Redbuds and Spuds

In the side yard just to the west of the house is a tree that up to last week, looked barren and dead.  It's a redbud tree.  It is another tree that we got for free from the Arbor Day Foundation shortly after we moved into our house.  With this tree, we were able to dig it up and transplant it in the side yard in the perfect spot.  There is a sliver of openness between the pecan trees and the live oak trees.  The redbud is able to get some sunshine that the live oak and the pecan tree benevolently shares.  As a result, the redbud has flourished and grown.  

The following two photos illustrate the reason for the name of the tree.  In springtime, even though the tree has no leaves, no green growth, and no signs of life at all, the tree erupts with hundreds or thousands of tiny flowers that line the branches - a beautiful announcement of spring.  Ain't it pretty?

Here is an up-close photo.  The tiny flowers have no discernable fragrance, but they are a feast for the eyes, for sure.  In a few short weeks, the buds/blooms will be gone and big, heart-shaped leaves will adorn the tree.

Just south and west of the redbud tree is a 45 foot double row garden plot that we rotate vegetables into.  We created this bed when we ran out of room in our garden out back.  Now that our 'birds' have flown the nest, we should rethink this and transition this patch back to grass, BUT we've worked so hard to amend organic matter, biochar, compost, chicken litter, and cow manure into, I hate to waste all that good stuff on grass.

The ground in this patch was compacted, hard, poor, and mostly clay when we first turned it over with a shovel.  Now it is easily-worked and fertile.  Last year we had zinnias growing here, along with numerous types of squash.  This spring I planted two double rows of Lasoda Irish potatoes in this bed.  The potatoes are off to a great start.  The plants catapult from the dark earth and up into the sunshine, healthy as ever.

The potatoes are mostly the same size, but a few are taller than others.  Some lag behind, but they'll catch up.

The encouraging thing about the potato crop is that EVERY SINGLE seed potato planted has grown.  There are no gaps to fill.  Pretty soon the plants will shade out and the bed will be nothing but a 45 foot double row of green.  Although the green leaves of the potato plant are nice to look at, the real magic is occurring beneath the soil where tiny potatoes will start to grow.  That one chunk of seed potato will reproduce itself, multiplying into many potatoes from each plant.  They'll be ready to dig in May.  We like to eat the small, new potatoes cooked in butter with fresh green beans.  Mmmm... What a great combination!

One thing I did today is I mowed several sections of the yard.  I closed the outlet from the mower and mulched all the grass, clover, and leaves.  The mower chops them up into small pieces.  Then I raked it all up and nestled it around the potato plants.  The leaf mulch serves several purposes.  First, it crowds out any opportunity for weed growth that might compete with the potatoes.  Next, over the season the leaf mulch deteriorates, becoming a home for earthworms and eventually part of the soil, adding fertility and minerals back into the soil.

Redbuds and spuds in the side yard - a nice treat.  One for the eyes, the other for the stomach.

Six Months Later...

A little more than six months after the hurricanes, we still have reminders of the carnage around us.  Our son, Russ, is about to move back into his home as the contractors will finish up shortly, remodeling his home following a large tree falling through his roof.  We still look around at broken branches ("widow makers") high up in our live oak trees - reminders of the storm.  We are blessed, though.  Many people lost their homes and livelihoods.  

This weekend we wanted to incinerate a big reminder of Laura and Delta that we walk by every single day on the way to the barn.  The "burn pile."  After the storm, we hauled all the branches, limbs, and assorted sticks to the pasture and stacked them in a big, long windrow.  This weekend we started the fire to bid farewell to the one of the last remaining vestiges of tropical wrath still on our property.

Buckwheat the billy goat with his long goatee looks on, as does Belle, our livestock guardian dog.  We separated the long windrow into an individual pile.  Lighting the whole thing up would burn our pecan trees to the east and our newly planted tomatoes to the west.  As the fire consumed the branches, we would toss more on, being careful not to let it get too high.

