Datura Mine
Delving deep
Diving sweet
Sipping sublime
Nectars divine
Datura Mine
Tag: Rural life
Homestead Happenings
This posts aims to answer the question: Would there be anything redeeming about August in East Texas if it weren’t for the watermelons?
I repeat this every year. But I can’t help repeating it again. When we first came here and I’d spent my first August, I was mostly without Hubby because he would often get stuck offshore in the Gulf for bad weather or working over for vacationing colleagues. I swore I would find a way to travel in August, just like the French.
The heat is brutal, the garden mostly gone. Actually, it amazes me anything can survive out there, and yet, plenty of plants are thriving.
And now I can’t imagine having a happy vacation when we’ve got bushels of grapes to harvest and after that bushels of pears, which then must all be processed.
Into wine! I know I shouldn’t whine. It’s not every year we get either good grapes or good pears, and this year we’ve got both.
Wine-making has proven to be a reasonable replacement for my sudden loss in cheese-making ability. That story has only gotten worse, so I’m going to avoid telling it, at least for now. Like I said, August is bad enough already.
While we have made hard cider from the pears and a bit of wine from grapes in past years, I really had no idea how versatile wine-making could be. Since last post I’ve added cantaloupe wine to the rows—joining Elderberry, Blackberry, Wild grape, and mead.
Cantaloupe wine? Who knew! But after giving these great big delicious 20- pounders to friends and eating them daily we still had so many and they were ripening so fast we had to do something. We forgot to keep track, but we had at least 15 of them, off only 3 plants.
Enough to make 3 gallons of wine. I plan to make cider from it as well. Imagine all the fun we’ll be having wine tasting in December! (That’s exactly what I’m doing, a lot of imagining, to keep my mind off the miserable sweltering reality.)
Now we’ve also got a couple buckets going of our cultivated grapes: white and red muscadines, sometimes also known as Scuppernongs.
If you’re not from the Southern US you’ve probably never heard of Scuppernongs because they don’t have a good reputation among wine connoisseurs and don’t grow north of the Mason-Dixon line, as far as I know.
And they aren’t really suitable for table grapes either, unless your table allows for a lot of spitting.
Good enough for country wines, they say. So, good enough for me!
In fact they are really delicious. Beyond bursting with juicy sweetness, the green ones especially have varied and complex notes, sharp and earthy. The red ones have such an huge pop of intense grape flavor I’m reminded of manufactured fake grape flavors from childhood, Jolly Ranchers and Bubbalicious gum. Sad, but true, since I never tasted such fruit as a kid.
Except, that these have a tough skin and big seeds. And they are really a pain to harvest. If the weather were nice it wouldn’t be so bad at all. But the thing about muscadine grapes is they don’t ripen in nice clusters like the fancy grapes of more civilized peoples. 😆
Every other day we’re out there gathering these plump gems from under their enormous vines, one by one, little jewels among the masses of deep green leaves. They’ve done remarkably well this year, after a dismal last year, and a meager crop the year before, and just when we were starting to worry all our hard work planting them was wasted.
I wish we knew the trick, Hubby tends the vines and he did nothing different this year from the previous.
We did have the big rain with a nice temperature drop, which also brought down another big tree, right through a fence, as per usual. It seems we lose a big tree with every rain event these days.
Too bad, because that oak has been providing a lot of acorn forage for the critters in autumn. There are several other nearby mature oaks looking like they are also about to keel over.
But, the pears have been spared and that will be our next big project in the blazing heat. Yay! 🤪
Three hard pear trees, two which were the only cultivated fruit trees here when we arrived, abandoned and still producing, bringing the feral hogs many happy meals. They produce prolifically when they produce, which is every 3 years on average. Plus one we planted in our still struggling orchard, it does really well most years, having gotten the regular run-off from our duck tub from it’s early years.
But the real pièce de résistance this year especially has been the watermelons.
They’ve not been as prolific as the cantaloupes, but they are some of the best I’ve ever eaten. Watermelons are Hubby’s preference, so he’s been in hog heaven every day, and the hogs are in a similar heaven with all the rinds they’ve been eating.
August has a few redeeming qualities after all. I don’t think I could make it through otherwise.
At sunset, within one hour they all open together while the bees get furiously busy. If you can’t catch the scent at just that initial pip of release, it’s instantly gone. Such an inimitable fragrance, enough to keep a woman longing, just long enough, that August might be gone again, and we’ll forget. It’s not so bad, right?
