Homestead Happenings

It’s been a while since any update, but not because nothing is happening on the wee homestead. It’s still the same story—the biggest news-worthy thing is the one I’ve been avoiding writing about.

As usual, there are the latest piglets and chicks and harvests and garden woes and ‘unseasonable’ weather. Rest assured, we’ve had all that again this summer.

I did imagine if I ever run out of blogging content to share I could start a new quiz show . . . Here we are in East Texas folks, so let’s play Guess The Season!

Come on down, step right up, where your chances to win are a remarkable 1 in 4, WOW!

But it might be more challenging to win than you think. How about it, ready to give it a try?

The roses and geraniums and wildflowers are blooming, volunteer tomato plants are coming up, the lettuce is bolting and the dogs are shedding, what season is it?

Well, if you guessed springtime, tough luck loser!

Let me give you another clue, Rambo, Teaky and Papa Chop are horny, but the girls are all already knocked up. Poor fellas!

What else is new, or not? We have entered slaughter season, my fall transplants are dying in the heat, the moles and voles and gophers have taken over the garden, and I have only two bee colonies which survived the summer, again.

It’s well past time to plant garlic, Hubby prepared the rows a month ago, but I don’t dare do the deed. It’s still far too warm. They will start growing too soon, putting all their energy into a fine green shoot that will then die when the inevitable frost comes again, and the remnants of the bulb will then likely rot in the ground.

As far as general garden results for the year, a mixed bag, as is typical. The peppers did not do well and I had such high hopes. Last year we had amazing peppers all summer and fall, so I really have no idea why this year was so poor. It was my hope to experiment with spicy ferments and pimientos. No such luck. We have dismally few jalapeños and green peppers coming in, plus one prolific plant that magically survived, producing these beauties, which will hopefully ripen quickly. I had to pull off one entire branch, which is where these green ones originated, because it was overtopping its cage and becoming unruly.

The squashes also did not do well and I attribute this to the wet spring followed quickly by excessive heat and drought. I’ve heard from several nearby gardeners who had the same problem.

The cucumbers were another disappointment, but that was my own fault. My goal was to prolong the season by succession planting, so I planted fewer cucumbers than usual at peak time, thinking we’d have them fresh and fermented for the entire summer and fall, so no need for canning surplus.

Unfortunately, even the young plants could not thrive in our summer temps, so old ones which were past their main production, along with new but not yet producing, all died. Then I got lucky and some volunteers showed up in late August, so I nurtured them along, and right after they started producing, we got a super early frost, one night only. It killed them off.

Surprisingly, the quick frost did not kill off the few remaining peppers, or the watermelons, which I planted late after starting them indoors, on a whim, because the best part of the summer garden this year was definitely the watermelons.

And now, we’ve got more!

Thanksgiving watermelons, that’s a first. There’s also a few volunteer tomatoes I’ll be digging up soon to move inside under lights.

The baby citrus trees have all survived their first summer, I’m so hoping that’s a sign of continued success. They aren’t looking so good, but they’re hanging in there. I’ll take that as a win, as temporary as it may be.

The young citrus planted in early spring, not looking great, but still hanging in there!

I’ve also been babying a few graveyard treasures. Perhaps as a distraction from my misery, I’ve been visiting all the cemeteries in the area and have found in them a few spectacular specimens I want to grow.

There was the healthiest, largest Turk’s cap aka Mexican apple (Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii) I’ve ever seen, and in the middle of drought still bright and beautiful. I’ve been wanting one not only because they are drought-tolerant and attractive, but also because they are a popular medicinal and a perennial edible. (I’ll definitely be covering it in a future Herbal Explorations post.)

Wild Edible Texas: Turk’s Cap

I did manage to get one cutting, out of 6, to take root. There’s also a wild pink rambling rose that I got rooted, and some gorgeous Magnolia trees, which I hope I can get started after stratification and scarification of their seeds.

Plus, I’m excited that 1 of the 3 Mimosa trees I dug up from the gutter in early spring, and have been doting on all summer, is doing beautifully; I think she’s going to make it! Last year’s attempt failed by this time of year, I think because the spot I chose was too shady.

