Category: SMTL

There are both pro’s and con’s of living a rural life. For some the relative isolation is unbearable, for others a God send. Dragging my butt 25 or so miles each way to pick up weekly groceries is a pain and now that I’m aged, my back hurts and my legs are cramped on both ends of the journey. While I think the thousands of pro/con comparisons weigh heavily towards the rural, I’m obviously a minority as only 17 percent of Americans feel the same. The other 83 percent live the urban/suburban life.

The 17 percent number is eroding exponentially. Right now rural areas are loosing roughly 300,000 annually while city dwellers are growing by a little over 2,000,000 annually. As things stand, our 330 million in population is split 273 million to 57. As this degradation in population continues so goes the political influence and value system. In 10 years little or no consideration will be given to the wants/needs of the rural population in America. It’s probably a good thing that the most important want/need is centered around ‘keep the hell out of my life’.

In short, we are insulated from the insanity that springs up in the population centers. No riots, no BLM/Antifa, no men running around in skirts with green hair and nose rings. But, to think/say that we are immune to the decisions made by politicians (and their fine constituents) is a mistake. Case in point: canning lids.

You may be able to detect that I’m still pissed about not being able to instantly go on line and execute a resupply. There is absolutely no logical reason that a commodity that is used almost exclusively by a rural population, a population that is shrinking, should be completely sold out at every retail outlet in the country. What few items are available are selling at 5+ times their normal price. Lids are now so expensive that, when they can be found, you can actually buy two 12 packs of canning jars (with glass jars, rings, and lids) for less that 12 individual lids. This is insane!

I’ve solved my lid issue. I’ve invested in bunches of ‘reusables’ that are said to have an 8 year life. I’m not sure that whatever drags us back into the stone age is going to last that long, but I am sure whatever causes it can be laid at the feet of the wondrous ‘leaders’ the urbanites install into office.

Really? Really? 22 bucks for $3 worth of lids? I thought it was a simple pricing error and then saw this:

Rural Woman (A Pusher)

Urban Woman (a Brainiac)

If you do a quick survey of Hillary’s backdrop, you’ll see why big city problems seem light years away from folk in fly-over land. This is the America that few will experience and fewer still will understand.

I decided earlier this month that I could solve a lot of the problems in my garden with a modest investment in it’s infrastructure. So I dropped a little cash on high quality landscape fabric and once the holiday’s pass I’ll order up the drip tape I need to implement the balance of my plan.

My problem is that I bust my ass in the spring, just before planting time, to clear out the weeds in the planting boxes and along the pathways between the boxes. I’ve all but given up on the three large planting areas, even if I till everything under and mulch extensively, the weeds attack with such a vengeance that within a month the areas are overwhelmed and gardening is untenable.

Here is a photo taken by Google-Earth, the areas of my garden that have become unusable are those within the yellow borders. An entire half of my garden has become unusable and the half that was usable required an inordinate amount of effort just to beat the weeds back.

Here is one of the planting areas as seen from the ground

Even those area covered in weed block fell prey to the onslaught. This is a bed that had cabbage in it. The weeds became so pervasive, even with a healthy mulching, that succession planting was impossible. The weeds were choking out the cabbage and stealing both the nutrients in the soil and the water.

The bed adjacent to the cabbage (below), it was set in garlic but was quickly besieged.

I stumbled across a series of videos by a young family in the Ozarks and discovered the solution to my problems: a quality ground cover and drip irrigation system. Here is how things are working out for them:

This couple has many good videos that, had I viewed them earlier, would have saved me a lot of grief!

Amazon sent the fabric along a couple of days back. I still don’t understand how they can provide and ship things so cheaply (I could not have shipped a roll for what they sold and shipped for). I’m using the 4′ fabric and tried it out on several 12′ planting boxes yesterday afternoon. One of the boxes holds garlic, so I burned holes at 6″ intervals with 1 foot between rows. I’ll get some pictures taken in the next couple of days and share them with y’all.

