east texas – Kensho Homestead

Homestead Happenings

It’s Shoulder Season on the wee homestead, and by that I mean a few things.

Tomatoes on their way out, eggplant just coming in

Shoulder season, for those who maybe new to the phrase, has a specific meaning in tourist trades, meaning between high season and low season. Savvy travelers and those who dislike crowds or who are just cheap or nearly broke try to travel in the shoulder season.

As far as I know it doesn’t have a parallel meaning in the gardening world.

But for me it does. It’s the time we move between seasons in the garden and since we garden all year, it happens twice, once in Swelter Season (now) and once in YoYo Season (formerly known as winter).

The key summer crops in the garden are either long gone–onions, garlic, crucifers, or mostly dead–tomatoes, squash, melons. And normally the cucumbers too, except those are, so far, successfully secession planted, with the new generation just coming up as the last one is dying. Good timing there, tiny bow to me!

Old cucs on left, dying fast, on right a couple of tomatillos in the back, also dying and a volunteer datura, doing great.

New cucumber plants looking good, but will they produce?

And big bow to Handy Hubby for growing this 27 pound beauty!

A nice variety of melons and squashes, we are quite pleased.

While it could be Vacation Season for some more sane types, for us it’s the work of Shoulder Season. We keep the minimum that will survive our high heat for the next two months and baby most of them best we can.

But under lights inside the fall/winter garden is on its way. There’s already another crop of tomatoes coming up, as well as broccoli, cauliflower and arugula.

In the ‘babying’ bed I continue my lettuce experiment, starting romaine indoors under lights and moving under double shade cloth to transplant, then removing one level of shade cloth after a few days to adjust. They are still alive, yay!

Also in the ‘baby’ bed under shade cloth: some parsley barely hanging on, some dill trying to seed, 2 peppers, 2 dying tomatoes and lots of very happy basil.

Tomatoes, peppers and basil for marinara. And in back left is cured lamb.

There’s processing to be done still, the marinara stockpile is done thanks to Hubby, but there’s still ketchup and bar-b-que sauce. And we still call this a bad tomato year!

Ah, the gifts and curses of relativity. And surplus.

The pears are looking promising, and the grapes–which will be the next big project–wine and cider-making season. Blackberries and pears are our easiest fruits here; everything else seems to struggle. Though we have had years of good figs, and some neighbors still do. The grapes are looking good too, but there’s no guarantee.

And I think I finally got the trick for strawberries. It seems most everything that is most delicious is high-maintenance. What can -we do, if we like high maintenance produce but to contend with the high costs of creating them?

Many years of failed strawberries, but this year was a great success in comparison. Now the runners are going crazy and taking over this bed, so next year promises to be better still.

I’m planning for more low-maintenance in future, but those might be high hopes.

Because, my choice would be to spend my dwindling number of pain-free hours working with the flowers!

I’ve seen a few butterflies and bees on the pink ‘Obedience plant’, such a welcome sight!

Which brings up my other meaning for Shoulder Season.
So much shoulder pain! And I am not good at staying stationary, it drives me nuts actually. So it’s between physical anquish, or mental, and I do far better with the former.

It’s as unwelcome a kinked, knotted, crippling invasion as this mystery fruit I posted about last year. I unknowingly caused quite a crisis in the garden and lost almost all the melons I planted.

What is this imposter which choked out all my melons?!

Just when I was insisting to Hubby we need to be thinking about reducing our garden plots in order to reduce our workload and water usage, I stand corrected. The orchard squash didn’t produce well at all, for some unknown reason; the garden melons were choked out by the wild cucumber; so without the third space we’d have no watermelons or honeydews, which would mean a mostly melonless summer after lots of work and wait, as the main garden produced about half a dozen sub-par cantaloupe.

A sweet, cold watermelon is the best morale booster in the hot, humid Texas summer garden jungle!

Two wheelbarrows full of vines and fruit the pigs don’t even like.

Wild cucumber vs melons and the melons lost bad. I have still not been able to figure out what these things are, which I brought into the garden under false pretenses. I have heard suggested they may be lemon cucumbers or mouse melons, but they are not the right size, shape or color for either of those.

I really get the frustration of invasive species now. I realize I’ve been a bit cavalier on that front in the past, for good reason, but I have definitely been humbled this time as these bitter, seedy imposters are still popping up everywhere.

Please, give me an invasion of the supposedy invasive Mimosa trees, and I’d be thrilled!

You have my permission to invade my gorgeous Mimosa!

The plants that thrive here in the long high heat and humidity are so impressive, even when invasive, but it helps my morale considerably to consider the non-invasive ones as often as possible.

A couple of young zuccini with the sweet potatoes

The sweet potatoes are almost effortless. Once they get established and as long as they get a good head start over the bindweed (another ‘invasive’ relative) they are pretty reliable. Eggplant and okra are others, and we’re learning to like eggplant. Maybe even a lot.

Eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, green beans and tonnato sauce over rice noodles, delish!

The bountiful basil takes center stage as the parsley, dill and cilantro take early retirement and don’t even bother to seed, it’s so damn hot.

Whether and which tomatoes will survive, or thrive, from one year to another is anyone’s guess.

