To The Mountains - Part 1

Once we dried off the cows, we took an 8 hour drive north to the Mountain View, Arkansas area to relax and recuperate for a few days.  We stopped in first to visit an old friend and his wife.  It was great catching up with them.  They gave us a tour of their beautiful home, barn, and property and showed us two Trail Trees in their yard.  I had never heard of that before.  Apparently they are markers made by Indians or early settlers to point toward springs, caves, etc.  My friend has a theory of what the trail trees were pointing to and had us follow him and his wife.  After a brief hike, we arrived at the shelter cave below:

We then journeyed on to an old train bridge in the area, but were too chicken to drive over it.  It looks like they poured concrete over it.  We watched as people drove across it, but we just walked.

Blanchard Springs Caverns were closed due to Covid-19, but we did hike around the area and see where the springs come out of the rock:

It is hard to believe that if you just drive 8 hours north there are mountains and crystal clear spring water (no mud!). 

The sounds of the water in the creek flowing over the stones in the creek bed are so relaxing and peaceful.  We wanted to stay here all day!  Arkansas is called the Natural State.  The views we take in of nature are gorgeous.  We talked more than once about the beauty of creation that our Creator made!

The park is well maintained, clean and has nice walking trails.  No litter and not congested with people.

Despite our protests, Benjamin hopped out on a moss-covered rock in the middle of the creek.  We thought he might slip and fall and break his head open.  But, alas, he did not.  The water in the creek was COLD!

Mirror Lake was right down the road and lived up to its namesake.

We arrived at our cabin on top of the mountain that we rented from VRBO.  It was a really neat A-frame.  Clean, modern, yet rustic, and comfortable.

I'll show you more of the cabin later, but here is a photo off the deck in the back, looking down the mountain at the creek far below.

Beautiful, relaxing, peaceful.  But it didn't end there!

We're Back!

We had a mini-vacation.  Stay tuned for a post coming tomorrow night!

The Neighbor's Vineyard

And sow the fields, and plant vineyards, which may yield fruits of increase.  He blesseth them also, so that they are multiplied greatly; and suffereth not their cattle to decrease.  Psalm 107:37-38

Sunday afternoon our neighbors were in the yard, and we walked over to talk to them.  They had brought over some fresh fig cookies and several bags of apples, and we wanted to thank them.  It is so good to have good neighbors.  We were standing in the shade visiting underneath their vineyard.  They are taking care of their parents who aren't in great health.  This keeps them very busy.

As a result they mentioned that they wouldn't have time to pick their grapes and offered to us to feel free to pick as many as we'd like.  Well, that's an offer we can't pass up.  Our muscadine grape vines are juveniles.  Our neighbor's grapes are old and established and produce lots more than ours.  We took them up on their offer.  Tricia grabbed our ladder and a few buckets and started picking grapes in the neighbor's arbor.

Tricia finally gets a "raise"

I found a shady, comfortable spot to pick!  Mr. Bill, our neighbor's Dad who planted the grapes also built the trellis the grapes grow on.  He was a Drilling Superintendent for an oil company, so the trellis is made with drill stem.  This grape trellis will be standing for the next 200 years!

While our muscadines are dark red when ripe, these are a shiny golden-green when ripe.  Some have a pinkish tinge.  The ripe ones are also soft to the touch.

They are quite large - bigger than a shooting marble.  More like the size of the "plunker" marbles we used to play with.

In no time flat, we picked this Tupperware cake cover and two and a half bucketfuls!  We weighed them when we brought them inside and they weighed 32 pounds in total.

The grape vines are healthy.  Just look at all the foliage!

When picking, we clip the bucket on the hook on the top of the ladder meant for holding paint cans when you are painting.  That little hook works fine for this application as well.

We brought all the grapes inside.  What in the world are we gonna do with 32 pounds of grapes?  Well, on Thursday night, I'll post Part 1 with more details about our Great Grape Project of 2020.

A Mink Coat For Tricia?