It’s that time of the year once again where we (actually/probably only me) count the days down to the 22nd of December; the day after the Winter Solstice. Until then light in each day diminishes in the Northern Hemisphere and then for the three day period 22-25th the daylight in each day is almost all of an equal length. From the 25th on our world becomes brighter and brighter each passing day!

The weather for the last couple of days has been pretty shitty, so to battle back the doldrums I’ve been locating and ordering the seeds I’ll need for next year. This was much more difficult this year than last, it seems seeds have become a high demand item. Guess folk are planning for the end of the world (or something). I’m not short on seeds, but I’ve heard that repeated planting of the same strain of a plant results in less and less yields over time. The solution is to mix in new strains occasionally to improve the genetic diversity in the garden.

I’m going to try a few new things this year: Brussels Sprouts, Artichokes, Cauliflower, Daikon Radish, and Asparagus. The radish is to improve my Kimchi, I tried making it with turnip (said to be a suitable replacement) this last year and it just doesn’t work quite right. I’ve also ordered some Soy Beans because I’d like to take a shot at making some Soy Sauce.

I mentioned earlier that my granddaughter bagged a nice buck a couple of weeks ago, she’s went back to the butcher a few days back and picked up her meat. She had everything possible cut into jerky strips, and what could not be cut that way packaged as hamburger and sausage. I’m the ‘jerky guy’ so yesterday I seasoned up and began marinading about 15 pounds of venison in three varieties (Chipotle, Mojito Lime, and Honey Sriracha). The Chipotle is in the dehydrator now: what a great smell!

The long beautiful weekend is about over; thunderstorms are rolling in as if to punctuate the end of this holiday. Son in law and granddaughter hunted for a couple of the days. She bagged a good size buck, he blanked as did I on my one day in the stand on my property. They hunted with my neighbor on his 500 + acres. We hunt only large bucks and so the 40+ doe and smaller bucks we spotted (4 separate hunting sites on one day) are safe for now.

As I look out my window right now (it is a few minutes shy of noon) I can see three on the hillside about 100 yards from my cabin. We’ll have a doe day pretty soon and thin out the herd. The meat generated from this hunt goes to a local food bank.

We had friends up Thursday before festivities to familiarize with their new home defense shotgun. I’m not sure they are any better equipped to defend their home now than when they arrived. I guess that my years in the military give me both confidence and a dose of respect for safe handling that these folk clearly lack. Just standing near them and trying to provide some semblance of caution and restraint had my asshole puckered so tight you couldn’t drive a 10 penny nail up it. The shotgun ended up being a production shortened, pump action 410 with a pistol grip and no stock. No way to aim it, just hold it somewhere between hip and tit level and let the shot fly.

We’ve put some hay and protein tubs out for the 17 cows, 8 calves, and one loaner bull. The kids went up on 4 wheeler’s yesterday with 50 lb bags of corn to give them a treat and pet them: both the kids and the cows seem to like that.

We’ve had some remote acquaintances touched by the virus. A friends of our daughter and son in law has been on a ventilator for awhile. He is slated for ‘unplugging’ tomorrow. I can’t help but believe that his underlying condition (or lack thereof) was to blame. He was a full blown diabetic that stood about 5’8″ and weighed in excess of 300 lbs. But that’s as close as it’s gotten to us.

My daughter told us that the guys wife, a good friend, kept wanting to come over to her house while here husband was hospitalized. She was seeking a comfort that just could not be provided to someone who should clearly have been self isolating.

Fingers crossed out here in the hinderlands of Tennessee.

The good weather over the last few days has given me the opportunity to clean up the garden and prepare the soil for next years bounty. It’s in bad shape. The garden has 6 ‘zones’ that are laid out as shown in the diagram. Each of the zones is 30′ X 40′. Zones 2,4, and 6 show the type of things I intended on planting. Not all were planned for watermelon, etc.., these areas are where beans and other row crop are planted as well.

Zones 1,3, and 5 are filled with 4′ X 12′ planting boxes. It’s these areas that need the most attention right now.

26 of the 28 boxes are stripped of the previous planting, the weed block, and the mulch.