Gavin’s seeds, the Scarlet Runnerbean (barely) and Black Hopi Sunflower, are hanging on still, very impressive.

The black Hopi sunflower behind a mystery weed that smells medicinal. Any idea what it is, anyone?

The two out of three citrus planted last spring are doing well–they look healthy and their growth has more than doubled since spring.

The poke weed, the datura, don’t get me started, such beautiful and amazing plants!

But, the mystery weeds, what are these?

Thanks for stopping by!

Homestead Happenings

It’s been so long since an update I don’t know where to start. Or where to end, or what to include. But I figure there have got to be a few readers out there hankering for some other news besides the shitstorm coming at us from the global mafia and the media cartels.

In my last update we’d started remodeling the kitchen. That was a very big DIY job, it took a very long time, and we’re still not totally finished. But we are very pleased with the results that were easy on the budget and tested our creativity, skill and resourcefulness.

I thought I’d include our first time redoing the kitchen, in 2009 when we first moved in, with the previous owners’ belongings to haul away before we could begin. It had been empty for many years and the mice and roaches had taken over. It was a disgusting experience, the worst of which we got to avoid this time, so that was a bonus.

This time we also repainted the ceiling and walls and all the cabinets as well as the breakfast nook bench and storage unit Hubby had built previously. He also replaced the countertops and handcrafted new lighting and shelves, expanding on the same ‘steam-punk’ style as he used on the entryway table he built last year.

Work in progress:

Just installed butcher block countertops, quite the challenge when floors and walls aren’t level or plumb!

After way too many lost hours, I was not always a happy DIYer! But I am pleased with the result.

I spent a lot of time stripping and re-staining the kitchen table. I still want to dress-up the windows treatments and paint the doors and bases of the table and stool. But then we got too busy and had to devote our time to the garden and orchard.

The cucumbers and zuccini that were badly damaged by hail in late spring did make a bit of a comeback, but now are succumbing to the heat.

Unfortunately and as usual, a lot of the time devoted to the garden gets wasted because of crazy weather. This year has been no different and we had a lot of rain at the wrong time for some crops at some stages. The older peppers did fine with it, but the younger ones look terrible and are not recovering. Same with the tomatoes. The heirloom Scarlet Runner bean is struggling and not producing, but is still quite pretty as an ornamental.

I’ll be writing about those seeds, as well as the ones that grew this great big beautiful Black Hopi sunflower (the tallest I’ve ever seen!), in an upcoming post about Gavin Mounsey’s book Recipes for Reciprocity, because the seeds came from him.

https://recipesforreciprocity.com/shop/softcover/

These cucumbers were just the right age for survival and are going strong now.

I’ve gotten good at succession planting over the years for the reason of crazy weather. In very early spring I try to get tomatoes, flowers and herbs started, but am often disappointed by late frosts. Days of heavy rain and high humidity with overcast skies can easily cause damage to younger more vulnerable plants in early summer. By this time of mid-summer I’m sowing more cucumbers, herbs, and sometimes beans, but it’s often already too hot for them to get established. At this point, we get what we get until fall brings more hope.

But of course I can’t be satisfied with that and am always experimenting. Often it’s fall tomatoes or melons, which rarely work out. This year it’s the challenge of romaine lettuce through summer. I seriously doubt it’s possible, but I’ve got a tray that has just germinated under lights inside to give it a try. I’ll put them in a shaded box, with plenty of hardwood mulch in an attempt to keep the roots cooler. It’s been in the 90s everyday lately, humid and not cooling off much at night, but there’s still some growing that wasn’t smashed by the heavy rain and hail a couple of weeks ago.

Left photo is view from garden, normally the creek is not visible at all. Right photo is walking along the power easement to the very flooded creek banks.

We also had another big oak tree die suddenly in the prime of life. The last one was just taken (partly) down by the electricity company’s crew because it risked falling into their cables. The latest one Hubby will have to fell himself, before it comes down on the fencing. That will probably be after he fixes his bridge to nowhere that he just built last year in response to flooding and was nearly taken out by this year’s repeat performance.

In the last two years, with no tornados or hurricanes to blame, we’ve had three large trees right around us flash out dead in a matter of days. Rather disconcerting to me, to say the least.

Still, let’s end on a positive note. Some years are better than others. We had an inexplicably bad blackberry year, but this year was excellent. Hubby made blackberry wine with much it, which was much better tasting as a young wine than the one I tried to make and age last year. Some years we have amazing tomatoes. Other years it’s great melons. Maybe this year it will be spectacular grapes?

It doesn’t take much for fabulous meals when food is fresh. Fermented herbs and veggies add flavor and nutrition with just a little garden surplus or foraging time. The chanterelles always do better with lots of rain. Hubby’s delicious young blackberry wine makes such a refreshing spritzer when mixed with kombucha.

Eating seasonally from our land is so rewarding even when we don’t have a bumper crop.

I have a long list of content coming up during the swelter season, so all the more excuse to stay indoors. Thank Man for air condition! 😆

And thanks for stopping by!