A mink coat.  When I think of that, I think of wealth, luxury, affluence.  The other day I almost acquired a mink coat for Tricia.  Let me rewind and tell you the story.  The hens have been real nervous lately.  My wife theorized that something was terrorizing them.  A hawk?  An owl?  Possums?  I promptly set the trap and caught 3 possums in five days.  I thought the culprits were caught.  Good thing, because their numbers were diminishing.  We're missing a noticeable amount of hens.  But now, I thought I solved the problem.

However, on Thursday of last week, there were feathers all over the ground by the barn and the hens wouldn't even go out and eat when we fed them the hen scratch.  What in the world?  On Friday I got home and Russ had been out to the barn to collect the day's egg production.  As he was picking up eggs, he noticed a fracas in the pasture.

Or maybe not.  It appeared at first glance that a hen was taking a dust bath.  After looking more closely, SOMETHING had her.  Russ picked up a stick and ran out to rescue the hen.  He popped the predator but good, and it limped into the woods wounded.  Russ ran to the woods and caught up with the perpetrator and finished the job with a solid blow to the animal's head.

What was it?  A mink!

This vicious weasel-like creature is a little larger than a squirrel.  This one was reddish-brown in color with lighter markings on its tail and a white patch under its chin.

I was impressed that Russ was able to run after this hen-killer and catch it.  Russ was in the right place at the right time.  The mink was not!  His chicken-killin' days are done.  The hen gratefully was saved.  She was scared and visibly shaken, but she'll live to see another day, thanks to Russ.

Where there is one, there's bound to be more.  We will keep our eyes peeled for more mink mayhem.  For now, though, I think I have the beginnings of a mink coat for Tricia!

On second thought, it might be quite a while before we can kill another.  Tricia is petite, but I'd have to kill a bunch of these varmints to make a coat for her.  Perhaps I can skin the mink and make Tricia a fashionable mink fur lined mask for her to wear during the Covid craziness.  She'd be the talk of the town.  I'm gonna go out on a limb and say she'd never wear it.

Making Butter With My Great-Grandmother's Butter Churn

My Mom gave us an old butter churn that belonged to my great-grandmother.  It is an old antique item, but it still works.  We dried off the cows on Friday, so we didn't milk Saturday or Sunday.  It was the first day in two and a half years that we didn't milk!  We made some butter on Saturday as it will be the last fresh milk we have for a number of months until the cows freshen.

The first three photos are out of order.  I took photos of the butter churn after we were done to show you the old mechanism, so the churn has buttermilk and butter on it from the process.  Here is the churn:

It is simply a gallon glass jar with gears, a crank and a rod with wooden paddles on it.  It is superbly built.  They made things to last back then.  It reminds me of an old Merle Haggard song where he sings, "I wish a Ford and a Chevy would still last ten years like it should."

Here are the wooden paddles that spin as you crank it that eventually separate out the butter from the buttermilk.

Now that you see the mechanism, here is a little less than half a gallon of cream in the jar that Tricia is cranking to turn into butter.  It helps to allow the cream to come to room temperature before cranking.  This will hasten the time to make butter.

You will immediately know it when the butter "breaks."  You can feel it when cranking.  Suddenly instead of liquid in the jar, you can feel something solid in there.  It's BUTTER!

Now you have to pour off the buttermilk.  This doesn't get wasted.  Tricia made homemade blueberry muffins Sunday morning before church using the buttermilk.  Rich and tasty!

The butter is put in a bowl and the buttermilk fills a quart jar.  The work isn't quite done, though.

We use a spatula to squeeze the remaining buttermilk from the butter.  By rolling the butter over and over and pushing down, you can squeeze out more buttermilk.

Once done, we add a pinch of kosher salt and stir it in

And there we have it.  Fresh butter from Clarabelle and Rosie.  The last of it for several months.  We also make butter just shaking it in a quart jar, but there's something special about using a family heirloom from several generations back to make it.

Eat your heart out, Land 'O Lakes.  This is Land 'O Swamps Butter.  C'est Bon!

This Years' First Picking of Muscadines

Muscadines are a grape that is native to the southeastern - south central United States.  If you take a walk into the woods in our area, you'll find them growing wild along the banks of the bayou with vines growing high into the trees overhead.  In May 2014, we planted our own muscadine vine in the side yard and we have it on a trellis made from a cattle panel.