Then I added about 5 cubic feet of 2 year old composted cow manure and a cup of 8-8-8 fertilizer to each box and worked it into the soil.

I’m 2/3rds finished on the clean up, once I get weed block on each bed and mulch them out again I can focus on what I’d really like to do in the garden: add ascetic elements such as stone half walls, stone borders, bird baths, and perhaps a small greenhouse.

So my weekend is filled with dirt and dung! I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I broke out the boat yesterday and put in at the launch on 2nd Creek. My excuse was fishing, but my intent was to put a little fresh air in my lungs and take in the scenery. Mother nature did not disappoint.

Here is a little zoom applied to the above photo. This is the first time that I’ve seen cattle in the water anywhere on the Wheeler Reservoir.

I played with the brightness and contrast on the photo’s above. The last photo (below) is a ‘auto leveled’ rendition of the photo immediately above. All bastardizing done in paint.net.

If you’re on the north side of Wheeler and just short of the dam, you are at the first creek entering into the impoundment; this is Second Creek. If you were at the second creek entering Wheeler, you’d be at First Creek. There is no mystery here, just how folk in North Central Alabama do their count’n.

The graphic below (the graphics by the way are the point of this post) shows the dam (red arrow) and Second Creek (green arrow)

Here is Second Creek (most of it anyway). The circle marks the area where I sometimes launch my boat. It’s about a mile from the mouth of the creek.

This is the circled area from the image above. There is a boat launch just above where the star is and each of the arrows points to an underwater bridge or culvert. Also shown are ancient stream beds and now submerged roadways. Its roughly 500 feet from where the boat launch is tow the submerged bridge to it’s left.

The point of all of this is the software that allows me (us) to sit our den and perform a deep-dive map recon on any freshwater lake in the country is free (sometimes). Yesterday I found it on the “Fishing Alabama” website. Link is here

Found this wreck of a place on a rural Lauderdale County Rd in North Central Alabama. Light was not quite right so I turned it into a black/white, diminished the light, and fuzzied it up using the oil paint feature in paint.net.

Now it fits my mood !

The wife and I are all set to step out and vote. Our polling place is about 10 miles away and sits in the middle of a big field near what used to be a small town (Five Points). It’s at what could generously be called a volunteer fire department. It’s in the circle below. Yes, those are gravel roads.

When I say that I live in the country, I mean that I really, really live in the country.

What’s great about living this far out is that it is away from almost all idiots. If you’re a fool or an ass or are looking to leach off of your neighbor, you wouldn’t last long out this way. It’s rough country filled with a good, rough, God fearing people.

Not a lot of Biden banners out this way. I’ve yet to see BLM or ACAB (or anything else for that matter) spray painted on the side of a building. There are a good amount of US flags sprinkled among the houses along the country roads; just about every time you’d see one of them there would be a Trump flag flying just below it.

Like I said, these are good folk with little tolerance for idiots. Biden type folk are neither made here or choose to plant themselves nearby. For us that live out here in fly-over country, we wouldn’t have it any other way (gravel roads and all).

A forecast for freeze and frost prompted the final gathering from the garden, so I pulled the remainder of the peppers out yesterday afternoon. I also picked a few habanero, bell, and banana peppers for seeds along with tomatoes, beans (Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lake), okra, and basil that I’ll use in next years garden.

By far the jalapeno’s were the most plentiful and I pulled right at 200 of them that were roughly 3 inches long by 1 inch wide (at the stem side). I decided to can these as ‘Cowboy Candy’. After slicing and simmering them for 15 minutes in apple cider vinegar, a massive amount of sugar, garlic, turmeric, crushed red pepper, and celery seed I was able to put up 6 twelve oz jars and 3 eight oz jars.

Before placing them in a hot water bath for 15 minutes I pulled a spoonful out and let it cool down. The many articles I read on this treat said that the sugar knocked down some of the heat of the peppers and I wanted to see if that was so. Yep, it knocked the edge off of them without overly diminishing the spicy flavor.

These little boogers will be great come Thanksgiving time!

