Tag: Rural life

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!

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.

Screenshot

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!

Thanks for stopping by, and maybe even a reply! 😊

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.

Shadow sniffing around, but not nearly as tuned into the wildlife as our livestock guardian dogs. In fact, he seems to be a bit allergic to the great outdoors, especially in summer!

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.

Water moccasin making its 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 . . .

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.

A larger garden view

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

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?

Cool pic, or chem-filled haze?

“I’m no prophet Lord, I don’t know nature’s ways.”
‘Anticipation’ by Carly Simon

Spectacular!

As much as I complain about the weather—that is mostly, the man-made weather—I feel I must give credit when credit is due.

We’ve been having a spectacular spring. Not one hail storm, flood, tornado to speak of. Perhaps still too light on the rain for my liking, but it’s been enough to keep things growing beautifully around here.

So I just thought I’d share a bit of that splendor here and now, even though I haven’t the time or energy for much else at the moment. I’ve been preparing all week for another basic fermentation workshop, which means a lot of mise en place (that’s a fancy French expression for ‘get your shit together’). 😆

The coral honeysuckle, looking more amazing than ever, with the rose growing in there just about to bloom too. And a hummingbird finally showed up to enjoy it too, but there’s not a chance to catch him on camera without many hours to spare.

I tossed poppy seeds out by the hundreds, everywhere. And they’ve shown up in the most unusual places, one at a time, in the tiny cracks between wood and grass, under the dogwood, under the mulberry, in the garlic patch and the turnip rows, just one each, out of hundreds.

I’m glad, I so love them, but I don’t get it. Why there? And where are the rest of them?

Everybody loves the turnip blossoms, especially the bees and goats!

You can see Chestnut’s abscess has almost completely disappeared, hardly visible anymore. But Walnut behind her has torn her ear something terrible, probably in a fence somewhere, doing just what she’s doing here. We may have to change her name to Van Gogh.

Getting some good kohlrabi and kale and potatoes, and peas, and strawberries and clover, and just about everything, coming in strong.

I’ve been meaning to get some cute lamb vid soon too, really! They are at that adorable stage. Next month come the kids!

More coming very soon, thanks for stopping by!

Homestead Happenings

The exciting season continues! Mostly plant talk this post. And, we’ve got our first lambs, I’m workin’ my first wattle fence, there’s some flower photos and fancy garden plans.

A first-time mama is the first to drop a perfect set of twins!
Dogwoods blooming beneath oaks

Trumpet, or coral, honeysuckle on our front porch usually attracts hummingbirds by now. It’s looking gorgeous and I’m quite proud of it because it’s one I propagated from the wild. But, where are our feathered friends?

Seed saving has definitely upped our game in the garden. Buying seeds is certainly far easier than saving them. Where we once just had to plan one large garden space, now there are three. It feels like juggling! You’ve got to keep all the spaces perfectly coordinated. I had to make a chart. I am not a chart sort of person. I’m the kind of person who instantly glazes over at the mere inclusion of a chart in any piece of literature.

So really my chart was more like a list of do’s and don’ts in a useless graph format. Don’t plant the pumpkins with the zucchini. Don’t plant the luffa with the Trombetta. Do plant different varieties of cucumbers, peppers, melons and watermelons at least 1/2 mile apart. (Is that even possible?) Musk melons and watermelons are safe to plant together, but French cantaloupe most certainly cannot be planted with American varieties or with green melons.

And that’s just the summer season’s produce, there’s a whole different set of charts for the winter veggies.

Luckily, I’ve got some good guidance in a great book and, even better, some bigger minds to follow in the form of Gavin’s Newsletter. He’s just started a book club and his first book up for April just happens to be the one I’m reading.

https://open.substack.com/pub/gavinmounsey/p/the-results-from-the-first-book-club?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios

Why save seed?
From the book we learn a few good reasons:
*selecting for specific traits,
*preserving diversity,
*saving money,
*creating superb plants,
*And, going on an adventure.
“The art of saving seeds may so intrigue you that you’ll branch out to your own plant-breeding adventures with such long-term seed-saving projects as growing oaks from acorns.”