Homestead Happenings

It’s been quite a long time since an update on the wee homestead projects and activities; it’s hard to know where to start! How about, for consistency sake, I bitch about the weather for a bit, and then move along to better tidings.

Of course the geoengineered chem-filled skies continue, as does our Yo-Yo season (formerly known as winter). We are using the air conditioning now, it’s been 80 degrees for days.

Buttercup is especially sensitive to the YoYo, to the point of regular getting seizures at such times, also lethargic and losing her appetite.

There was of course the lows not long ago in the 20s and I was very concerned for the newly planted citrus. We employed quite the set up of lights and covers and they faired very well, I’m happy to report.

Invasion of Asian beetles on the citrus cover

But there has been a bad invasion of these awful beetles, which we’re vacuuming off the ceiling multiple times a day. Not to be confused with the garden-friend, the lovely little lady bugs, NO, these little beasts are really nasty. They infest, as obvious from the photos, and they bite, and as if that’s not enough, they stink.

I don’t like when folks call them lady bugs, they are not at all ladylike, so I try to correct them anytime I hear complaints, which is more often than you might think. The reaction I get is much more open and accepting than when I inform them about the manufactured weather.

Old lettuce bolting, replacing with new lettuce started under lights indoors, along with broccoli and cauliflower.

It does keep us on our toes, dealing with the Yo-Yo. Lettuce and herbs bolt prematurely quite often, seedlings come up then freeze or wither. We never know from week to week what to expect or how to plan.

I don’t normally have such a fancy setup, but these trays were gifted to me and they’re working quite well germinating some lobelia and snap dragons.

My indoor lights and heating mats make things easier, as does the row cover in the garden, but it is constant juggling. And if I miss a beat, death. Like happened with the Mexican oregano I was so proud of. I forgot about it outside one night when it frosted. Very disappointing considering our long journey of discovery, and how long I babied those few little sprouts, trying to anticipate their every need, carting them inside for warmth, then outside for sun and wind, and just when they were getting their legs, gone. All my fault.

Well, except for the geoengineers, because I wouldn’t be doing this constant refrain if our weather was consistent or predictable or seasonal.

I’ve tried twice since then to sprout the herb again with no luck. I will succeed eventually, of course, we’ve come too far in our quest to fail. The Mexican oregano has a long tale in these parts. Failure is not an option. More on that in the last HH post, if you like. https://kenshohomestead.org/2024/11/14/homestead-happenings-43/

I’d like to say it was the same with the milk quest. Unfortunately, I’m not nearly as confident; I feel failure is probably inevitable and maybe even imminent. For the time being I’m counting my blessings I’ve found another (perhaps temporary) source. Last time I was complaining about the cost, this one is even more expensive at $15/gallon. At that price I’m not going to be experimenting with any new cheeses, that’s for sure. To make cheese at all is not really feasible, except for the most delicious of selections—Camembert. Otherwise the precious commodity goes toward morning coffee, ice cream, and buttermilk for recipes and the extended expiration date.

I’ve been doing continued research on the topic of raw milk and what’s available and in general, where’s the market vibe. I found one young entrepreneur with a private herdshare selling cheese for $25 a pound. (A Herdshare Agreement or a Grade A license from the state are the only ways to sell raw milk in Texas legally.).

With my new herdshare deal I can buy more milk for cheesemaking, if I’m willing to pay $15/gallon. Considering the hard cheeses I typically made were 5 gallons ideally (better for aging in less than optimal conditions), that’s a really expensive cheese.

Certainly what can be made on-site are far better cheeses than can be bought at the store; that’s why I started making cheese in the first place. But still, it’s really hard to justify all that work, and expense, when we can still buy organic cheese for about $8/pound.

I will splurge one time in late spring, if possible, when the grass is thick and so the milk most rich. And we do still have two goats, hopefully pregnant, so there’s a small hope of cheesemaking in my future, if all goes well.

Moving on to the garden, the garlic is going strong and I’ve just got the onions in, 3 big rows of each. The garlic we plant is elephant garlic which does so much better here than any other variety I’ve tried, and I’ve tried lots. These are local for over a decade now and their productivity has yet to disappoint.

The onions are from purchased sets and they normally do well, though some years are a bust, like last year. I also started some from seed under lights, to compare if they are more consistent and adaptable, because the sets have gotten pricey in recent years and it’s irritating to pay good money for possible failure. Onions do not like Yo-Yo weather, but then again, who or what really does?

At least some seem to tolerate it better than others. We’ve got a couple of ‘oyster trees’ that are bringing us regular tasty gifts.

I’ve also tried a couple new things that have been long on my list. There’s the soap that’s just now cured, a bit earlier than I’d read is typical. I’m really pleased with it! It lathers very well and the scent is rather sensuous. My intention was something earthy and erotic, and I think I succeeded.

I got the sensual part down, now I need to up the aesthetic! Trust me, looks are deceiving here, I just need better molds! Never underestimate the power of packaging, eh?

After finishing up slaughter season and chopping up downed trees for a month, Hubby has moved on to a far more desirable and needed project, according to me, our kitchen! Yippie!