The other day (29 Oct) I rambled about my motor bikes and how my time on this planet advances relentlessly. I was a little remorseful for having moved on from Harley’s to cows. Here (above) is a photo I snapped this morning that highlights that transition.

On further consideration though, I really should be extremely grateful for the changes in life. I’m so much more than an ironed butt biker, or for that matter the other persona I’ve worn on this journey: bad ass infantry soldier, business executive, and (in my grand youth) hoodlum extraordinaire.

My view now is that it’s what’s in the cup that matters most. I might as well adopt that position as I’ve done a bang up job of absolutely wearing out the ‘cup’ I’ve been poured into!

Have a great Monday.

I’ve battled for the last day or so with updating my website. I couldn’t crank up new drivel (posts) or modify the existing fodder. Everything I did not only did not solve the problem, but also generated a new problem.

I couldn’t figure out how I, who consistently keeps the latest/greatest version of software up to date, could completely lose the ability to post. Then, I happened across the below review of the latest version of writing interface.

So after uninstalling the auto-updating Gutenberg program and reverting to an earlier edition, I’m happy to report I’m back.

I’m back baby !

Thanks for your patience.

I’ve been busting my butt (which actually means I’ve gotten off of my fat ass) over the last several days trying to recover the land around the spring that was trashed from flooding a storm brought last year. Here is a picture of the flood in progress

After it passed and the waters subsided I was left with this:

This pile of rubble is about 2 foot deep, 7 feet in width and 12 or so feet long. It sits exactly at the point where the spring enters the creek. The photo below is looking up the spring channel. The structure on the left of the photo is the stone benches and table we erected a few years back. The channel is was filled with rubble and silt that washed off of the hill (to the left) and down the creek during the storm.

Getting all of this crap out of the spring had to be done by hand as it wasn’t wide enough for the tractor (with bucket) to get into it.

So I parked the tractor with the bucket near where I was working and filled it, one shovel full at a time and hauled it areas nearby that were ‘trenched’ by the flooding waters.

So now, it looks much better. Still much to do in this area, but shoveling rock one shovel load at a time isn’t one of them.

Did I mention that I had help? Here (below) are the worker bees lending their talents to the task. The first is ‘Dixie’ and the second is ‘Rusty’

I purchased the mount from Bassett about 6 years ago and it works better than most anything else on the market. If you’ve ever fired a M14/M1A you’ll understand why most all scope mounts fail. Hard to believe this simply designed bracket works so well and holds zero both while mounted and when removed and remounted.

Cheek pad is next as using a scope on my M1A completely removes the cheek weld. Nothing worse than having a scope on a National Match grade thunder stick and not being able to go sub MOA on three round groups.

The postings have been slim over the last couple of days, the next few look like they will be just as spartan. I’ve got 90 bales of hay cut, raked, and baled in my front pasture. Not the little square pocket size bales, the 5X5 rounds. I’ll get them moved into the hay barn in the next day or so.

It’s slow going sometimes, but its slow because of the tasks, not because I’m ‘Joe Slow’ . Joe Slow you ask? It’s kinda/sorta like the little video below.

I’ve been busting my ass with the zero turn mower and weed eater again, this time around the cabin and near the creek. The ground is so steep in many places that it has to be cut by backing down the hills. A zero turn on steep grade (going face first) is nothing more than an uncontrollable skid. The picture below s about 3/4 of the way down to the creek from my cabin.

This picture was taken near the place the picture above was (I moved 20 yards or so to the right), Note how fast the land falls away from the cabin on the right side.

Finally, this is a picture taken up by the cabin looking down to the creek.

The point of all of this, if there is a point at all, is that cutting and weed-eating around my little chunk of paradise is time consuming and pushes other task to the rear burner. Thus: slow posting !

Thanks for bearing with me as I do my fall tasks.

Now that the weather has begun to moderate (moderately moderate) I thought that I’d get my fishing tackle and poles straightened up and make the final repair to my trailer. I did find a photo (of sorts) of my boat/trailer after the fall.