Until the next August.
Datura inoxia perhaps signaling the season of intoxia? Because we’re making lots of wine and it helps to get intoxicated to get through it? 😆
Thanks for stopping by!
Farmer or Pharmer?
A few choice quotes from Juliette de Bairacli Levy who did not mince words about her views on modern medicine.
This excerpt is from 1952! It’s astounding to me that it’s only gotten worse in the last 70 years. They keep doubling-down, and the public keeps buying it up.
“The present-day farmer has been educated to consider disease as inevitable and the only scientific cure as being in the artificial remedies of the modern veterinary surgeon who through over-rigid orthodox training and himself under the influence of advertisement, is too often a mere vendor of the products of the vast and powerful chemical and serum manufacturers. For the vested interests in modern medicine are stupendous. Businessmen who have never owned an animal fatten like breeding toads upon the ailments of farm stock which need not know sickness at all if they had daily access to the herbs of the fields. The true farmer should cultivate his own medicines in his own fields, and he should not consider himself as being a farmer if he has to resort to outside help for keeping his animals in health, and healing them when in sickness. Science is providing the ruination of true farming; the only thing that I, and countless others, have noted as flourishing alongside science, is disease!—disease of the earth, disease of crops and disease of the animal and people who feed on the diseased produce.”
“Professor Szekely had declared emphatically, that the curing of the ailments of his patients is often a simple task in comparison with the freeing of their bodies from the accumulations of chemical drugs lodged in their tissues — the drugs derived from orthodox medical chemo-therapy, and from the poisons sprayed upon fruits and vegetables by the modern farmer, or placed in tinned and bottled foods as preservatives. Many of his patients are Americans, and in present-day America the chemist seems to be running amok, spraying and poisoning everything edible.”
~Juliette de Bairacli Levy, 1952, The Complete Herbal Handbook For Farm And Stable
The influence of advertisement, you say? Naw, can’t be that!
Purebred Souls in a Redneck Wood?
I’ve been doing lots of research concerning the goats and so appreciate the kind help and suggestions from others.
It really is a quandary just like I went through with the bees. Treatment-free types are the anti-Vaxxers of the animal husbandry world, getting similar treatment from the established voices—that is cursed, mocked, belittled and silenced.
And that’s not the worse part, not for me anyway.
It’s far worse not being able to find honest, untainted information. The goat world, like the bee world, is dominated by the industry standards, which has penetrated into every conceivable space of our reality.
In the U.S. that means public-private partnerships that wholly infiltrate the information and therefor the society through the university system and popular organizations like the 4-H club.
Many of our best and brightest agriculture enthusiasts start very young, showing animals and winning awards based on criteria that then get distributed into general farming life. Very little attention is paid to the actual results of this process, not even the simple stuff—like considering whether purebreds are really the best option when stellar looks and trainability aren’t the owners’ top priorities.
Which got me thinking . . .
Might we make an analogy that it’s kinda like ZaZa Gabor playing a starring role in a film like Deliverance?
In other words, are we trying to raise the equivalent of thousand dollar racehorses in two-bit barns? Is that the problem? Or part of it?
“I get allergic smelling hay! I just adore a penthouse view,
darlin’ I love ya, but give me Park Avenue!”
My goats hate the rain (makes for a bad hair day?), and would prefer all their meals to be served to them promptly, 3 meals plus snacks, in their communal space (breakfast in bed), with minimal foraging required (just enough to stretch their legs and ease any boredom) plus they need regular brushing (all natural boars hair brush) and their hooves trimmed (mani-pedi), and routine expensive toxic treatments (Botox).
We get frustrated, obviously, but whose fault is it really?
When I got into this I went for the most popular and trusted source who was calling her style ‘natural’.
That’s for me, I want natural!
I’m not saying this is a bad book, I’ve certainly learned a lot from it, but knowing what I know now, I don’t call it ‘natural’ anymore.
These farmers and breeders may be on the path less traveled, but they are most certainly not off the Big Pharma Ferris wheel. And personally, I find that poor word choice to be deceptive.
For example, they advise breeders to cull rather than to risk populating the community of farmers/homesteaders with genetically inferior animals, which sounds like the wise and conscientious choice to make. Right?
