream toward the dock and then we'd repeat the process.

At some point the sun began beating down on us and it got hot.  Russ decided to cast caution to the wind about the heart attack and got in a tube we brought along before we learned that was crazy.  Russ said it was very cold, but refreshing.

We began to catch fish.  Rainbow trout!  Such a beautiful fish...

We all fished and when someone caught a fish, another would put down their rod and grab the net to secure the fish.  Benjamin was particularly adept with the net.  We gave him the moniker than was truly earned.  We called him "Benjamin Net an Yahoo!"

We've caught speckled trout before in south Louisiana and love to eat them, but this was our first opportunity to catch rainbow trout.  What an experience!

Benjamin's rainbow trout

Tricia got an opportunity to drive the boat.  She was a pretty darn good boat captain.  She also packed us lunches and boat snacks.  What a great day we had!

We did a lot of boating upstream, viewing the sights and surroundings and then floating downstream while fishing.  We burned an entire tank of gas.

Oh Captain, my captain.

We laughed and talked and sang and just enjoyed good family time together.  It was a peaceful time.  Well, at least once we got the hang of the current and the boat.  At first it was a little unnerving to be in a river with a brisk current.  We're used to slow moving bayous with next to no current.

At the end of the day, we caught seven nice rainbow trout.  Of course there's always the big one that got away.  Benjamin had two like that.  All in all, we caught enough for supper and made some great family memories in the process.

When we got back to the cabin, Tricia pan-fried the trout in butter and lemon.

Fresh-caught rainbow trout for supper.  It was heavenly!

We even had leftovers!  It wasn't over yet...