Today I replaced the roller that’s shown in the yellow circle below. The portion of the trailer that the spare tire is mounted on was twisted and while this forces the spare to ride a little to the left (in the photo) it has no effect on handling or aesthetics so I’m finished with all the repairs.

I put in near Athens Al. at the Elk River Mills boat launch. While there I ran into the guy in the photo below. He’s a tournament fisherman in a league that competes from kayaks. I had no idea that was a sport. According to him, there are actually three different leagues and he competes in all three.

This thing has a strong electric motor on it and extensive electronics. Here is a little closer view.

I ran my boat up the Elk River to what I guess was nearly the Tennessee line. When the water started getting ‘thin’ I saw this house on the east side of the river.

There is a lot going on with this place. That’s a pretty unique platform that the house is built on, made of huge concrete blocks and stacked 10 feet or so high. I suppose that’s their way of keeping the river out of the house should the Elk ever flood, but between the bank of 6-8 feet and the block, they’ll escape everything but the second coming. City folk might find the water collection system a little odd and they may think it strange that the house has been circumscribed with a electric wire-mesh fence. Both of these are common when you get away from pavement and light poles and live your life on the edge of civilization.

I will say that this first time I’ve ever seen a gate on the water side of a boat launch, but they obviously have their reasons.

Here is a view (below) of the electric mesh fence. My guess is that it is solar operated as I could see no power going to the place. Looking at other photos I’ve taken, I can see no exterior lighting. These folks apparently have no power or have a generator for emergency interior lighting.

Living this far out it’s a good idea to have an electric mesh fence as all kinds of critters will want to either live with you or eat you. If you’ve ever had a raccoon as a roommate you know just how hard they are to vacate. Same with skunks, possum, squirrels, etc. When you get on in years feral dogs, hogs, and coyote begin sizing you up. All good reasons for fencing.

Well, as the old saying goes: There is a time and a place for all things. The time for the place indicated by the yellow arrow above was a month ago. A month ago the foliage along the fence line could have easily been tamed with the weed-eater and I would not have to have fought woody brush every square foot for the roughly 850 feet. The problem was the weather was so damn hot/humid a month ago that it became easy for me to procrastinate.

By way of orientation, the entry to the property is via the upper road, follow it for half a mile or so and the cabin appears. The road right below the arrow bounds a part of the front pasture. The horizontal distance between the fence line (circled in the photo below) and the road is about 10 foot or so.

Weed-eating 850 feet is not all that difficult. It’s a bitch when the foliage has grown so much that it has become ‘woody’, and a really crusty old bitch when it sits on an embankment that slopes 8 feet or so vertically over 4 horizontal feet. In the photo above I’ve cut the 850 foot embankment and now need to get to the top and the 2-4 foot flat area around the fence.

That part is done! Now I need to get the bolt cutters and cut down all of the woody plants that the trimmer wouldn’t.

These photos were taken just below where the yellow arrow is in the Google Earth capture. The last one shows just how ‘woody’ the area had become.

I’ve got to run up to the garden spot in a short while and pull the okra.  It demands attention every two or three days and this is day three.  This year I went with a variety called ‘Emerald Green’ instead of the ‘Clemson Spineless’ that I’d been planting/harvesting the last several years.  The emerald is a little more forgiving (doesn’t stiffen up as much) when you miss a day of picking.  Once picked it’s cleaned, boiled for 3 minutes, tossed into an ice-water bath, cut, flowered, placed on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and frozen for four or five hours.  Once frozen its repackaged into quart baggies for long term freezing.  I’ll also freeze a few quart baggies full of some that are un-breaded.  This will go toward gumbo when the leaves begin to drop this fall. 

The garden is still spitting out jalapenos.  They are not as abundant as last year, and the size is not as large, but they are damn good.  I’ve used almost all that were produced thus far this year in the salsa and rotel I’ve made.  I’ll put up the rest in my three favorite types:  simple brine, ‘spiced’, and what’s called ‘cowboy candy’ (spiced with sugar). 