However, they’re advising culling the animals which are not responding to the poisoning protocol, not only the ones who are truly resistant to the parasites. And as for true resistance, could they really know which ones, since they’ve been dosed at birth through the milk or, even more likely, in utero?
Yes, the ‘natural’ methods they espouse still include dosing the goats with drugs, just not so indiscriminately, which they at least recognize has caused a huge issue of drug-resistance in the goat-rearing community. They still rely on highly processed feed, hay that’s been sprayed, and they recommend medicated feed for kids. Many of them also advise vaccination.
This is what passes for ‘natural’ now.
So, for the barber pole worm, the notorious sheep/goat killer, which was the most likely culprit in Bluebonnet’s demise, the issue is said to be that these awful worms cause anemia. But, listed on the side effects of the popular dewormers in use is also anemia.
Hmmm. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Ivermectin—the infamous horse dewormer both celebrated and cursed during the Convid—has a shockingly long list of potential side effects. Interestingly, in all the social media arguments back and forth among suggested protocols and what or whom was being censored and why, I don’t recall that list coming up anywhere.
https://www.drugs.com/sfx/ivermectin-side-effects.html
Since that time I have come across a couple of articles demonstrating how toxic the drug actually is, https://open.substack.com/pub/timtruth/p/ultimate-guide-to-anti-fertility?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios and https://open.substack.com/pub/chemtrails/p/ivermectin-and-population-control?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios though it remains exceptionally popular for horses, sheep, goats, and humans.
These above-linked articles show studies proving its toxicity, but when it comes to the studies themselves, I don’t have much faith in them either. The kinds of studies I’d like to see are those that are appropriate to their environment, and no one does those kinds of studies. No one in farming is dosing their rabbits every single day with Ivermectin in a lab setting. What we need are multi-generational studies with real control groups in natural settings, as in real nature. Science doesn’t do that, yet somehow we accept they are ‘controlling’ inputs and outcomes, and that those results are remotely relevant to the average user, that is, those of us not living in a lab.
Besides Ivermectin, Safe-guard is another farm favorite in these parts.
The following comment comes from my dear friend Kath, a certified herbalist who was also previously a professional nurse in the UK.
Safe-guard:
“I can’t quite believe how bad this drug is!
Taken from this article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9413524/
‘When fenbendazole was last reviewed (15 years ago), the literature supported the drug’s lack of toxic effects at therapeutic levels, yet various demonstrated physiologic effects have the potential to alter research outcomes. Although more recent reports continue to reflect an overall discordancy of results, several studies support the premise that fenbendazole affects the bone marrow and the immune system.’
‘. . .lengthy and expensive treatment regimens. including the use of fenbendazole and mechanical disinfection, that may fail due to inadequate ovicidal effects.’ (Ie: won’t kill the worm eggs)
So, step one: Kill a few worms. Weaken the animal.
Don’t properly kill the worm eggs. Re-emergence of worms when these eggs hatch. Weakened animals can’t fight off new worms.
More drugs. Vicious cycle.
So, companies which make & market this drug very conveniently refer to the old research which states no side effects expected & ignore the possibility & reality of new research showing significant risk. Hmm 🤔
Basically use of this drug this means causing ongoing serious depletion in overall resilience & significantly increased susceptibility to further parasite infestation & whatever-it-is that we used to call infections. Worse potential recovery from anything. And all from a drug whose stated purpose may fail!
So, what to do imo is to work to build resilience by nutrition, herbs & healthy living & maybe try to introduce some wild blood when freshening.
I think this drug is an agenda in itself – not only for animals but humans too. Heavily publicised on Google as an amazing off-label cancer cure. I’ve met people who have been persuaded to take it! That’s right – make their own chemo cocktail!
It’s an agenda because I know how heavily ptb come down on any complementary health practitioner making public statements about cancer cure. It’s literally against the law.
And they put it in animal feed too. It’s a very shortsighted & stupid approach.”
Short-sighted, I couldn’t agree more!
Another popular dewormer: Cydectin
From Drugs.com
‘Not for use in female dairy cattle 20 months of age or older (including dry dairy cows), veal calves, and calves less than 8 weeks of age.
For Treatment of Infections and Infestations Due to Internal and External Parasites of Cattle.’
Kath: “This ‘who not to give it to’ suggests it’s toxic to humans & cattle/goats – they wouldn’t make a statement about veal calves if it was a safe thing for humans (or animals) to ingest. Funny how they can balance the illogic of ‘don’t give to babies’ & ‘dose babies by mother’s milk’.