We’ve needed new countertops badly for many years, ours have been well-worn in 40 years, especially since we’ve gotten here and the space went from softly used a few times a year, to a daily year-round assault. It’s actually pretty impressive the counters aren’t near dust by now, considering how quickly more modern materials fall apart.

Old, ugly, not square or plumb . . . Good times coming in Hubby’s near future!

New countertops got us on a roll and now we’re planning new light fixtures and maybe even a new paint job. Big ideas, perhaps not backed up by time or commitment.

Those big ideas, I’m full of ‘em! In my mind the kitchen’s already painted and my next project is to paint the table, which I’ve wanted (and once tried) to do for as long as we’ve had it. I can imagine I might have a table with a surface that looked something like this . . .

But I’d be perfectly willing to settle for this . . .

Or this . . .

So, after I repaint the kitchen in the few spare moments between juggling plants in YoYo season, I acquire the skills of an artist, and paint something I can really be proud of . . .

Whenever I’m finally able to manage that, y’all will be the first to know!

In the meantime, here’s where we were at in the last update . . .

Homestead Happenings

Homestead Happenings

Mostly happy snaps this post, plus a few weather woes.

Hubby’s gorgeous melon patch is starting to produce more than just a feast for the eyes. He’s come up with quite an integrated system there and when I expressed how impressed I was with his companion planting scheme (and wondered whether he’d been taking a permaculture course on the sly) he informed me it was all a matter of frugality.

His penny-pincher logic is: the melon mounds have a lot of water run-off and sometimes erosion, so he added a ring of clover at the base of them. It’s just a bonus they are also good for the soil and the bees. The sunflowers are fodder for the goats and the chickens, plus they help shade the melons. The sea of black-eyed Susan’s just turned up there, apparently as impressed as me with the space.

Hopefully the melons don’t go the way of the onions, which has been our worst year yet. Luckily the garlic still did fine, which is from our saved seed, which previously came from a nearby friend’s saved seed. That has become a theme.

Elephant garlic does much better here than anything else, and I’ve tried many others for many years. I think I’ll give up that practice now and stick with what works, avoiding future costs and frustrations.

The success of the tomatoes and peppers so far has also been thanks to saved seed. I bought several varieties of each from the store, just for more variety, and those are the ones suffering more from the rain and high humidity. Several have already died, a few aren’t growing at all, and several of the others have bad issues.

Ours on the left, theirs on the right.

The purchased squash is already full of pests before giving us even a single fruit.

At least we got a few zucchini off our own saved seed before it too is already beginning to succumb to some kind of mold.

But other saved seed, the Trombetta squash and the mystery squash from last year, have proven to be more resilient than the popular varieties.

The filth-filled skies continue and not even the regular rains clear them up for long. I’m sure the sorry state of the skies has nothing to do with the crazy storms, right? The intense lightening, sudden flooding rain bursts, intolerable humidity, hail, tornadoes, and so on, that folks are experiencing across the country?

Just ‘mother nature’ they tell us. OK.

Well, too much ‘mother nature’ is not so good for the garden. It looks plenty green and lush, so that’s nice. But, look a little closer and we find it’s not so pretty below the surface.

But we’ve been relatively fortunate so far this year, just lots of rain and some wind gusts. Others have had far worse.

The yucca didn’t get lucky, but the blossoms are still lovely, even on the ground.

There’s some long-term requirements that fall on Hubby, which I mentioned last update, an upgraded culvert is required now in order to drive to the back half of our property. He’s already gotten started on that, a huge undertaking for sure. After that he can look forward to tackling the pond that’s now washed out.

In better news, there’s been some amazing growth in just one week.

A side by side comparison of 8 days growth.

We’ve prepared for the swelter season by crafting another shading system where these tomatoes and peppers should be much happier into late summer. It’s recycled from another project and a bit awkward to move through, but it should do the trick just fine for supporting the shade cloth.

The asparagus beans, a first timer here, have really taken off in the last week. I’m excited to try them!

In even better news, the mamas and kids are growing well. We’ve started forcing them out of the corral during the day so I was able to give that space a much needed refreshing.

It seems they sometimes prefer following the chickens instead of their mamas. 😆

I’m getting the first fresheners ready for milking by training them on the milk stand. Soon it will be time to start separating them at night so I can milk them in the mornings before putting them back together again during the days. It’s not a happy time for anyone and I’m not looking forward to it.

But, I am looking forward to making lots of cheese again. We’re getting a bit of milk from Chestnut, who rejected her boy, and her girl is only nursing from one side. So, if I weren’t milking her she’d become even more lopsided than she already is.

It’s not a lot of milk, but enough for a little mozzarella now and then. I’ve found another method from my new favorite YT channel which is completely natural and far more tasty than the vast majority of those found online.

Raw milk mozzarella, mmmmm!

Unfortunately, the 2nd time I tried it was a failure. But, 99.9 % of the time a failed cheese can always become another delicious cheese. Some of my best cheeses have been from failures.

Not necessarily the case with failed wine. This cheese ‘failure’ will be soaked for a couple of days in the leftover must of the now fermenting wine, another tip I learned from my new fav YT channel.

This one was mulberry and I’ve also started a blackberry.

