Three Thoughts on a Thursday

I was doing some thinking today as I walked around and observed things.  Sometimes there are things to be seen if we'll open our eyes.  There are lessons to be learned, if we'll listen.  Often God educates you outside of the church doors.  

Pecan trees are the last trees on our property to bud out in the spring.  By this time, all the leaves have fallen.  When the kids were younger, I would rake up huge piles of leaves and they would run and jump in the leaves.  Such fun!  We grow up and stop jumping in leaf piles.  Why?  As I was thinking about that, my eyes saw something in the garden in the side yard.

What might be a little hard to see is a watermelon plant left over from the spring.  It is still living.  It is clinging to life with determination.  It has a will to live.  It will never produce watermelons.  Too late for that.  It doesn't worry about that.  It lives.  One day at a time.

What is not hard to see is the Lemon Queen Sunflower left over from the spring.  It's bright yellow contrasts mightily against the gloomy gray sky.  

It's bloom dispels the gloom, you might say.  It lights up the room.  In times of darkness and sorrow, that's what we should aspire to do.

A good friend of ours went out foraging for mushrooms and wanted to share some with us.  How nice!  He gave us three paper bags full of mushrooms.  Here is the top of a big cluster of oyster mushrooms that, following the rain, were growing all over a willow tree near the bayou.

Here are the gills on the underside.  The oyster mushrooms were heavy and clean and had a woodsy smell.  This afternoon Tricia made Rice dressing (Rice, ground meat, green onions, onions and a bunch of seasoning).  She quickly sautéed the oyster mushrooms and made an ad lib on the normal recipe.  She mixed the mushrooms in with the rice dressing.  You know what?  It worked!  It was delicious.  We cleaned our plates.

We've got a bunch left to eat.  I always like sautéing them with onions, garlic and heavy cream, but then again shoe leather would taste good, I'm sure, cooked with onions, garlic, and heavy cream.  Years back, I would've walked right by these in the woods or I would've kicked them off the tree and destroyed them.  Now I know better.  There is fresh food growing for free all around us, if we look and learn.  Thanks to our friend that shared the oysters with us!

In this world, it is easy to have a "woe is me" mindset, but I trust that things will get better.  Oh yeah, you say? "That's a one in a million shot."  What are the chances of that?  Slim to none?  Not so fast, my friend!

My eyes caught a strange sight on the patio.  We have a patio table with an expanded metal top.  It has those little openings.  We have a Laurel Oak tree in the front yard.  It has been shedding its leaves and the leaves fly over the roof and fall on the patio.  Look at how they fall and lodge themselves in the holes in the table-top.

I don't think I could stand over the table and make that happen if I tried all day.  Somehow some of the leaves defied the odds.  They didn't end up on the ground like all the other leaves from its tree.  No, these leaves achieved the impossible.  Who would we want to be like?  The leaves in the pile on the ground or the leaves standing tall?  Let's stand tall, come what may.

Merry and Bright

Our family celebrated our Savior's birth and all the festivities that surround it.  We purposefully try to keep things low key and simple.  We had a nice worship service on Christmas Eve, entitled Jesus, the Light of the World.  At the end of the service, everyone comes up and lights a candle on the tree to signify Matthew 5:16.  It is an old tradition at our church and is always a moving service.

Way out in the country in Hathaway, Louisiana, there is a family that puts up lots of Christmas lights - 4 acres of lights to be exact.  We walked around and looked at all of the beautiful lights.

It is amazing that people will put in the time and effort and expense to put up lights for the community to enjoy.  Truly a sight to see!  My photos just don't do it justice.

We had already made tamales, but had some baking to do.  First we made pumpkin empanadas and almond crescents.  Then we made Gingerbread men.  We always get a kick out of decorating them.

Here is a special one I made for Benjamin.  It is a Benjamin Gingerbread man CT scan, showing the titanium rods in his spine and legs.  

Then we made baklava.  This is a favorite dish of ours.  It is tedious with 10 individual layers of phyllo dough followed by a mixture of pecans, coconut, sugars and spices, followed by 10 more layers of phyllo and another layer of the pecan mixture and 10 more layers of phyllo dough.  We slice it and bake it.  Then we pour a diluted honey solution over it and let it soak in overnight.