It didn't take long until the entire pile was burned down to a mere fraction of its original size.  In the photo below, the pile originally stretched almost to the t-post in the foreground.  Now there is lots more room to walk, roll out hay bales, and much less hiding places for hens to lay their eggs.  These new hens are crafty.  We'll discover 'hidden nests' after searching around when we don't collect as many eggs in the nest boxes.

We weren't done with fires or smoke just yet.  As the fire smoldered and smoked, we were about to start another fire.  First, we seasoned up one of the briskets from one of our Jersey bulls with a rub we like.

I started my charcoal chimney fire starter (an easy way to start charcoal without lighter fluid).

Put the brisket on the smoker...

And watched and patiently waited for 6 hours while the brisket smoked at around 250 degrees.  Our Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker does a great job.  It requires monitoring, though, to ensure your temperature stays somewhere between 210 - 250 degrees.  This is easily accomplished by opening or closing the air vents and tossing a few more chunks of pecan or live oak wood in on occasion.

We used cut up chunks of pecan branches and live oak branches we lost in the storms to flavor the brisket.  It turned out delicious.  

More Spring Blooms and A Surprise

As I continued to walk around the yard, I noticed lots of spring.  The grass is growing and in need of mowing.  But it is the trees that really caught my attention.  At the border of our property right next to a big pile of wood chips that has been composting for two years is a little clump of wild peach trees.  They always put on a ton of blooms before the first leaves appear.  The blooms are strikingly beautiful.

These blooms will develop into peaches this summer.  We normally blanch them and make peach cobblers - my favorite way to enjoy fresh peaches.

As we move from the edible to the inedible, the Bradford Pear tree is in full bloom.  More of a decorative tree, it doesn't produce edible fruit.  I originally got this tree for free from the Arbor Day Foundation, planted it intending to move it and then it grew too big to move!

And finally, the Redbud tree.  It has small blooms all along its branches.  This tree soon grows big, heart-shaped leaves.

Everything is budding out and then I look at our citrus trees - brown, every leaf on them dead and falling off.  The freeze really put a hurting on them.  On the bright side, I scraped a small part of the trunks of each of the trees - I think it is called the cambium layer, and I noticed green.  So the trees are still alive, despite the dead leaves.

And today we got our first indication of new growth.  Here are some green growth on the navel orange:

And these are some shoots on the tangerine...

Finally, on the grapefruit!

So temperatures down to 14 degrees a few weeks ago and it didn't kill the citrus.  That is great news.  Now, what I'm interested to see is if they will put on leaves, bloom and fruit this year or will it skip a year?  We'll have to wait and see.

72 Days

Or 10 weeks and 2 days.  Or 2 months and 13 days.  We planted all of our tomatoes (and peppers and eggplant) from seed on January 1st.  72 days later we put them in the ground.  The plants were healthy and green, tall and vigorous, yearning to leave the confines of the seed pots and stretch out their root system in good soil.

I used some baling twine to stretch from one side of the garden to the other.  Then I raked away the wood chips until I got to soil.  The twine enables me to plant the seedlings in a straight row.  It is not necessary to have straight rows, but I like order.  I planted 5 rows of tomatoes, 18 inches apart.  This allowed me to have 13 tomato plants per row, 65 tomato plants total.

I used a shovel to open a slightly deep hole and tossed a handful of biochar inoculated with composted cow manure in the bottom of the hole.  Then Russ planted the tomato, burying it up to the bottom leaves.  The 'leggy' stem will become part of the root system of the plant.  Then Tricia followed behind, pulling the wood chip mulch around the plant to preserve soil moisture and block out weed growth that might compete with the tomato for nutrients.

I planted the following varieties of heirloom, indeterminate tomatoes: 

Black Krim                Black Vernisage            Big Rainbow            Pink Brandywine

Mortgage Lifter        Roma                              Chadwick Cherry    Creole

Cherokee Purple    

Then I planted the peppers, two varieties of of each:

Anaheim        Chocolate        Lipstick        Lilac        Banana        Emerald        Horizon

Then, very far away, in the front of the garden so they don't cross pollinate, I planted six Jalapeno plants - 3 hot jalapenos and 3 Craig's Grande (a big variety for making poppers)  Finally, I planted 3 Florida Market Eggplant.