The blackberries seem to very much appreciate the extra rain and our harvest has been great, inspiring me to make blackberry wine for the first time. Last year’s harvest was very disappointing after getting some kind of strange disease right after their flowering period. (Not normal development, despite what several folks claimed at the time.)

I’ve decided to try more natural, traditional methods with the wine-making, like with the cheeses. Modern methods require all kinds of chemically-obtained inputs, which most insist are necessary for a fool-proof product.

Yet, last year we had a major failure using that method and ended up with several cases of vinegar. Very disappointing after all that work. We have had great success in the past or we might be too discouraged to try again.

Blackberries, banana peppers and Nigella seed pods

Traditionally, country wines were not made with all those foreign yeasts and I don’t really want my blackberry wine to taste like merlot anyway. While we may not have a decent cultivated grape harvest this year, the wild grapes look promising again. Also the pears are looking good, could be a bumper crop like we get only every few years.

If so, I’m going to do some side-by-side experiments, traditional methods vs. modern methods, and make a real project of it.

Blackberry wine in the making, hopefully

It’s easy to find lots of instruction using the identical modern method. For that I’ll rely on this book.

The wild grapes are looking promising. Our cultivated grapes still uncertain.

It’s not as easy to find good instruction on traditional methods, no surprise there. But this channel has a lot to offer and she uses nothing but a homemade fruit fermentation starter for her wines.

A teetotaler who makes wine, don’t see that everyday!

She also teaches how to make natural sodas and mead on her channel which I’m also very eager to try.

Blackberries fermenting beautifully after 36 hours.

The elderberry is also liking the extra rain. I might even try to make elderberry wine too. The blossoms are excellent in kombucha and will make an effervescent ‘champagne’ like beverage or flavor a cordial. And the goats love it. It’s just an all-around fantastic plant that is popping up everywhere now, so I’m going to create a big grove of them trailing down the hill.

A couple happy snaps in parting.

Thanks for stopping by!

Homestead Happenings

It’s raining caterpillars!

And other news this post, including Hubby’s big mistake, lots of garden snaps, critter updates and the new normal weather chaos.

Big ones, small ones, skinny ones, fat ones . . .

Black ones, white ones, green ones, yellow ones . . .

Let’s see, perhaps a bit of 80s pre-conditioning before our current day “You vill eat ze bugs!”?

We’ve never seen so many, and such a variety. They do not look the least bit appetizing and clearly the birds agree, or there couldn’t possibly be so many.

I’m not exaggerating when I say you cannot take a step without seeing one. I’m hoping they turn into gorgeous butterflies and soon we’ll have a garden full of them. But I haven’t looked them up yet and they could easily become some voracious relative of horn worms for all I know, about to attack the tomatoes.

They’ve destroyed my spring cabbages and are working on the fava beans and snap peas now.

Fall cabbages in the back compared to spring cabbages up front

At least the goats appreciated all those Swiss cheese-like leaves.

Snap peas don’t last long here anyway and while those creepy crawlers get the leaves of them, and those of the radishes, at least they leave us the fruits.

I’ve already made a large crock of sauerkraut and a quart of fermented radishes. Plus we’ve been getting loads of mulberries thanks to Hubby who has been destroying the tent worms that have been appearing all spring. Those little buggers love the wild cherries too and can easily destroy all leaves and fruits in a matter of days.

So, big kudos to Hubby for coming to the rescue, and spending a fair amount of tedious time harvesting these little beauties as well.

But, Hubby is also responsible for the misdemeanor crime of killing our potatoes! I should’ve caught it. I know, he was just trying to help. So, he filled our potato buckets with too much compost too fast and now we have potato disaster.

Lesson learned, you can only add a couple inches at a time, even if the greens are much taller than that.

I’ve got lots of herbs companion planted with the tomatoes that are all looking great.

Thyme, cilantro and dill growing between tomatoes

One of the best garden decisions I’ve made is far more flowers in the garden. Not only to attract pollinators, but to attract us too. It’s a far more inviting space than just rows of crops and makes me want to go in and play. 😊

The Peggy Martin rose just one year after planting a cutting from a friend.

And the Burr rose, many years old, huge and seemingly indestructible, even from constant nibbling by the sheep and goats.

And one of my garden favorites, which my photo doesn’t do justice at all: Nigella, a delicious seed and lovely tiny blooms in blue and white.

Their seeds have a grape-like flavor and are delicious in bread and kombucha.

Another fruit that so far seems successful are the persimmons. We have both Virginia and Asian planted and the flowers on them are so unique, just like their fruits.

I’ve also got the citrus planted at last and I’m so excited! I cannot fail! (Says no one but me and I’ve gotten quite a few discouraging words from others on this venture.)

Meyers lemon, Satsuma orange and Key limes, don’t fail me, please!

Planted along with the new ‘kiss me under the garden gate’ flower which is doing quite well, and the still unfinished wattle fence.

In the best news we have our first kids just born this morning. Milking season approaches too quickly!

The weather madness continues, unfortunately. Big surprise.

Some still think these are contrails! Good grief!