The resulting confection is a sticky-sweet delicious dessert.  Look at the flaky layers.

We enjoyed spending time with family and being thankful for the many blessings in our lives, first and foremost, the birth of the Messiah, Jesus!

Joy To the World, The Lord is Come!

Image Credit

From the Sonnier Family here at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, we wish you all God's best as we celebrate the coming of the Christ Child and hope that you enjoyed the company of family and friends and those you love.  There is darkness in the world, but the Light of Christ burns brightly and nothing or no one can separate you from His Love.

We spent nice time with family.  We gathered in the den where my Dad opened the Bible to the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke and read of the Messiah's birth.

In Him we find hope for the hopeless, encouragement in all our despair, and peace amidst the storms of life.

A Christmas Tradition

My bride grew up in South Texas.  Corpus Christi, to be specific.  In her family, they had a Christmas tradition - making tamales.  One of the first times I visited, we made them.  Everyone lined up in the kitchen with a job to do.  I didn't know a thing about tamales other than how to eat them, but I'm always anxious to learn.

Although we don't make them every single year, we try to make them as often as possible.  This afternoon, as a family (Tricia, me, Russ & Benjamin) spent the afternoon making them.  Laura Lee wasn't here, but I assume she'll be involved in helping us eat them.  I'll show you what we did.

First, Tricia mixed up the masa with spices and broth and stirred it all together.  It smells really good!  That's a lot of masa - 10 cups.

For the meat, we used beef (a chuck roast, shredded) and chicken (thighs, deboned and shredded).  The meat was heavily seasoned and then broth poured in to keep it from drying out.

The corn husks are put into a sink full of warm water to soften them up a bit.  They need to be soft in order to roll up the tamales.

Normally in the past, to spread the masa on the corn husk, we'd use a butter knife or a big, flat spoon.  This year, we were trying out a new tool - a Masa spreader, made in Corpus Christi.  You simply scoop up roughly half a cup of masa on the edge...

And the nifty gadget smoothly and evenly spreads the masa onto the corn husk.

Tricia's assessment is that it makes the task of making tamales go by quicker.  I was spreading masa and she was adding the meat and rolling them and stacking, and she said she couldn't keep up with me.  As you can see, you add roughly a tablespoon of meat to the center of the corn husk.

Then you roll them up and bend the end of the corn husk over.  Then we stack the tamales in dozens.

When we were done, we had made 13 dozen!  We put a bunch in the freezer to freeze and we'll be cooking and eating some this week.

The masa spreader is going to take some practice.  I was probably putting the masa on too thin, so our meat ran out before the masa did.  Not to fear.  We devised a way to use up the extra masa.  We made some "refried bean and cheese" tamales!  A vegetarian option, I guess, even though we aren't even remotely vegetarians.

We had a good time together, laughing and visiting while we worked.  We'll have a good time together eating them, too!  It's a nice tradition.

Would You Eat Year-Old Vegetables?

This year we didn't quite know what the fall garden was going to look like.  With a drought that rivals anything that we've seen since we've lived here twenty-something odd years, we didn't even think we were going to get a fall garden in.  Couple that with Benjamin's accident that occurred at the beginning of September where we were in the hospital every day and night for over a month and well, the prospects of a fall garden was on shaky ground.

But we got it in.  The only crop that we missed the deadline on and didn't plant was Irish Potatoes.  We generally try to get a fall crop in, but not this year.  If you drift past the September 15th last planting day, you really risk it.  An early freeze will wipe them out.  That's experience speaking, ha ha.

The question that the title of this post asks is a little misleading.  I'll clarify.  I've learned to overplant seeds in the event that germination isn't good.  If your germination isn't good, you end up with enough plants to get a stand and achieve a good yield.  On the other hand, if they ALL come up, you can gently pull out some of the seedlings to get the proper spacing and either give the seedlings to family members and friends or replant them in another area of the garden.