The type of nerve receptor that are targeted by this drug are only found in invertebrates – creatures that don’t have a skeleton. So drug companies have jumped to the assumption that it will paralyse (& kill) only parasites/insects. However – & this is important – the target receptor in invertebrates is very similar to the mammalian – human & animal – receptor for glycine – an important neurotransmitter. Chances are that this drug & its family are at least partly responsible for human & animal depletion & neurological problems, perhaps even paralysis, in goats by direct dosing & in humans via eating meat& milk products/drinking milk from dosed animals.”
Seriously! And they have the nerve to call these treatments ‘natural’ and of course, that old reliable, safe and effective!
(Thank you so much Kath for your addition to this post and to Highlander in last post’s comments for your help and advice, I’m very grateful for your efforts and experiences!)
New marketing suggestion for the CDC:
If your kids get all their shots on schedule, you’ll look just like Za Za!*
😆
*Results may vary. Consult your pediatrician.
(Who, by the way, did a hell of a good job dressed as a pig at last year’s luau in Vegas at our promotional conference that counts as continuing education credits and gets billed to the State. Remember Rule #1: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!) 😉
1
Herbal Explorations: Mimosa Tree
Persian Silk Tree
Albizia julibrissin
The gorgeous Mimosa tree is considered an undesirable and invasive species by many US experts, if you can believe that!
But to herbalists worldwide it’s a treasure. And to butterflies and bees it’s a feast!
Another much maligned and misunderstood plant joins our growing list today. Hard to imagine calling this beauty a ‘trash tree’, but a great many experts call it that, and worse.
The Mimosa tree . . .
“Is another dog. Although beautiful when healthy, it never is. The root system is ravenous and destructive, and the tree is highly vulnerable to insects and disease. Shallow, destructive root system. Not even good for fire wood. Destructive roots, short-lived, crowds out good plants. Not a good tree for Texas,” he resolutely concludes.
Texas Gardening the Natural Way: The Complete Handbook by Howard Garrett “The Dirt Doctor”
Garrett is considered the foremost organic gardening expert in these parts, he has a popular radio show, has published several books and he has his own organic product line. He was the first gardener I learned from when I started gardening here.
And worse, he convinced me! I wanted one from the first moment I gazed upon it, but I resisted, for over a decade.
Luckily in recent years I’ve revisited that poor choice and lazy thinking to discover how wrong these experts can be.
What a (typical) shame to learn how very wrong they can be! Along with Wikipedia and a great many other popular info hubs.
“In the wild, the tree tends to grow in dry plains, sandy valleys, and uplands. It has become an invasive species in the United States, where it has spread from southern New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, west to Missouri and Illinois, and south to Florida and Texas. It is cultivated in California and Oregon. Its seeds are wind-dispersed and numerous, and they are fertile even over long periods of drought. Each pod, which resembles a flattened bean pod made of paper, holds about 8 seeds on average. The pod bursts in strong winds, and the seeds can carry over surprisingly long distances.”
It is certainly for the ‘mess’ they create with their seed pods that some may not find them suitable for their yard or garden. And naturally, farmers and ranchers malign any plants which dare to interfere with their livestock management preferences.
But, venture away from those slanted sources and the light shines on this ancient medicinal treasure.
Mimosa—The ‘night sleeper’ so nicknamed in Persian thanks to its usefulness as a cure for insomnia, among its many other medicinal and practical uses.