Each year we pick more and more muscadines!  This year appears to be a bumper crop.

I like to eat them right off the vine while they are warmed by the sun.  The muscadines are so flavorful.  They have probably 3 to 4 seeds in every grape, but that's okay.  We just spit them out.  I like to pick them when they are a deep red coloration and soft.  The harvest goes on for a while, so every day you can go out and pick some.

I was planning to go and pick some the other day, but Russ beat me to it.  We've been eating on these in the kitchen.  Tricia reminded me to be careful while picking as there is a wasp nest amongst the muscadines.  I don't want to get stung while picking and eating.  That would put a damper on the fun.

Tricia and I planned on going to the vines to pick this afternoon after work; however, we started visiting with the neighbors under their grape arbor and eating their grapes.  We talked and snacked on their grapes for so long, we didn't ever make it to pick from our vines until it was time to go eat supper.  Tomorrow is Friday.  We'll make time to go pick tomorrow or this weekend.

Growing a New (For Us) Type of Cowpea (Southern Pea)

Saturday morning is a morning different from other mornings.  We slow down the pace to that of a three-toed sloth or maybe a snail.  It is a day that we allow the sun to beat us outside.  We rise at a respectable hour, have coffee, and slowly make our way out to milk the cows.  Once finished, I usually take a stroll through the garden, not to work, mind you (that comes later in the day), but just to take in all the changes that I didn't get to observe during the week. 

It is usually around 9AM by this time and the sun filters through the live oak trees to our east and lights up the garden with soft light.  I notice the beautiful blooms of some peas.  If you look closely below, you can see that a fire ant is enjoying the bloom as well.  Can you see that dad-gum thing on the flower?

This beautiful bloom is on a new plant for us.  Several years ago, we went to a sustainable agricultural conference.  In one part of the conference, they have a seed exchange.  They invite attendees to bring heirloom seed to trade.  It is a good opportunity to pick up some new varieties of old heirloom seeds that you can't buy from seed companies.  These are seeds passed down in families from generation to generation.

This bloom is from a plant in the Southern Pea family called a Whippoorwill Pea.  I had never heard of it before.  I opened the small brown envelope with a hand-written label containing the seeds and planted them a couple months ago.  The seeds were old.  I was not optimistic, but lo and behold, they grew!  And now they are blooming and setting pods of peas.

The peas seem immune to the heat and dry conditions of south Louisiana and send out vines that stretch across the ground and climb up the trellis supporting the luffah gourds and birdhouse gourds.  This is an old seed!   This seed was harvested from the gardens at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's garden.  Here is what is written about it from the Monticello website:

In 1798 Thomas Jefferson wrote that the cowpea (also called southern, crowder, or field pea) "is very productive [and an] excellent food for man and beast."  He also praised the species' ability to improve the tilth and fertility of the soil.  Cowpeas, first brought to the southeastern U.S. by African slaves, were sowed in the South Orchard at Monticello between 1806 and 1810.  Whippoorwill Cowpea, a bush variety with short runners, purple flowers, and 7-9" pods, was popular in the 19th century.

The pods of the Whippoorwill pea turn white when they are ready for harvest.  I've been picking quite a few of them. 

In the evenings I sit in the kitchen and shell peas.  Sometimes the boys help me if they are around.  It goes faster when you have help, but like Saturday mornings, we don't get in a rush.  Shelling peas is a relaxing exercise.  Time seems to stand still.  The stress of the days' demands roll off of you like water off a duck's back. 

When you are done, there is the gratification of a job well done.  Here we have a nice bowl of fresh-shelled Whippoorwill Peas.

Whippoorwill Peas are different from other cowpeas.  They are a little smaller and have a green-grey mottled color.  I like the way they look.

Now, to complete our review, we just need to cook up a pot of them and taste them.  The flowers are pretty, they laugh at the heat and dry conditions of the summer, the yield is great, and they are nice to look at.  The proof, though, is how they taste.  I'll report back on that.  I am optimistic and have saved some of the best looking pods to hold back for next year's Whippoorwill Pea seed planting.

These peas have survived for over 200 years in America.  Might as well do my part to keep them going for at least another season.