Sometimes, however, I don't get around to doing that.  What ends up happening is that some of the seedlings are 'shaded out' by their larger counterparts.  They are still alive, but they are stunted in the undergrowth and never mature.  This year a funny thing happened.  After we harvested the ripe kohlrabi and broccoli in the spring of 2023 from the fall crop, some of the stunted seedlings lived on.  They lived on through the heat of summer and the drought.  Miraculously, we are harvesting some year-old vegetables right now.

Here is a purple kohlrabi.  It is a weird plant, but tastes delicious!

If one would ask me to envision what vegetables would look like that grew on Mars, the purple kohlrabi would be my answer.

We fed all of the leaves to the cows.  Then we harvested a bunch of florets off of the year-old broccoli and have been eating year-old vegetables for the past several days.

Later this week or perhaps the next, I'll show you another year-old vegetable that we're going to harvest.  The fall garden is really producing right now.  Lots of lettuce, radishes, sugar snap peas, snap beans, kale, bok choy, etc.  Most of those were just planted this fall.  That's expected.  It's the ones we're harvesting now that were planted LAST fall that are something different from what we've ever seen before.

An Update on Benjamin - Back to Work

Tricia took Benjamin by the Medical Office at the refinery that he works at and he was cleared to go back to work (light duty) part-time.  Benjamin completed his first full week back at work.  He works M-F 7AM -1PM.  Because he hasn't been cleared to drive, I drop him off in the morning and Tricia picks him up in the afternoon.  It is a 45 minute commute to his work from our home in Jennings.  I drop him off by the front gate and he walks in.  He's very happy to be back at work.  Even though he's limited to office work only, sitting at a desk behind a computer, he says it feels good to be useful and part of his work team once again.

His right leg (the one that has the non-union) hurts him while walking.  He walks with a limp and since he is spending more time upright, he's noticing swelling coming back in his right ankle and foot.  He's a little discouraged with that, but doesn't spend a lot of time worrying or complaining about it - at least not out loud.  On Monday and Wednesday, he has rehab in Jennings from 1:30 - 3:30 or so, where they work on improving his strength and his gait.  He's still working hard with that.

We did receive a call today from a nurse who will be bringing by a bone stimulator on Thursday that he is to wear for 20 minutes each day on the right leg.  The hope is that it will stimulate bone growth where it hasn't healed yet.  After 3 months of this, we'll return for x-rays or MRI and consultation.  If it hasn't healed, another surgery will become necessary where they will go back in and remove hardware.  We are praying that this is not necessary.

Benjamin tells me that he tries real hard to walk as normally as possible at work so people don't stare at him, and he thinks that's why his leg is hurting so bad.  All things considered, we feel absolutely blessed by Benjamin's healing up to this point and the progress he has made.  The fact that he is back at work just blows my mind.  I watched him as he walked into work this morning as the sun was rising.  It hasn't been an easy road and no doubt he may have rough days ahead, especially if another surgery is needed, but God has been so good to him and so good to us.  Thank you for being so faithful in praying for Benjamin.  He's so appreciative and can't believe how kind people are to him. 

Sunday School Christmas Party

This past Friday evening a couple in our church who have the gift of hospitality opened up their home to our Sunday School class from Cornerstone Baptist Church in Jennings.  It was our annual Christmas Party.  We met at 5:30 and visited for a good while.  We then circled up in the kitchen, held hands and prayed.  There were 19 of us in attendance. 

We lined up and fixed our plates.  There were lots of delicious dishes on the buffet line.  I tried to try a little bit of everything.  Some of the more interesting was boudin stuffed in a pastry with a pepper jelly glaze, homemade sausage, and... Alligator!  It was lean and in a spicy gravy.  There were more desserts than you could shake a stick at.  We had coffee with dessert and then moved to the living room where we took pictures around their tree.

Then we sang Christmas carols.  Next year we'll bring our song books since we only know the first verse of each carol, pretty much.  We sang some hymns in Cajun French along with interpretations for the non-French speakers.  We laughed and joked around and thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

It is good to have a close church family to belong to!  What a blessing from God.