This weekend’s forecast looks like a drop-down menu: 1/16th inch rain possible, or severe storms, or flooding, or hail, or tornadoes. Try planning for those options, peasants! 😩

Hope life is a little more predictable in your neck of the woods!

Thanks for stopping by. 🤗

Homestead Happenings

A quick reprieve from ruminating about technology for some recent happy snaps. I’ll try to not do too much complaining about the weather. But I know how hard that’s going to be so, here’s a deal, for every complaint I will offer one bonus. 😁

Dortmund climbing rose makes a surprise appearance

The extreme heat, and drought, is not normal, so I really wish folks would stop saying it is.

Bonus! It’s reassuring how remarkably resilient some plants and animals are.

One green melon from one surviving plant, I think I’ll name those saved seeds the Miracle Melon.

Not much harvesting happening, but at least something. A few figs and grapes, some herbs and elderberries for flavoring kombucha.

How dare man meddle with the weather, makes me SO mad!

Bonus! We can fully appreciate how precious water is to all of us.

Pretty obvious where the sprinkler spray stops

Man changing the climate? Perhaps.

Man changing the weather? Definitely. Do they care how toxic and dangerous that is? Seems like no.

Bonus! We can observe different species peaceful tolerance of the other under times of stress, as well as which critters are more heat tolerant. The honeybees only appearance in the garden at the moment is at this water trough where I feed some tadpoles. But, bumblebees are going crazy on the salvia, wonderful!

It’s so hellishly hot by 10 am we can’t stand to be outside anymore.

Bonus! We can feel like heroes as we try to keep the critters as comfortable as possible.

This cool-looking wasp followed me inside, maybe hoping to keep cool? It’s been living happily on this ‘longevity spinach’ (gynura procumbens) for nearly a week. I didn’t realize they could live so long alone, indoors and with no nectar. The wasps must eat something on the leaves, there’s loads of wasps on the okra leaves too.

Here we come to save the day! Bubba in his tub and Buttercup in her sand hole.

The final bonus of bonuses! I can tackle all kinds of indoor projects I’ve been neglecting, like organizing the closets, washing the windows and floors, attending to the neglected pile of sewing . . .

The only true bonus of that list is that I find it so objectionable I’ll instead be reaching for another novel I’ve been meaning to read. 😆

Thanks for stopping by, hope you’re keeping cool!

Homestead Happenings

Weird scenes inside the homestead! What have we to add to the big wide web of weird today? A couple of things only, along with some sad news and some happy snaps. Successes and failures, as usual. Trying to keep them all in stride, which with the wild flowers and a short country drive, isn’t too big a challenge at the moment.

Creepy visitor appearing everywhere after the rains

Best to get the crap out of the way first, I prefer. We’ve got seemingly severe blackberry failure and an established bee colony suddenly lost. I could write exhaustively on just those two, but since I’m already exhausted, I’ll keep it brief. And continue the relentless churning in my mind alone.

These photos and several more have seen the cyber rounds this week, let me assure you! And the cornucopia of responses we’ve received is rather astounding. Long story short—we’ve had some lovely rains, finally. But it sent our blackberries from thriving and gorgeous, to this brown, crispy-looking horror nearly overnight.

Not just a few bushes either, the entire row, a dozen bushes easy. It looks terrible. So we got a bit frantic and have been sending photos to Ison’s Nursery, where we got them. Also, to various friends and forums, where we’ve had answers to run the gamut: too dry, a virus, a fungus, a blight, Botryosphaeria canker, empty pocket syndrome, aphid damage, and then the kicker . . . This is totally normal development.

Wait, whaaat??

You mean to tell me these could be normally progressing blackberries and after many years of growing blackberries we just never noticed it before?!

Well that would certainly be a big and welcomed WOW! Yes please!

But unfortunately, I don’t think so. They look brown and shriveled beyond anything I’ve seen in any of the online photorama. And there’s no sign of aphids, and it’s not cane blight, and it’s certainly not too dry, although I totally understand that guess, since that’s exactly what it looks like.

And I do so appreciate all the speculation, seriously! It gets me thinking and exploring every time and I do so love all the effort and camaraderie inherit in it. Be wrong, it’s not the end of the world!

Of course, what I did so notice among the seeds of speculation was the one that was, unsurprisingly, totally missing. Toxic rain perhaps? Some other oddities in the atmosphere, perhaps? Not on anyone’s radar? Really?

No idea what’s happening in this photo with the blue dot-purple ring, I just snapped the shot with the tablet as soon as I saw the trail while busy in the garden.

On better themes . . .

I also took some lovely happy snaps of the wild flowers blooming along the road, which was so much more gorgeous than what I was able to capture here. But I tried, and that should count for something, no?

And on that note, this post will have a Part 2 to finish later, cause that’s all I can manage at the moment. More to follow, so much more!

Thanks for stopping by!

I leave with a song that motivates me when I really need it most. Hope it works for y’all too!

Homestead Happenings

A bunch of happy snaps, a bit of gardening news, a wild-like encounter and some homestead TV for today.

Everything’s blooming and we’re scheduled for frost/freeze at the end of the week! I was afraid that might happen, so have not put out the frost-sensitive plants, though they are definitely ready to be moved.

