The Blessing of Side Dressing

I remember when my grandfather taught me how to garden.  It opened a whole new world to me.  Simply watching the miracle of a seed being dropped in a hole and a few days later witnessing the tender seedling sprout out of the ground had me hooked for life.  I remember how he taught me to water and weed the garden and, as the plants began to grow, to side dress my vegetables with fertilizer.  "Just like you and I eat, plants have to eat, too," he told me.

These days I primarily feed the soil, amending it almost daily with compost and other organic fertilizers, pulling out weeds, mulching it.  It is always important to take care of your soil, if you want it to take care of you.  Our cole crops are growing quite nicely.  Even though we got a bad start, losing most of our cole crop seedlings to rainy, soggy weather that persisted for months on end, we went to plan B and recovered nicely.  On a nice Saturday afternoon, the temperatures in December spiked to 80 degrees, causing the leaves on the cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower to wilt a little.  They like cooler temps. 

I took the opportunity on this glorious day to side dress the vegetable plants.  I wanted to give them some food to make them happy as they will begin producing heads in the next few weeks or a month.  Just as we operate best when we're well-fed, plants will produce best when they have the nutrients they need.  There is nothing quite like home-grown vegetables fresh from the garden.

I had some organic fertilizer tucked away on the shelf under my work bench and got it out and headed to the garden.  Russ came out to help me.  I grabbed an old spoon that we no longer use to eat with to use for digging holes.  I find that is the best thing to use when side dressing.  When plants are close together, I don't want to risk damaging any of them with a hoe.  A spoon is much easier to use for this task.  Side dressing is doing precisely what the name suggests - with the spoon, I dug a hole on the side of the plant and deposited the prescribed amount of fertilizer into the hole and then covered it up.

Side dressing allows the nutrients to be available near 'root-level' so that the fertilizer is accessible to the growing plant.  We'll check on them in a few days to see if the plants are happy with their "meal." 

Putting It Back in the Ground

The frost we had in November finished off the okra.  Fortunately, we had a great harvest this year which enabled us to eat as much as we wanted AND put enough away in the freezer so that we can make 8 or 10 more gumbos this winter before we would have to buy any okra.  While he was off on Friday, Russ took the pruning shears and lopped off the okra stalks.  He left the okra roots in place in the ground.  They'll rot and will be worked into the soil next spring.

Okra "stumps"

The okra plants were between 10 and 11 feet tall.  Once he was finished chopping the okra stalks down, he had quite a pile of debris.

So what to do with all of the debris?  From reading on the Internet, I learned that the composition of the plant itself is made up of nutrients and minerals that have been pulled up from the soil.  The best choice is to put it all back into the soil.  The plant will decompose and in the spring, other plants that I'll grow right on top of the buried okra plant compost will be able draw from those same nutrients to grow.  So first I dig a big trench in the garden ground.  I try to do this especially on the southernmost part of the garden since the land is low on that side.

Then I fill up the trench with okra cuttings and toss in some cow manure.  The bacteria speeds decomposition.  Then I cover it all up with dirt.  It raises the soil level a bit.  Once the okra begins to decompose the ground will settle.

Doing this same practice year after year has built up the soil level.  It has added organic matter to the soil which lessens soil compaction.  The added organic material helps the soil bank moisture during drought months.  There are numerous benefits to trench composting garden waste back into the garden.  You can do this with leaves, grass-clippings, kitchen scraps, shredded paper, etc.  I have seen significant improvement in the soil over five years, and I'd highly recommend this practice.

The Frost Finally Did Them In

Way back on April 14th of this year, I planted some seeds that a friend gave me on the row right in front of the okra.  They were seeds (he told me) of a squash called the Tahitian Melon Squash.  It is supposedly the sweetest squash there is ~ even sweeter than butternut squash. 

The Tahitian Melon squash seemed to languish in the garden for most of the spring and summer.  No blooms.  No fruit.  Oddly enough, once the weather cooled somewhat, the plant took off!  It invaded the back half of the garden, creating long vines, huge leaves, blooms and fruit!  It was so prolific, it was hard to pick okra, because you had to walk around the vines so as not to damage any of the growing squash.

Finally, about a week ago, our first frost finished off the plant.  I went out and picked all of the squash off of the vines and put them in a 5 gallon bucket.  The leaves and vines had been decimated by the light frost.  I wanted to pick the squash before they began to deteriorate.  I think there was about ten of them.  They made a nice seasonal centerpiece on the supper table. 

Tricia cuts them in half and roasts them in the oven.  We use a spoon to scoop the flesh out and eat it as a side dish.  Very smooth, creamy and sweet.

I asked Tricia to save the seeds off of the biggest one so that I can plant more next year.

The Cream Always Rises to the Top!

One of the extra special things about milking cows is the cream.  If you look at the gallon jar below of fresh milk that we put in the fridge, you'll see a line about one third of the way from the top.  Everything above that line is cream that has risen to the top.  You can shake it up and drink it all - whole milk.  Or you can skim it off and drink the 'skim' milk.

We normally shake it up and drink whole milk - so sweet and delicious.  But, we also skim some off for coffee or for making whipped cream to put atop desserts.  I captured the process of the milkmaid, Tricia, making fresh whipped cream for our pumpkin cheesecake on Thanksgiving Day.  After skimming the cream off the top of the milk, Tricia poured it into a bowl.