Knocking Things off the List

I had a somewhat easy day at work today, so it allowed me a little time in the mid-afternoon while I had some daylight left to knock two things off my list.  How's your To Do list?  If it's anything like mine, I add two things for every one I scratch off.  I'm not complaining, though.  That gives purpose and ensures productivity.  It protects one from the sin of slothfulness!

First item on the list:  Move mulch to the garden pile.  We have a number of piles of wood chips that have been decomposing.  As I make space in the back of the garden, I move it from the yard piles to the big pile in back of the sugarcane in the garden.  These piles have reduced significantly in size as they decompose.  It's time to go find the right-of-way clearing trucks and get some more.*

The interior of the pile is moist and full of mushrooms.  If I rub it all together in my hands, it turns to a rich soil-like substance - a nice growing medium.

In the big pile of wood chips in the back of the garden, I'm working on what I call bacteria compost lasagna.  I call it that because I have layered wood chips, cow poop, wood chips, dead chickens that the mink killed, wood chips and cow poop.  Today I put a cap on the lasagna but topping it off with wood chips.  The bacteria in the cow manure and dead chickens will inoculate the wood chip pile with bacteria.  The mushrooms will further break down the pile so that next year some time, I can move all this into the garden.  Then we start the process all over again.

Second item on the list was to "secure the hen house."  As you saw, the mink murdered a number (about two thirds) of our flock.  They did so by accessing the hen house at night by digging under the tin walls that weren't reinforced by bricks and cinder blocks and gaining entry.  Today, armed with some self-tapping screws, tin snips, a drill, and tin, I drove the tin into the ground deep and screwed it in securely and then piled bricks and rocks against the wall to discourage them.

I know what you're thinking.  "It ain't pretty!"  It's not.  This is an old hen house that was given to me and moved on site.  Over the years, the bottom tin rusted out leaving holes that tempted various varmints and vermin to find their way into the hen house.  That ends today.  I know it doesn't match and its not even.  A friend told me one time, "Animals don't care if it's pretty.  They don't care if the wood or tin is cut square.  It just has to be functional."  I subscribe to that!

It's all patched up.  Along the back wall where the roosts are, prior to my patching job, you could see sunlight from where the holes were.  Not anymore!  The only daylight you see is from the coop door that I have opened.

Third item was to patch up the holes in the rabbit hutches.  These are really, really old.  There were numerous holes in the roof and in the hardware cloth that would allow critters to get in and kill my chickens.  I fixed all of that and worked on latches for the doors.

You can see the hens making their way into the hutch on top.  That's where I lock them up for the night, safe from predators.  The bottom hutch is not ready so that we can move the hens from the chicken tractor that's in the yard.

I didn't want to move them before I had everything fixed as best as I could.  That was an afternoon of fixing things.  The next items are much more fun.  I'll be digging sweet potatoes and picking pecans.  Hope ya'll have a great weekend!

Proof That Taste Buds Change

When I was younger there's no way I would've eaten greens.  Mustard greens, Collard Greens, Kale, Swiss Chard?  Forget about it.  I think I tried them, but did not like them.  I don't know what happened.  At some point I got bit by the "gardening" bug and haven't found much in that garden that I won't eat.  Green, leafy stuff of all types are coming in right now by the bushels.  Here's a typical daily basket of the good stuff that Tricia harvested:

I had a serious hankering for some mustard greens over homemade cornbread.  Not just any cornbread, but cornbread made with buttermilk and Anaheim peppers.  First you have to cook down some chopped mustard greens.  At first it looks like the skillet isn't big enough.

But that changes quickly as it starts to cook down.  We add a little bacon and some onions as it cooks.

Notice something in the bottom of the skillet?  Pot liquor.  This is the liquid left over when cooking down greens.  Not only is it good, it's good for you.  Filled with Vitamin A and C and iron.  If you spoon some of that over the cornbread and let it soak it all up, well, that's some mighty fine eating right there.  Here's a plate of the good stuff:

This is a better picture as you can see the cornbread under the pile of mustard greens.