Not the most elegant set-up, but it works! Thriving under the lights and ready to transplant: tomatoes, marigold, calendula, Moringa, geranium, thyme, Mexican mint marigold, kumquat, anis hyssop

We’ve also kept the row cover handy in the garden for a quick save. A light frost won’t bother much in there now, but a freeze or prolonged low temps would do a lot of damage.

Lettuces, radishes, carrots, a few rows of garlic, then onions all the way back to the cucumber trellis, soon to be planted.

First time trying potatoes in containers and they’re looking good!

The wild cherries are my favorite wild fruit tree out here, they are super tiny, but the cherry flavor is super intense. Unfortunately, they bloom very early, so we rarely get a crop of them because of late frosts.

I’m particularly proud of this pretty plant, Coral Honeysuckle, because like with the cherry, I’m growing them from wild cuttings.

The goats do an excellent job of keeping the fence line cleared, so helpful! We have a boarder joining our wee herd for a while, Broderick, a sweet, young Billy whose owner was sick of listening to his constant mewing. He’s not made more than a peep since coming here, so he must be happy, despite his rivalry with our herd queen, Summer. They’ve butted heads many times, and poor Broderick doesn’t have horns. He’s had a bloody head, been chased around, and he keeps going back for more! So cute but so tough!

That’s Summer, the white one on the left. On the right, that’s Broderick facing the camera in front, and behind him also facing the camera is our whether, Hercules.

Of course, there’s always the dumbbell of the group, and that would be Bluebonnet, Summer’s offspring.

Bluebonnet, the only one to get her head stuck in this fence at all, and to show off, apparently, she does it 4 times! Each time having to be rescued by Hubby, thankfully working nearby.

There’s a steady supply of captivating entertainment around here. Just yesterday, around cocktail hour, I went out on the back porch to snip some cilantro from the herb boxes for our guacamole snack, and I stepped out onto this surprising tableaux.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, the gorgeous ribbon snake was positioned there as still as a statue. For long enough I went back inside to get my tablet for photos. And then, our barn cat, Skittles, sauntered over, neither the cat nor the dog remotely aware of the snake’s presence!

This went on for quite some time!

Finally I yelled to Hubby inside, “You’ve got to see this!”

He comes out, and of course, boys will be boys. He was not as satisfied with the simple moving tableau and banal observation of the odd occurrence, oh no, he had to throw some action into it.

So he chucks a little plastic planter into the middle of the scene, which startles the snake and snaps Skittles instantly into predator mode.

She spots the snake and takes a pose.

“Oh, no!” I gasp. Hubby says, “Huh?”

“Don’t let her get him!” I exclaim.

“Wait, who don’t you want to get who?” He replies.

“Save the snake!” I gasp.

So, in a snap he picks up the water bowl and throws its full contents onto the cat.

Happy ending, it worked, the pretty little wild thing slid swiftly beneath the deck. 🤗

Moving on to chick and piglet news, my how they’ve grown!

On the left are Hubby’s incubator-hatched chicks, and on the right are hen-hatched. Just 6 each, which is not a good success rate. Hubby’s got another batch going, pilot error on the previous one, he says, so fingers crossed!

The piglets are doing great. A very large litter, 12, all still alive and kicking. I was hoping to get a short clip of them wrestling, it’s so funny, but it’s not easy to capture, since they are mostly eating all the time.

But, watching them eat is pretty cute, too!

Thanks for stopping by!

Do come again, say Bubba and Buttercup!

Geoengineering Update

Our skies in the days leading up to the latest ‘rain event’. We get the perception of rain, mostly, but rarely a real rain, unless it’s a flooding deluge.

It REALLY fools most folks! Because it’s overcast and drizzling for days, so the yards and gardens get squishy. But it’s not a lot of rain, 3 inches of rain over 3 days ‘feels’ like a lot of rain. A rain gauge will prove it, but most folks don’t have those. Not to mention that from one county to the next it is often drastically different in amounts. So, they complain about all the rain, while our ponds and creeks are still very low to empty.

They can’t even give it a break at night!

Technology continues to leap forward in the expansion of ‘climate remediation’ systems. I suspect one of these days they won’t even need to blanket the skies in chemicals anymore and folks will be tickled pink that the Uber-wealthy and corporations can change the weather on a dime and blame the birds, or the cows, or the SUVs.

“The “Clear Sky Manager New Generation” climate safety system uses the synergy of a growing pool of the most efficient and proven weather management technologies, and also develops new promising technologies that will allow more effectively to carry out the weather management.
Currently, “Clear Sky Manager New Generation” uses the synergy of 2 of the most efficient, safest, recognized by the WMO, technologies: The technology of unipolar electrical ionization of the lower atmosphere using stationary, mobile
and air-mobile ion generators (ILAP type ionizers).
Cloud seeding technology using environmentally friendly reagents, as well as an innovative cloud seeding method based on the unique biological ability of new prospective reagents to
“cause” rain.”

Climate safety system “Clear Sky Manager New Generation”

The last ‘rain event’ last week, same story.

While they work on perfecting that, we have the fallout of the last decades of weather experimentation to deal with, but hey, what’s a little Alzheimer’s for the greater good?