Perhaps that could be me! Or perhaps I should’ve started this about 30 years ago.

But, those do all sound like good reasons to me, plus I’ll add one more. It’s a good way to exercise your body and your brain at the same time.

But, propagating something so slow-growing from seed at this stage of life, I think I’ll need more bang for the buck than an oak. Like, this magnificent magnolia!

(Photos sent by a friend in UK, wow, what a specimen!)

Of course, not all seed saving is complicated. After all, it used to be something every farmer would do, and their children, too. If I’d grown up doing it I’d probably think I’m making much ado about nothing.

In particular, most of the common herbs we love—dill, cilantro, basil, parsley couldn’t be easier—let them go to seed, collect the seed once dry, keep in a paper bag over winter, and sprinkle back out in spring.

Easy-peasy, leaving more time for flowers!

More flowers, herbs and medicinals has been the big goal besides seed saving. I’ve always liked hollyhocks and other traditional ‘cottage garden’ favorites. How fortunate for me to find one I’ve never heard of before, with a really cute name.

Inspiration photo only, real or photoshop, no clue

Flower name: “Kiss me over the garden gate”
Latin name: Persicaria orientalis (formerly Polygonum orientale) is an annual member of the buckwheat family. The tall plants produce pretty pink pendulous blooms.

I’ve just planted it under the bedroom window inside my work-in-progress wattle fence.

What’s a wattle fence?

I had no idea what that was until I read about another blogger, Re-Farmer, building one. It looked like a fun and do-able project perfect for a precision-challenged person like myself.

And it is! There are lots of YouTube videos on the process, but I think this one was the best—a much taller and longer wattle fence than I’ve tried to produce, but who knows, as my skills develop I could step it up a notch. 🤔

The other big garden plan this year are a few citrus trees. We’ve been wanting them for a long time, but all fruit trees are a challenge here with our crazy weather. (And it’s not just us! All kinds of complaints about it from YouTubers and neighbors alike. It didn’t used to be like this.)

Anyway, this guy’s got some great suggestions and solutions and we so love our citrus, so we’re going to make an investment toward our citrus-filled future with Myer’s lemon, Mexican lime and Satsuma orange.

Another small plan is more peppers, specifically seasoning peppers, also called spice peppers (though they aren’t always spicy as in hot), like pimiento’s and such.

As much fermenting as I’ve been doing I see they are an excellent addition to all kinds of dishes. Plus, peppers do pretty well here usually, and they harvest in fall when there’s little else happening, and they are lovely little plants some folks grow just as ornamentals. Four excellent reasons to squeeze them into the rotation. Here’s one variety I’m trying:


Aji Dulce spice pepper from Southern Exposure

Aji Dulce Spice Pepper

“(C. chinense) 99 days. (green > orange-red > red) [Venezuelan heirloom. Seed source from Donna Hudson in TN.] Has the same shape, size, color and aroma as Habanero, but is sweet, spicy, and delicious, with only a trace of heat. Highly aromatic fruits; their flavor is unusual and complex, with overtones of black pepper and coriander, and undertones of other spicy flavors. An excellent choice for sautéed vegetables, rice and bean dishes, paprika, or herbal vinegars. The thin-walled pendant fruits are 1 x 2 in., tapering at both the stem and blossom end. Plants have good foliage cover and bear at 18 in. high. Seedlings grow slowly at first, but grow rapidly later in the season to 48 in. or more.”

Like I said, it’s the exciting season on the wee homestead!

Bubba says “Bye and thanks for stopping by!”

Homestead Happenings

Such an exciting season around the wee homestead! We’ve got mostly happy snaps and cute vids to share this post—growing piglets and bees and veggies—yippie!

I’ll save the unsavory stuff til the very end, that way those who must can just skip it. (Mighty generous of me, eh? 😆)

Let’s begin with a bumper crop of piglets, 11 of them, here trying to figure out the basics. This is just one day old, my aren’t they some quick learners!