I climbed on top of the wood chip pile in the back of the garden to capture the newly planted tomatoes, peppers and eggplant and to get a look at the entire garden.

You can see the onion plants in the photo.  They are looking better at this stage than in prior years, believe it or not, after being concerned that the freeze killed them.  We have lots of beets, carrots, chard, kale, kohlrabi to harvest in order to make room for beans, corn, squash, cucumbers, etc.  We'll get to some of that maybe this next weekend.

Family Movie Night - Old School Version

This weekend we had both Russ and Benjamin back with us.  It was as if the empty nest was almost re-filled for a brief period.  Benjamin came in from college for the weekend.  Russ' home is having the floors re-done from hurricane damage so the smell is so strong from polyurethane, he can't stay there.  After a full day of knocking things off the to-do list outside in the garden and yard, we decided to do what we had done when the kids were much younger - we'd have a family movie night!

In this case, we let Benjamin choose the movie.  He chose an old favorite from when the kids were very young - My Dog Skip.

We had this movie on VCR back in the day and watched it many, many times.  Tricia got the VCR going and the very first thing we had to do was REWIND THE TAPE!  We joked about paying a $1 rewind fee.  As we waited, the VCR made a loud noise at the end as the tape tightened and then it stopped.  It was ready to go.

We put the VCR tape in and watched the FBI warning and numerous previews of movies COMING OUT SOON in 2001.  Finally, the movie started.  The first thing we noticed is how "grainy" the video was.  It wasn't as clear and sharp as a DVD.  As the movie started, Tricia stated, "Whew, I'm already getting sad just listening to the music."  And she is right!  This is a very emotional movie.

My Dog Skip (spoiler alert), is a favorite of ours, but it is a sad, dog story - similar to an "Ol Yeller" or "Where the Red Fern Grows."  It is a true story about Willie Morris, a nine year old boy growing up in Yazoo, Mississippi.  Willie is awkward and shy and needs a friend.  His mom decides that he needs a puppy.  The Dad objects, saying "a dog is a heartbreak waiting to happen."  And he's right, but the Mom gets Willie a puppy named Skip and good things happen.  

However, Skip helps Willie make friends and adventures in his childhood that Willie would relish for years to come.  Willie (as an adult) narrates looking back and states:

Narrator:  I almost lost old Skip that day.  Even as he was sleeping on the operating table, he was still teaching me.  That day, I became a young man.  Why in childhood and youth we wish time to pass so quickly - we want to grow up so fast, yet as adults we wish just the opposite?

Isn't that the truth?  I think of that sentiment a lot.  Allan Jackson sings a song about that called 'Time marches on'

Narrator: I was an only child, Skip was an only dog.

Willie and Skip navigated through life on the Mississippi Delta and were good for each other - best buds.

Narrator: There were so many surprises that year.  Who'd have thought that my Daddy would ever let me play football?  And who'd have dreamed that Rivers Applewhite, the prettiest girl in town would let me hold her hand?  It was indeed a strange and unusual time.  Old Skip had helped me through the struggles of boyhood.  But his job was far from done.

A boy and his dog - an all-American story.

Narrator:  In my life, I find that memories of the spirit linger and sweeten long after memories of the brain had faded.

I concur.  Memories about childhood and adventures growing up seem so real and vivid and will hit you right out of the blue sometimes.

SPOILER ALERT!

Willie grew up and moved off to college - to Oxford, England from Yazoo, Mississippi.  While he was gone...

Narrator: Old Skip was eleven, and feeble with arthritis, but he never lost that old devilish look in his eye. He made my room his own. Came across an old photo of him, not long ago. His little face, with the long snout sniffin' at somethin' in the air. His tail was straight out, pointin'. Eyes were flashin' in some momentary excitement. He always loved to be rubbed on the back of his neck. And when I did it, he'd yawn and he's stretch, reach out to me with his paws, as if he was tryin' to embrace me. I received a transatlantic call one day. 'Skip died,' my Daddy said. He and my mama wrapped him in my baseball jacket. 'They buried him out under our elm tree,' they said. That wasn't totally true. For he really lay buried in my heart.   