Aluminum Snow: Lab Test Confirmed

“Aluminum nanoparticle fallout from climate engineering operations are building up in our snow, soils and runoff waters, the levels are far beyond alarming. Lab test results of snow from the side of Northern California’s Mt. Shasta are a truly shocking example. Testing samples from this formerly pristine water source have revealed levels of aluminum that are so astronomically high that the meltwater can only be considered completely contaminated.”

“China’s Mindblowing Weather Modification, Geoengineering and ELF Transmitter Projects”
An oldie but goodie from ClimateViewer for those fixated on the ‘China balloon’ in the news:

https://youtu.be/Fjq2ssb4KKA

I’d say Bill Gates chemical cloud is an old-school Red Herring. There’s loads of far fancier tech out there!

https://www.youtube.com/live/eTUE5YBLQ-8?feature=share

How are your skies looking these days? I hope your having fine weather! 😁

Of Pigs & Life

This post is not for most vegetarians or vegans, or anyone easily shaken by reality. Graphic images and musings on the cycle of life will be presented with impunity.

This post is for those who:
~Love bacon;
~May ponder the ethics of eating meat, perhaps even to the point of reading such books as The Omnivore’s Dilemma;
~Think we’re crazy for doing such monumental tasks ourselves, instead of going to the grocer or butcher like normal folk.

Before getting into the boring stuff, let me start with a virtual standing ovation and huge ego-stroke to MY MAN!

That’s one giant hog for one middle-aged mere mortal!

And, just a bit of backstory for nostalgia’s sake. Mama Chop and Papa Chop were our first pigs. They are Red Wattles, a heritage breed that we bought from friends as a breeding pair about 7 years ago. We would’ve kept Mama Chop as a breeder indefinitely, except for one major problem—as sweet as she was, she kept squishing her piglets, no matter what we did to try to prevent it. And, try Hubby did, repeatedly, for several years, to no avail.

Something else peculiar about Mama Chop, which I have not noticed with any of our other pigs: She smelled fantastic. I’m talking about her natural aroma, not her cooked flesh full of seasonings, which is also proving to be delicious. I mean her living self—just being in the vicinity near her—she smelled like maple syrup. That may sound crazy, but it’s absolutely true.

Fortuitously, Mother Earth News has a feature story about this breed in their current issue. “Grandma and Grandpa’s Red Wattle Hogs” by Amanda Sorell.
“Red Wattle hogs are immense, reddish pigs with fleshy appendages that dangle from each side of their necks. Their up-turned noses and upright ears with drooping tips give them a friendly demeanor that matches reports of the breed’s charm.”

“According to The Livestock Conservancy (TLC), this pig’s gentility lends itself well to small-scale, independent producers, and its foraging skills make it suitable for pasture production. Further, this hardy breed is adaptable to a wide range of climates, and it grows rapidly—usually reaching maturity between 600-800 pounds, but individual hogs can weigh as much as 1,200 pounds.”

Red Wattle Hog Stewardship – Mother Earth News

That’s a whole lotta pork!

Thank you for our blessings, Mama Chop!

We don’t know how much she weighed in at slaughter time, but here’s Hubby’s approximation of her results:
150 – 200 pounds of meat for our consumption, that is approximately:
25 # chops
40 # sausage
36 # ham
20# bacon
15 # hocks
20# stew meat
10# in pressure canned
2 gallons bone broth
3 gallons rendered lard
Plus dogs get ~40#s of scraps…..skin, lungs, ears, liver.

Wow, right?!

But, it’s SO MUCH WORK! He is one man in one small kitchen with one unskilled helper. That’s me. I’m the equivalent of his Girl-Friday (aka Galley Slave) — on call, doing what I can in wrapping and cleaning and cooking. The bulk of the work falls on him and he does it like a true stoic.

But what about the bang for the buck? Most folks who raise their own pigs don’t do their own slaughtering, for myriad reasons. It is a highly-skilled process that requires significant strength and time and at least some basic equipment.

It’s now 10 days since she was slaughtered, that makes: 2 days to hang, initial butchering one day, hams and bacon curing for 5 days, a day for making and packaging sausages, a day for smoking, a day for roasting bones, making broth, canning meat and broth.

However, it’s not only costly to go to a professional processor, it’s also a lot more stress on the pigs, as you’ve got to load them into a trailer and drive them quite a distance, sometimes as far as 2 hours away, plus reserve your slot months in advance (whether or not your pigs are ready), all which can affect the final flavor of the meat. We’ve heard many complaints from friends about this process.

Another significant drawback to this expensive convenience is typically, depending on the processor, you will forfeit many valuable parts, including the organ meats, the leaf and regular lard, the bones, including all the trimmings that go to the dogs, not to mention to the vultures, coyotes, and the bugs and soil as the entire animal never leaves our land.

Such is the cycle of life and this makes so much more sense than concentrating carcasses and waste in one place. We, and our neighbors and friends and pets and land are the direct beneficiaries of our labor, and that degree of skill and self-reliance makes me super proud. And when I’m proud, Hubby’s pleased, and so it goes the bitter-sweet circle of life!

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