Later we have a couple more from today, at one week old.

She’s been an excellent mama, Patty, this is her 2nd litter.

The garden is going strong already and this is definitely the earliest I’ve seen bumble bees out and about. March 15 is our average last frost date around here, for whatever that’s worth. Considering we’ve seen snow-covered Indian paintbrush before, we don’t put a lot of stock in that date.

If we don’t get a late frost this year it will be our earliest ever for summer planting. I’ve already got cucumbers in! The tomatoes are just about to go in and the peas are presenting perfectly.

Peas and fava beans planted together. If it gets too hot too quickly they will be a bust, but we do love when they succeed.

On left in the basket is celeriac, another fav of mine I try ever year, but like the fava beans and peas, it all depends on the temperatures if we’ll see a harvest. Next to them are tomatoes started under lights indoors and hardening now before planting in a day or two. I’ll plant some indeterminate varieties in about a month, hoping they’ll last longer through the heat. On right, the onions and garlic are looking great.

The old pears have already flowered over a week ago, here you can see Papa Chop napping while surely enjoying their sweet scent wafting on the breeze. Along with the bees!

On the right you can see me filling up the new hive with bees that over-wintered in the nuc where they positioned themselves last spring.

This was such a memorable experience last year that we managed to catch a bit of on vid—well worth the watch as the colony we just captured as a swarm moves from the hive I tried to put it in into the nuc I’d placed as a bait hive, moving themselves within just a few hours from one side of the garden to the other.

This was a swarm we caught and first tried to transfer to a different hive on the other side of the garden. The bees had a better idea.

This was the swarm last spring. It was just a small one and I guess they just didn’t feel quite ready yet for the big hive I tried to place them in.

Thank you ma’am, but we prefer it over here!

Well, this time they were a little more receptive to my preference and they are in their expanded home doing fine. 🤗

The piglets are so cute it’s hard not to take multiple vids watching them. I don’t edit yet, but maybe someday I’ll venture into more serious farmish filming.

And another ….

But, it’s not all peaches and rainbows for the piglets. Because you know, ‘male privilege’. Last year Hubby learned to castrate, which is an absolutely necessary skill if you’re serious about raising pigs. He did the deed, he’s gotten rather quick and good at it, so we made a couple of vids this time. Here’s the intro.

https://videopress.com/v/59aC7tGy?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

I’ll refrain from posting an example of the dirty deed though, which I could barely film! Yes, I admit one of my many bad qualities is squeamishness. But in my defense, I know many others way more squeamish than me!

If you really want to see it, you’ll have to send me an email. Don’t worry, I won’t judge. 😉

And in other bad news, yes, they still spray our beautiful days away. 😩

Still, it’s a beautiful life, and while we may complain, we know how to appreciate it all, too.

When all else fails, learn from Bubba.

“Oh, you only meant to dry the cushions here for freshening?
Let me test that out for ya.” ~So Says Bubba

Thanks for stopping by, wishing y’all a glorious spring!

Shadow pointing out which wild cherry suckers I should try to grow into trees.

Homestead Happenings

This post we’ve got some happy snaps, the usual weather bitching, a bit of pre-planning and some good news on two healing fronts.

(From bottom left: mini-mustard greens and new lettuce germinated inside about to be transplanted to replace all we’ve eaten; several types of onions and elephant garlic (which does best here, by far); and turnips for us and the pigs. 😋)

The cauliflower is long gone, the broccoli nearly so, but a new crop is already in the works inside on a heat mat. Succession planting has its limitations in our East Texas Yo-Yo Season (formally known as ‘winter’). Sometimes you get lucky with a warm stretch and get a nice surprise (yay, third times a charm, the carrot seeds finally germinated!) other times you get premature bolting (that dumb broccoli didn’t even produce a good head yet!).