As we watched last night and the movie finished up and I lay in the dark on the couch, "My Dog Skip" really got to me.  We all lay there in the silence as the credits rolled.  Although I can't exactly put my finger on it, the innocence of youth, memories of growing up, memories of my kids' childhood and the laments of the passage of time and changes cumulatively overtook me in surprising fashion.  I couldn't believe it, but I felt big old tears coursing down my cheeks.  I quickly wiped them off on the blanket I had.  Darn allergies.  All that dust and pollen in the air must be getting to me...

I highly recommend "My Dog Skip" for your next family movie night.  Just be warned - that movie will get ya!

Cupcake & Popcorn

Just a brief update tonight on the kids.  Annie had a buckling last week that we named Popcorn.  Agnes had a doeling last week that we named Cupcake.  Cupcake was born with trouble in the tendons in her front legs, making her unable to stand.  It has improved slightly, but she has a ways to go.  She'll get better according to everything we read.  For now we hare helping her so that she is able to nurse on Agnes.  That is going well.  We think that she's even finding it on her own now.  Tricia goes out several times a day to make sure Cupcake is getting what she needs to grow and get stronger.

Popcorn is another story.  That little dude is the picture of health.  We named him popcorn because he jumps around like a popcorn kernel in hot oil.  The trouble is with his Momma, Annie.  Annie is a big, beautiful goat (as goats go), but over the years her bag has degraded with mastitis to the point at which this year, no milk comes out.  Her bag is enormous, but there must be lots of scar tissue or things messed up inside that makes it impossible for Popcorn to nurse.

So Popcorn must be bottle fed.  Fortunately, we have a pretty good bit of cow colostrum and milk frozen expressly for this purpose.  Tricia makes up bottles every day, several times a day to feed Popcorn.  Here's her baby:

As a result of not getting a lot of nurturing from Annie, Popcorn has gotten very attached to us.  When he sees us, he knows he'll get milk.  He was sucking on Russ' finger in this one.

I even join in on the action at night sometimes.  Popcorn makes that bottle disappear!

If we can get Cupcake healed up, it would certainly make things a lot easier in the barn.

You Can Use Ashes For That? Part 1

My wife emailed me the other day while I was at work.  The email contained the following link:  https://practicalselfreliance.com/wood-ash-uses/  It is a blog post written by a woman appropriately named "Ashley."  The content seemed very interesting since we had just cleaned out the fireplace after burning wood all winter.  We had two 5 gallon buckets of fireplace ashes.  I bookmarked so I would be able to read later.

When I got home, I read it in detail.  Very interesting.  70+ Uses for Wood Ash.  Well, here is a bucketful of ash we just scooped out of our fireplace:

I'll show you one interesting use for ash that we experimented with and it works!  My grandmother on my mom's side we affectionately called, "Bumby."  Bumby collected small silver spoons.  Anytime she traveled, she would purchase a souvenir spoon.  We inherited some of those beloved spoons.  My grandfather "Poppy" made some wooden display cases for Bumby to display her spoons on the wall of the kitchen.  Here are the spoons we have to remember Bumby:

One thing about silver is that it tarnishes.  You must get out the silver polish and polish them up to keep them bright and shiny.  Polishing silver requires some elbow grease.  Well, I hate to admit it, but polishing silver isn't high on our priority list and so our cherished spoons are in a tarnished state right now.

But lo and behold, Fireplace Ashes will polish silver.  Simply add a little fireplace ash to a damp rag and apply.  Well, we wanted to check this tip out.  So we picked out a spoon that had considerable tarnish to test it out.

Tricia applied a little ash to a dampened rag and began polishing.  She was surprised at how effortless it was - easier than silver polish.

After just a short little time, Tricia had expertly polished the front of the spoon...

And the back!

Wow!!  Scroll back up to compare the before and after photos.  What a neat use for fireplace ashes.  As we read and experiment with other uses for fireplace ash, we'll be sure to share.