Another noteworthy piece is we’ve had a mystery fruit invade the garden.

Mouse melons gone wild? I did plant store-bought mouse melon seed, also called cucamelon, for a couple of summers. I called it my ‘crop of the year’ in 2018.

https://kenshohomestead.org/2018/08/25/celebrating-small-steps/

They were a novelty item I thought I’d try, and while they are so cute and a fun addition to the summer produce, they are super tiny and tedious to harvest, so not a lot of bang for the buck.

Mouse melon from Wiki: Melothria scabra is native to Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela,where it grows in forests and thickets.

That is the closest fruit I can match to our mystery fruit, which does come with a more interesting backstory.

Two years ago I found five of these fruits on the road near the creek with no plant attached to them. I figured they were part of a squirrel’s stash that had flooded out, or had dropped from an unknown tree, a wild variety of something I’d never heard of before. I was so intrigued!

I looked all around for the potential tree and couldn’t find any. But, somehow I got it stuck in my head that I’d just found wild kumquats. When my local gardening friends laughed and told me that was impossible, I said, well, we will see.

The following spring I gave some of the seeds to a friend and planted some in our garden. Within two months I’d regretted it; it was no tree. The vines had very quickly begun to take over a large section of space with the most tenacious tendrils and prolific foliage I’d ever seen.

I told my friend to pull them out, immediately, as they were very invasive and she has very limited garden space. She laughed and said, “I told you they weren’t kumquats!” 😆

The vines are so tough they’re like pulling thick rope. They readily re-root from the vines as well, and I came to discover this year, re-seed with great abandon.

While I pulled them up that first year before seeing any fruits on them, there must’ve been some hidden, because this year another plant formed, rather late in the season, and in a spot where we could afford to leave it to its natural inclinations.

Wow, what a giant beast it grew into! In the dead of summer, in severe heat and drought, without any supplementary water, it grew, and grew, and has produced so many golf ball sized fruits I could’ve easily filled a wheelbarrow with them more than once.

Except the fruit is quite sour, exceptionally seedy and with tough skin. It was a labor intensive process, but after peeling and deseeding, I made a few ferments and I was impressed with the results.

But, the vines were taking over, moving into our pathways, climbing up fences, choking out everything in its path. So we started pulling it, mowing over it, and generally abusing it on a daily basis.

It lived on! All through the late summer and into our faux fall. It actually started regrowing under the brush pile of leaves and grass we piled on top of its last remaining vines.

While most of the fruit became pig fodder, I’m still impressed with its determination and tenacity and will be finding some wasted space to keep the mystery fruit in our summer rotation. Maybe with the okra, which we aren’t crazy about either, but keep growing as a ‘just in case’ survival crop.

There’s been another ancient garden mystery, which we may have finally solved. I mean ancient in the modern sense, that being over five years in the making. It concerns the herb popularly named ‘Mexican oregano’.

Many years ago I started looking to plant this herb, one of my all-time favorites in the kitchen, and that’s when the quest began.

Now, one would certainly think this herb to be readily available in these parts, considering every year I can find in the garden stores many different varieties of oregano—Greek, Italian, Cuban, Golden, variegated, ornamental, Syrian. Really, Syrian?

No Mexican. And yet, that’s right over our border, certainly a lot closer than Syria. Why can we not find seeds or plants of Mexican oregano?

Years ago this put a bee in my bonnet loud enough to get Hubby on the hunt. Between the two of us we’ve spent many hours calling around, searching online, trying to sift through the mounds of misinformation and redirection.

Yes, it would seem that’s happening not only in politics and history, but even in culinary herbs!

Once we were able to identify the basics of the problem, we honed in on the solution. There are actually two different types of (commercially unavailable) plants called Mexican oregano. We’ve been buying the herb in bulk for years without any problem, but we really want to be growing it ourselves.

~Mexican Bush Oregano (Poliomintha longiflora)
Mint family

~Mexican Oregano (lippia graveolens)
Verbena family

Of the 2 types, we want to grow the latter, lippia graveolens. It’s a marvelous oregano and not just in Mexican cuisine. The flavor is much less intense than Greek, more like marjoram, but with notes of citrus and thyme. It’s quite unique as far as oregano’s go, which makes sense, since it’s in the verbena family and not the mint family, as most are.