She put the whisking (or whipping attachment, I assume) on the stick blender and turned it on.

In less than 15 seconds, the cream begins to thicken up.  Tricia has often said the stick blender is one of her favorite gadgets.  In the past we've poured cream into a quart jar and allowed it to come to room temperature.  Then we shake it for 4 or 5 minutes to make cream.  Needless to say, the stick blender speeds up the process.

And in two shakes of a billy-goat's tail, it's done.  The cream is ready to be put on top of the cheesecake.

All that's left is to taste it...

Delish!  The cream rises to the top.  From milk to cream to whipped cream in less than a minute! 

Using Heart Pine To Start The Fireplace

This morning when I woke up the winds were briskly blowing out of the north and east with temperatures in the mid 40s.  This evening it was downright chilly.  I made a fire in the fire pit outside.  Prior to that, though, I was thinking about starting a fire in the fireplace in the next couple of nights.  I've moved a load or two of firewood under the patio for when we light one, but realized that I need to go cut some heart pine or lighter pine.

When we light fires in the fireplace, we always start the fire with a few kindling sticks of lighter pine.  I looked on the Internet to see exactly what heart pine actually is and it confirmed my suspicions:

"Heart pine," as it is referred to, is only long leaf pine. It was the main type of pine found in the old growth forests from Virginia to Texas. This type of pine is called "heart" because when it reaches maturity the tree is mostly heartwood. This is not true of other lesser specie of pine such as loblolly and slash. The original old growth long leaf pines grew to be 300-500 years old. It contains almost twice the resin content of other types of pine and had much much higher structural strength. It was used for the tall masts of sailing ships and was referred to as "The Kings Pine" when this country was owned by England. Much of this information and more is contained in historical record of the Great Southern Lumber Company in Bogalusa, LA. This mill was opened in the early 1900's and was the largest sawmill in the world at the time, producing 1 million bdft of long leaf pine per day.  Credit Link

Here is a big chunk of lighter pine that I chopped some kindling sticks off of today:

I have a stack of this stuff that I keep on hand for fire starting.  I wish you could smell how Great it smells by scratching the photo below!:

From looking at heart pine from the outside, it is unremarkable.  Hard, heavy and dull looking.  But when you split it open, it has an amber tint and is oozing with sap and bursting with aroma of pine.  In my scouting days, they taught us to take our pocket knives and carve little slits in a stick of heart pine on every side, opening it up like a Christmas tree shape.  Then you would light it and use it to start a campfire.

I can remember clearing land at the farm in Oberlin that was previously all in pine timber.  We'd pile up sticks to burn, but we'd put all the pine knots and heart pine that we would find on a trailer and would save it.  Many years ago my neighbor gave me a bunch of logs of heart pine that he had gotten from Georgia while on a job.  Each year I cut sticks off of the bigger logs and place it on the bottom of the firewood in the fireplace.  It starts very easily and pretty soon, you have a roaring fireplace!

Here's my bucket of cut up heart pine.  In a few days, we'll be ready to burn our first fire in the fireplace of the winter.

Can't wait!

Daisy Comes Home

Daisy is the matriarch of our current Jersey herd.  Back in 2007, she came to us as a baby calf on the side of her mother, Momma Cow.  Momma Cow passed away years back, but Daisy remains.  She's getting up in years a bit and has been having trouble getting bred the last few times we've had her get together with a bull.

We've had her get checked out by our veterinarian, but he cannot find anything wrong with her that would be keeping her from getting pregnant when all the other cows have gotten bred.  So, we have a friend in Hathaway with a registered Jersey bull.  He agreed to let us bring Daisy down to stay for a few cycles with his bull. 

Our friend saw evidence that Daisy was bred by his bull, but this has happened before without her actually becoming pregnant.  Two days ago, blood samples were taken to check to see if Daisy is carrying a calf.  We await the results.  We picked up Daisy and brought her back to home.  She arrived in the trailer and began walking to meet up with the rest of the little herd that she hasn't seen in a couple of months.  There was lots of mooing and bellowing...

Cows go through some sort of a greeting process where they touch noses and then start walking around sniffing each other.

And then they sniff some more...

After a couple of months all the cows are back together again.

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We should hear results of the blood work to confirm pregnancy in about 10 days.  If the results come back that Daisy is open (not pregnant), we'll have to make some hard decisions.  On a three acre pasture, we can't keep cows that can't provide calves.  We'll cross that bridge when we get there, I guess.  In the meantime, we'll pray that Daisy is carrying a calf - a heifer calf!

Thanksgiving 2018

Psalm 100 King James Version (KJV)

1 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.

2 Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

3 Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

5 For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

I hope that you had a great Thanksgiving and had and opportunity, like we did, to spend it with family, eating great food, enjoying fellowship with those you love, and making memories. 

Baked Turkey Before it was Devoured

We ate entirely too much and then sat around and had great conversation with one another, telling stories and laughing.  Amazingly, these conversations didn't involve cell phones or computers. 

We sat around a fire pit and enjoyed the beautiful weather and then ate again in the evening.  As I write this I am so thankful for a great family, for health, for spending time with people that I love.  I am thankful for salvation through Jesus Christ and for blessings that I do not deserve.

Although our lives are far from perfect, God is so good to us, and we are so thankful!