A bit of history:
“The stem bark has been used as a sedative for hundreds of years as recorded in the Pharmacopeia of the People’s Republic of China(Nehdi 2011, Zheng 2006, Zheng 2010) and as an anti-inflammatory agent for swelling and pain in the lungs and to treat skin ulcers, wounds, bruises, abscesses, boils, hemorrhoids, and fractures, as well as to remove carbuncles. The dried stem bark is used as a tonic in China and Japan.(Ikeda 1997) Indigenous people living in the southern mountainous region of Korea prepare the root as an infusion for bone diseases.(Kim 2011) In India, a chloroform and methanol seed extract has been used to treat bronchitis, asthma, leprosy, and glands infected by tuberculous.(Gautam 2007) A bark extract to treat insomnia, diuresis, asthenia, and confusion has been used in Asia.(Nehdi 2011) The plant’s flowers have been used to treat symptoms associated with palpitations, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.(Nehdi 2011, Samwald 2010) It’s common name of Shabkhosb (good night’s sleeper) in Iran is indicative of its use to treat insomnia.(Ebrahimzadeh 2017)
Mimosa are used in gardens for ornamental purposes, in sandy areas to prevent erosion, and along roadways.(Chang 2011, Irwin 2003, Nehdi 2011, Pardini 2007)”
From Science Direct:
“Albizia belongs to Mimosoideae and are native to Asia and Africa. It is a kind of multifunctional trees and they are always planted as ornamental trees. In addition to using it as foliage, green manure and timber for furniture production, the bark of Albizia is herbal medicine and the seeds are a source of oil. There are about 150 species in the genus and 17 of them can be found in the southern regions of China. Albizia julibrissin and Albizia kalkora are two familiar species, which are planted in China from tropic to temperate zones [69]. Although Albizia spp. are of great importance, little was known about the diversity of their microsymbionts. de Lajudie et al. [15] found that two strains isolated from Albizia falcataria grown in Brazil were Bradyrhizobium; Chen and Chen [5] classified five strains isolated from Albizia julibrissinin China as Bradyrhizobium sp. and Rhizobium sp. These results indicated that Albizia trees nodulated with both fast-growing and slow-growing rhizobia.”
a unique taste reminiscent of nectarines.
Mimosa Uses, Benefits & Dosage – Drugs.com Herbal Database
Gavin Mounsey, author of Recipes for Reciprocity, recently shared some of his knowledge and links about this amazing tree, which he’s cultivating in his food forest designs all the way up in Canada:
“Another interesting fact about this tree is that it is being investigated for it’s potential in Phytoremediation (for both heavy metal soil remediation and for it’s photocatalytic activity for cleaning up toxins humans put in the air) and a more specialized field in what is called “Phytomining” (it is a nasty industrial process used for profit but it hints at more holistic applications of this species for real time remediating/mitigating of geoengineering heavy metals in the air and soil.” (Read more: Regenerative Agriculture: Solutions Watch at Corbett Report)
The pods are plentiful and can be used for animal feed, according to TCPermaculture.
It’s notable umbrella shape when provided with plenty of space has me wondering if it might be the tree represented on some old gravestones in our area.
Might the Mimosa Tree be our rest in peace?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Classic Gaslighting
A lot of folks still aren’t grasping this manipulative strategy, so I want to make a glaring point of it this post.
It’s easier for others to recognize classic rudeness, and shrug it off. It’s considered good manners to be tolerant of others’ petty foibles or potential misunderstandings or cultural differences and so on.
But folks aren’t putting a stop to plain old gaslighting, even when it’s obvious. They aren’t calling it out, and naming for it what it is—abusive, highly toxic, anti-social, not only for those who perpetrate, and their victims—but also from those merely viewing or reading.
Abuse radiates much further than those immediately involved in the moment.
This little rant, or welcome observation, depending on your position, was inspired by a small YT channel, another East Texas gardener, which I was curious to view from his title today—Garden Failures: Looks like another bad year.
The kind of title of a seemingly honest person just sharing his experience, not a hustler looking to sell me shit or snare me into another Cult-ur, is one of the nice rare finds still sometimes popping in my social feeds.
I watched only a few minutes before taking a gander at the first comment, and was relieved to find a someone seemingly aware of the enormous amount of weather manipulation going on, and clicked because I saw there was a reply.
But, much to my annoyance and disappointment, it was the typical reply of a Master Gaslighter.
To be shamed as you seek validation, or understanding, is gaslighting. This ‘rude behavior’ is far more than rude and it is tolerated in our culture far more than bullying. Why?
This behavior is graver than victim-blaming and bullying, it is an aggressive attempt to diminish, deflect, avoid, minimize, and control the perceptions, research, feelings and lived reality of the host.
The host, as in the one who has had the audacity and courage to seek understanding in the first place, in a hostile environment and against the norms of the Cult-ure.
I’d just been listening to Jon Levi discussing it, so it was very fresh in my mind. I’ve experienced it all my life, as ALL have in our Cult-ure.
It’s just that some go along with it, instead of recoil from it.