After discovering we cannot find plants or seeds anywhere around here or online, we were really wondering why this is. It’s a very popular herb after all, used in lots of Mexican dishes. We did come across a few sites that claimed to sell the seedlings and small plants, but they were always out of stock.

Finally, Hubby stumbled on a potential answer in an online forum. It was suggested that they don’t sell the seeds because they are too small. We had never thought of this! It was suggested to simply sprinkle some of the herb purchased from the store onto some soil! Wait, what . . . ?

So, I’ve been trying that a couple of times now, and I may have just gotten some positive results.

Back to the bad news. We continue to lose trees, old and young, at a dismal rate. This one flashed out dead within one week in July. It’s one of four equally large ones that have come down just this summer. I honestly can’t imagine how that happens so quickly outside of being poisoned. The dead leaves continue to hang there, almost 3 months later, while branches full of dead leaves come down in the slightest wind.

The spring floods that forced Hubby to rebuild our culvert then turned into the two-month plus drought that made his efforts futile. Still, it had to be done, as the washout was really significant.

The previous culvert was our first job when we bought this property. That time I was a big helper, right alongside Hubby, digging dirt and dragging debris. It was necessary in order to get the car to our camping spot, where we spent many months building the cabin. Hauling in water, no electricity, sleeping in a tent. Ah, the good ole days!

This time I didn’t lift a finger, not even to take photos. He was able to successfully replace the culvert with a structure which we call our ‘bridge to nowhere’.

But, it was still necessary even though we aren’t camping over there anymore, in order to get the tractor to the back half of the property for other reasons—fence repair, any necessary tree felling, or getting to the cabin that’s become an unusually attractive storage room. 😏

Hopefully this one will do the trick for another 15 years or so.

Slaughter season may not sound so appealing, but if you could smell our kitchen when Hubby is cooking up the meats and broths for canning, or making his marvelous split pea soup or sampling sausage mixes before freezing, I think you’d change your tune.

Which reminds me of a bit more news worth sharing. Canning potatoes has been a surprisingly good choice I’d not have expected. Fried potatoes are such a popular food and we eat them weekly. But it’s a pretty labor-intensive process to make good fried potatoes, because you’ve got to cook them twice to get them crisp. This is probably why so many folks rely on the wide variety of frozen French fries and other convenience potato products on the market.

While we never get large potato harvests here (besides sweet potatoes that is) Hubby is an excellent sale shopper. When he spots them for really cheap, like they are now at just 19 cents a pound, he’ll buy a big load of them and get prepping.

By getting the first part of the potato prep done in bulk, these canned potatoes are so quick and versatile and delish. It does take a lot of initial time and effort—peeling, chopping, pressure canning, but it’s well worth it.

All you have to do then for perfectly crisp ‘fries’ is drain and rinse and dry a bit, then toss them in your hot oil or fat of choice and in minutes you’ve got a cheaper, healthier, quicker version than most convenience products.

And would you look at that! Such a long and newsy post which I managed without ever mentioning the elephant in my head.

That is the goats. My great summer sorrow. I lost 9 of them; there are just 4 left. And I still can’t face up to it without tearing up.

So, it seems I can be as avoidant, bypassing, stalling, redirecting, minimizing and gaslighting as the best of them, when it suits me. 🥲

Just protecting myself from facing reality, right? How very common.

I failed. I miss them. That dream became a nightmare.

But I can’t end on that sad note, not now. The summer has been hard on the sheep and the dogs, too. We lost several lambs and Hubby was once again nursing Shadow issues for weeks. That’s quite another story, for another time.

Suffice it to say, he’s doing fine now, hurrah!

Better watch out, Shadow’s in loop position, he’s about to pounce!

What an athlete!

And right back to lounge position.

There’s always Bubba, giving free hourly lessons in lounge.

Thanks for stopping by!

Do you have any idea what our mystery plant could be?