Premature bolting 😖
But some nice butter lettuce still doing well by covering during cold swings

I do not appreciate it, and I think it stresses us all at some level, not just me, not just the more sensitive 4-legged and 2-legged, but all of life. Five warm days go by, in the 70s (but feeling hotter), with an unseasonal and hot stinking wind coming from the south, then suddenly, the very next day, it’s 40, lows in the 20s, and the dogs are shedding, also unseasonably.

Our ‘Arctic chicks’ — confused broody hens confusing weather whiplash for spring

Yes, we get the surprise arctic chicks on occasion. It’s nice to see a bee or two about. We get early daffodils. But we also get another lost fruit crop because it is sure to frost and now, again, everything is blooming far too early.

And it seems to me, the more folks are catching on, the more the establishment pushes back, with the gaslighting and the misdirection and the normalizing.

Going back to the 1800s! And how’s that working out for us?

Despite the man-made manipulation, or maybe because of it, I’ve come to appreciate the old adage ‘Let nature take its course’ on a whole new level. We’ve had two overlapping critter health issues these last months, both with their unique challenges.

Shadow’s blood-spurting ear was by far worse, but still, in every case, I don’t like not knowing what to do, stressing about my lack of knowledge, feeling useless, and that’s how I felt during Chestnut’s ordeal as well.

Please allow my whine for just another moment, it’s been illuminating for me, in a way.

Self-reliance is a cornerstone goal for us. Relying on vet care is not an option for a number of reasons, beginning with the cost, ending with the lack of trust we have for the medical establishment, and with a very long and convoluted journey in between where we try to figure out how to bridge this enormous gap, with no training.

We are lucky for the internet, but you know how that goes. One problem, a dozen conflicting pieces of advice. We ask around as well, we are certainly grateful the many suggestions offered, but still it’s nerve-racking making ill-informed decisions, and no matter what anyone might pretend, health is not an exact, one-size fits all kind of science.

Chestnut was acting strangely, very suddenly. She went from just fine to a few hours later she was lethargic and not eating much and separated herself from the herd.

My goat friend suggested Ivermectin and it seemed to work fine. Then she quickly developed an abscess on her side. Related? No clue. It looked terrible, but it was not bothering her at all. I read lots of advice, but decided to let nature take its course after reading one description that sounded most similar to what I was seeing. Though they recommended lancing it at the end stage to avoid ‘infection’. (In the above photo you can see the ‘before and after’, the photo on right taken yesterday, sorry for the blurriness.). It got very large and it was not easy to do nothing!

It’s been over a month now, and it is healing nicely. Patience was the correct remedy, not lancing. I think we have an addiction to unnecessary interference in our culture.

The ordeal with Shadow was a serious challenge. You might recall the middle of the story from our last Happenings post. It started all the way back in November with a little nick on the tip of his ear. The cat?

Who knows, but it was shockingly difficult to get the blood flow under control.

We had much advice, some of it new and excellent (thanks again Kath and Zoe!), but wow, did that take some patience and perseverance, which mostly landed on Hubby, as per usual. (Male privilege! 😂)

Three months later and it is completely healed and all’s well that ends well, thank heavens!

What exuberance, no one around here can keep up with him! He runs circles around us all, then sits patiently by Hubby’s side until the next round.

We LOVE potatoes, but they aren’t the easiest to grow here. This ‘barrel-layering’ technique has proven to be more successful.

We love potatoes so much we also buy them in bulk when they’re on sale and Hubby cans them up and they fry up in tallow so quick it’s like a delicious fast food that’s a cheaper and healthier alternative to the industrially processed varieties.

It is a long and labor-intensive project, that’s 45 pounds of potatoes there, it took him the best part of a day to do, but we’ll be appreciating the effort for 28 delicious meals. 😊

Looking ahead we’re doing a bit of planning—I’ll be giving another beginner’s fermentation course next month and Hubby’s got some good livestock trades in the works, we’re committed to foraging more for mushrooms and cultivating our own.

Patty, our mama-to-be, eating up the last acorns. Already many of her piglets claimed for bartering deals. 😁

Here’s a current little visit with our herd, including, hopefully many healthy, expectant mamas with kids growing fine.