This is simple, yet delicious, country food.  I would have never eaten this as a kid, but now?  I look forward to it.  The whole skillet was wiped out in two sittings.  Time to go to the garden and fill another basket!

Items on my Desk

I have way too much junk on my desk.  Mainly books, photos, trinkets, reminders of things from the past.  This evening I looked at these old artifacts.  Were you a member of 4-H when you were growing up?  Do you remember why the club was called 4-H?  In other words, what do the four H's stand for? (Answer Below)

Head, Heart, Hands, Health

We'd meet in the gymnasium and would stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.  Then we would remain standing for the 4-H Pledge.  I still remember it:

I pledge my head to clearer thinking,
My heart to greater loyalty,
My hands to larger service,
And my health to better living,
For my club, my community, my country, and my world.

4-H was just a club, but I still remember my advisors and activities that we did and important life lessons we learned, trips we went on, and friendships we developed.

46 years ago I was awarded that wooden ruler shown above for participating in a Forestry Slogan Contest.  I don't remember what slogan I came up with.  Forestry was a big deal in our area.  There were 'tree farms' where pine trees were grown.  Right down the road from where I grew up there was a nursery where pine trees were grown for the timber business.  When large areas of pine trees were clear cut, the land was replanted with pine trees from the nursery.  

To protect the tree farms from fire, there were fire towers in the area.  People were positioned in the tower to scan the horizon for smoke.  If fire was threatening the trees, trucks with bulldozers were called out to the area and fire lanes would be made to stop the forest fires from damaging and destroying the trees.  There are big facilities in Allen Parish and parishes to the north and west that make plywood.

Back to 4-H.  4-H was a fun club.  We all looked forward to going to Camp Grant Walker in Pollack, Louisiana during the summer.  We'd attend Achievement Day where we'd be tested on Seed Identification, Leaf identification, Livestock Judging and all other sorts of things.  Demonstration Day was a day that made your knees knock.  You had to get up in front of the class and give a demonstration on something.  It was your first real shot at public speaking.  I was terrified!

As I look back on it, I think of how naïve and simple the times were.  One of the more popular demonstrations was, "How to Clean a 12 gauge Shotgun."  Yes, we would bring shotguns to school and break them down and show how to properly clean a gun.  No one thought anything of it.  It was innocent.  It's kind of amazing, if you think about it, how much we've changed since then. 

The Parish Fair was a blast!  I would bring my sheep to show in the fair and would win ribbons like the faded one above.  People throughout the parish would bring all sorts of things that they grew in their gardens, or farms, or pickled or canned.  We'd walk through the barns after judging to see who grew the best looking potatoes, or who had the biggest rabbits.  Of course there were the rides!  We'd ride the Twist-A-World, and The Scrambler, The Ferris Wheel, and the Rock-O-Planes.  I got sick and threw up on the Rock-O-Planes!

It's funny how some old trinkets on your desk can transport you back almost five decades to good memories! 

The Perfect Time for Fresh Leaf Lettuce

I grew up eating head lettuce, Iceberg, to be specific.  There's nothing wrong with iceberg lettuce.  The CRUNCH of iceberg lettuce is something I look forward to when eating a salad.  However, for years we've been growing an assortment of different types of leaf lettuces and leaf lettuce mixes.  While they don't have the "crunch" of iceberg lettuce, the different colors and the variation in shapes and sizes of leaf lettuce yields a rich dividend to your salad bowl.

Right now, the weather is perfect for fresh lettuce.  It has cooled down so the pressure from bugs and worms has finally lightened up.  The cooler temps have also slowed the growth of the lettuce.  When it warms up, the lettuce grows so fast, it quickly bolts to flowering and becomes bitter tasting.  The lettuce we have been harvesting daily has been sweet, tender, and colorful.  We have so much lettuce, we couldn't possibly eat it all!  Lettuce seeds are so small and that tempts me to always plant too many.

Let's look at some of the lettuce on the lettuce row.  The first is a nice red romaine.

Next we have an Oak Leaf Lettuce.  You can see that it is aptly named.

The next three varieties are different types that are in a salad mix that I plant:

I like the way this one looks.  I call it 'freckled lettuce.'