I have gaslit others before, sometimes knowingly, sometimes quite unconsciously, only realizing it years later. My mindset was at those times to ‘fight fire with fire’ and maybe that’s a good strategy, at times, with those who have breached the boundaries into your personal life and betrayed you.
But the large majority of the time those gaslighting others on social media is ALL about narrative control and social engineering. Sometimes I wonder if these are actual individuals, but I don’t bother to check, because I’ve experienced it enough in real life to know if these are just AI bots replying to one another, well, they have a pretty good idea of the human condition.
Is it because the political world has so infiltrated every aspect of our existence that folks have come to accept a steady supply of gaslighting in their lives?
I’ve stopped fighting fire with fire myself, too much gas out there, I’m too old for that now.
But, I wonder, besides avoidin the gaslighters, which seems quite impossible these days, what other action might one take?
Thoughts welcome!
Homestead Happenings
An interesting week on the wee homestead, worth a quick update with many happy snaps and a couple of video clips.
We’ve had some wonderful days and nights of rain, too much for most, but quite fine for me. Hubby will unfortunately have to repair some fencing, nothing new there.
All the usual erosion issues will fall on him and his little old tractor once again, so I make great efforts to contain my glee. Our water is out and so is the phone, but that’s not unusual either.
The creek overflowing its banks and the pond washing out.
I think he prefers his time lounging in the hammock with Daddy. 🥰
He does also appreciate chasing the pigs and goats and sheep, as much as we keep hollering at him to knock it off.
If you’re wondering what’s happened to scar up poor Pattie’s back like that, zoom in on the following photo to find the culprit.
The rains have certainly seemed to wake up the wild life—just in the past few days we’ve seen a scorpion, 2 water moccasins, 2 copperheads, and Hubby even thinks he saw a coral snake.
I followed one for a couple of minutes as he made his way back to the pond.
There are some more pleasant sitings as well, like these, wild butterfly weed (Asclepius) and Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia).
And some cute mushrooms that I haven’t been able to identify.
The garden is doing fine, tomatoes are growing very well, all from our saved seed. Beans and cucs just coming in and the peppers are getting their first flowers.
The first datura bloom, the German chamomile flowering by the snap peas and a nasturtium blooming near the wild spiderwort (a medicinal I’ve posted about here).
In closing, a quick view of honeybees bathing in Poppy pollen.
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 . . .
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.
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.
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.)
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
Almost entirely happy snaps and almost no complaining at all, really! The garden is mostly great, the weather mostly fine, summer in full swing already, ready or not.
It’s been busy around here, as usual. But, busy in the country way, which is very different. Our preservation season has already begun, and it’s fixing to get very busy very soon. I have mixed feelings about that, but here it is anyway.
I’ve been saving the rose petals for drying and kombucha after admiring their scent and beauty in many lights and angles.
The poppies continue to pop up in random places, among the roses and in cracks and crevices, like dandelions.
And the bees love them as much as I do.
Another rose variety, the thornless Peggy Martin, I just planted last year, is now getting its first blooms.
I’m so very pleased with the transition from cool-season coral honeysuckle blooms to the Dortmond rose takeover, lovely! I especially like the short spell they co-habitat.
The wattle fence I began with the best intentions is languishing due to too many other priorities. It has been a sheep deterrent at least, since the mamas and lambs have taken over the front yard. And even Shadow doesn’t dare stand in their way!
This is where the citrus will go, my new big project. I’m even considering throwing an avocado in there too. I know, very ambitious! But, I want to give some of the new methods a try and it seems like a good time. This side of the house is ideal, the house breaking the north wind and the heavy late afternoon sun. Plus, there’s the extra warmth accumulated in the walls of the house to help in cold snaps, along with the extra heating and draping methods that seem to be working for others.
Ooohhh, anticipation!
Just like the tomatoes and cucumbers coming so soon, right around the corner, and I can hardly wait. The last fermented cucumbers we used up a week ago, amazingly, and they were still crispy and flavorful. I plan to continue and expand my fermenting efforts this summer and fall. More herb pastes, more tea blends, more spice mixes.
The lambs are still doing fine, my how fast they grow.
Spring lambs on springs! 😆
My garden mascots, two white rabbits.
And my single complaint—the spray continues to ruin our beautiful days.
Is this why we can so clearly see these colors, because we have an atmosphere saturated with reflective particulate matter?
“I’m no prophet Lord, I don’t know nature’s ways.”
‘Anticipation’ by Carly Simon