Not that little guy, he’s our first buck, we call him Teaky.

5 expectant mamas among our St. Croix-Dorper flock

Incorporating more permaculture design in the garden and orchard is an on-going big goal. We have a couple spaces empty and I’d love to try something really unique like this:

Permaculture-Inspired image I’m dreaming about!

Where I’d be including my fun garden-art projects, like these:

Lots of grand plans in the works, always, but it’s the simple things that make the hard stuff worth while.

Thanks for stopping by!

Rhythm of Life

Our seasons change. I don’t just mean from north to south, east to west. There are the calendar seasons, and the four seasons, though some unfortunate folks only get two.

Then there are the seasons of life—childhood, adulthood, old age.

Here on the wee homestead we have our own seasons now, too. These, of course, are the most special of all seasons, to us.

Here we have just ended the killing season. Hallelujah! A very unique sort of season to most—vegetarians certainly—but also to most of the western world, who no longer process their own meat.

This is an extremely challenging season.

For Hubby!

He has full and sole responsibility for the slaughtering, the gutting, the skinning, the scalding, the hanging, the butchering, the grinding, the rendering, the canning, the smoking, the curing, the broth-making.

WOW!

 

For my part, I do the packaging. Plus a bit of pâté, a smattering of curing. 
Not exactly an equitable deal.

Mostly it’s Delicious Season for me! Our small space is full of meats of many flavors—bacon, ham, pâtés, sausage, lamb pastrami and various other cures, beautiful chops and ribs and roasts, the aroma of broths and meats that he pressure cans, filling up every corner of our little cottage and wafting out to season the surrounding vicinity.

Roderick and half of his harem. Notice the PVC pipe on Walnut? That was a temporary fix to keep her horns out of the fences, and it worked like a charm.

Cheese season has also just ended. Now my divas should be comfortably pregnant, their season also having shifted thanks to the services of our friendly neighborhood Billy (aka Roderick). That means our herd shall be greatly increased by early summer, gods willing. Roderick has since moved on to more fertile pastures in the next county.

While the Gouda-style and the Camembert-style are more difficult to make, the Mason Jar Marcelin and the herbed cheese balls aged in olive oil couldn’t be easier. A 3rd grader could do it!
Don’t let the moldy surfaces fool you, beneath their scary exterior these cheeses are quite mild and very tasty.

That means it’s also a season for some difficult decisions. We are at our ideal capacity right now. We don’t want to grow. We don’t want to get ‘into business’. Such an odd thing to reject, considering where we’ve grown up. It gets in the blood—this mindset/worldview—now what, what’s next, what’s new. Get big or get out! Where’s the market? Don’t you want to open up shop? Sell to the public? Get all licensed up and grow, grow, grow?

Oh, hell, no!

What if, we don’t care about all that? What if we are in a season of life where we care about quality over quantity? Others can, and will, ‘get big’ and in some cases (a precious few) more power to ‘em.

But, I’m in my Delicious Season. I have an extra roll around my middle to prove it. (So do Hubby and all the dogs and pigs and even the sheep!)

Nope, my main concern at the moment is, how delicious can I get delicious to be? It sounds decadent, I know. But, maybe further refinement, compared to mass production, could be a really good thing?

Quantity over quality—whether in words, or food, or strip malls, or entertainment—has not worked out too well for this world seems to me.

There was a time, in my peak ambition years, I did strive for more instead of better—more travels, more experiences, more friends, more leisure, even more work. My season has shifted. I definitely strive for better over more these days. What if I could make the most delicious cheese ever made in all the world, and only 3 people ever tasted it?

Fine by me!

Of course, then how would I know if it’s the most delicious? Maybe that’s not so important either. Maybe it’s sufficient that what we produce and process and serve is delicious enough to make all the hard work worthwhile.

We’ll be spending some cold days relishing in our Delicious Season, because right around the corner another season is waiting.

Bubba and Buttercup LOVE when it gets really cold! When it’s under 20 degrees F they get to camp inside under the kitchen table. 🤗
“But the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time.”