This one is brightly colored.  It also has a crunch to it, although not as much as iceberg.

On my way out, I walked down the Sugar Snap Pea trellis.  These sweet peas are very sweet.  I like to eat them raw while I'm standing there.  Tricia also stir fries these up.  They are delicious in fried rice.  With the sun in the background, it almost appears like this is an X-ray.

We'll continue eating salads daily, while the freezing weather holds off.  Even when it freezes, I'll attempt to cover them to see if I can save them.

Times, They Are A-Changin'

Since Benjamin has moved back in with us, we've been watching old episodes of "The Wonder Years."  If you have never seen it, it is a beautifully written TV series that ran from 1988 to 1993 about growing up in the 60's and 70's.  We'll generally watch two episodes in a row and sit in silence for a few seconds and just say, "Wow."  The story lines are so poignant and tender.

For a nostalgic like myself, this show brings back feelings and memories that were previously catalogued and filed away neatly in hermetically sealed boxes way back in the corridors of my mind.  The episode we watched tonight was about the pain a father feels when his kids grow up and move out on their own, sometimes taking on different values than those they were taught.  The episode closed with the Bob Dylan song, Times they are a-changing.

Times are a-changing, aren't they?  My wife and I were just talking about this today.  I'm an old-fashioned dude.  I'm not an extremist or a radical.  Heck, I have the same values as that of my father and my grandfathers.  How does one become an extremist if he hasn't changed?  Those values are tried and true.  They worked.  I haven't moved.  It's just that everything else has.  I don't know how to live another way.  I don't want to live another way.  My anchor is down. 

Funny how times change.  Times always change.  This morning my work brought me to the town I grew up in, right next to the field where I used to play Little League baseball.  Here is a photo of the third base line:

The Volunteer Fire Department now sits right on the infield.  The best I can figure, home plate was at the near corner with the third base line running down where the garage doors are.  There was a fence in the back.  I never hit a home run in this park, unfortunately.  Right over the fence were the railroad tracks where the Missouri Pacific Lines trains would run, blowing their horns loudly as they passed.  We'd leave pennies on the track and pass back and pick up the flattened pennies to take home as souvenirs.

Just past the railroad tracks was the Kinder Butcher Shop.  We would walk over in our uniforms and cleats with all the spare change we could find.  When you would open the door, the smell of smoked meats would greet you.  If I close my eyes, I can smell that aroma.  There were always some Hitachi Rice Cookers warming hot boudin on the counter.  We'd buy links of boudin to eat and a Dr. Pepper and walk back to the park, now prepared nutritionally to play ball.

This here is the first base line:

There was a concession stand just to the left of the corner of where that building now sits that we would frequent, purchasing delicious, big dill pickles from a gallon jar, so sour they made your mouth pucker.  Then we'd buy blue raspberry snow cones to wash the pickle down that would stain our tongues and lips blue, not to mention our white uniform pants.

I played for a team called the Pirates.  A lawyer in town was my coach.  I remember we had a hot shot pitcher from a neighboring town that threw straight fire from the cannon that he had for an arm.  I was the catcher, crouching behind home plate, absorbing his salvos.  His fastball broke my thumb.  I was in a cast for a while and on injured reserve.  I straightened a coat hanger to scratch down in the cast where it itched.  I had everyone sign my cast, and wanted to save the cast for a souvenir, but by the time it was cut off, the doggone thing stunk so bad, it needed to be disposed of.  I couldn't wait to get back behind home plate and play ball with my buddies.

The ballpark is long gone.  Many of the buddies I played with are gone, but all the water from the Fire Station's hoses can't put out the flames of all the memories of good old times shared there.  Which leads us back to where we started.  Times change.  You can't go back.  Apart from your memories, those times (and many of the people) just don't exist anymore.  But from a cultural standpoint, what if you don't want to go forward in this brave new world?  The answer for me (everyone has to make the decision for themselves) is to remember to magical time we grew up in, but live life now, make memories, trust God, be joyful, and be true to your core values.  Contra Mundum.