The habaneros are just about ripe and the thick cayenne peppers are a deep red.  I’ll get those pull in the next couple of days.  They cayenne will be dehydrated and then ran through a food processor to turn them into red pepper flakes.  The habaneros will be dehydrated and remain in little strips.  My only real planned use for them is for shrimp & scallop ceviche. 

The watermelon, cantaloupe, eggplant, and slicing tomatoes are still producing.  Right now I believe I could live a full ‘nuther’ lifetime without skinning/coring another Roma tomato (a feeling that will pass when the salsa runs low).  I trashed the last 4 quarts of last year’s salsa this morning and spent a little time arranging, rearranging and then un-arranging the pantry.  Here is what I’ve gathered/preserved thus far:

• Salsa, Tomato Sauce, Tomato Jam (2 types), whole tomatoes, dehydrated (Besser) tomatoes and tomato powder.
• Salsa verde, dill relish, rotel, sauerkraut, okra, and pesto
• Jalapenos and Spiced Jalepenos.  6 or 7 varieties of Pepper Jelly.
• Three types of orange marmalade, blueberry jam, and jalapeno/blackberry jam  
• Dehydrated squash, cucumber and zucchini.

I did get the boat out this past week.  I fished just a mite, but my real purpose was to see if there was any damage from my spring accident and to reposition the boat on the trailer.  My spring accident came about by my being in a big friggin hurry and not blocking the wheels on the trailer when I unhooked it from the jeep.  I thought sure that I would stay where it was on my upper driveway (wrong).  Given that the jack on the front of the trailer has a wheel on it, it came off of the drive, bounced off of a couple of trees, gained enough speed to jump the upper tier of my railroad tie retaining wall and end up nose down on my lower drive.  This promptly crushed the front jack and caused the boat to slam forward on the trailer.  I guess the only thing that kept it on the trailer is the two rear tie-downs and transom saver.

I was able to lift the boat and trailer back over the wall using the tractor.

Because of the way the boat was positioned on the trailer the only way to get it launched was to back so far into the water that the exhaust on my jeep was gurgling.  This enabled the u bolt welded to the front of the boat to float over the roller on the front of the trailer. The front of the boat had to go up before it could go back.

I replaced the front jack a few weeks ago and, now that I’m certain that I didn’t crack my transom or destroy my engines hydraulic trim. All is good !

Anyway, I’ve got to go gather okra. Take care.  Block your trailer wheels.

Not quite as bad as the dust bowl around my neck of the woods, but we’re getting pretty dry. The few drops we were blessed with early last week was the first rainfall in more than a month.

After several attempts to transfer the photo’s I took of the garden on my camera (Nikon D300) to the hard drive on my computer, I’ve decided to let that rest until I can figure which piece of technology has corrupted itself. Hopefully it’s just a matter of reloading a driver (or two). I shall continue to post with bloodied brow and photos from the webs (vice my own) until the gods shine their light on my technology.

The garden is kicking ass and I’ve been busy putting thinks up. I really need to keep on top of the ‘plucking’, once the tomatoes begin to ripen I’ll need all of my time to get those canned.

The last couple of days have been mostly peppers picking and jelly makin’. I’ve made batches of: Habanero-Aprocot, Apple-Cayenne-Bell, Cayenne-Bell-Banana Pepper, and Jalapeno-Cayenne. I’ve found that the green cayenne peppers are completely sweet and mild for the bottom half of the pepper. No seed means no heat, so to make up for the slow start of my bell peppers (California Wonder) I’ve been supplementing with the green cayenne. The cayenne are called ‘cayenne thick’ and grow 9-10 inches long and perhaps 3/4 inches wide so it doesn’t take all that many to get a few cups worth.

The Habanero-Apricot really has some heat to it. This recipe is a little different that others I’ve used in that you start by soaking dehydrated apricots in vinegar for 4 hours before you begin. I used a dozen peppers instead of the 10 called for and I removed about half of the seeds; not sure that made a difference given the fire that Habanero’s bring. The apricots proved a great balance.

Likewise, the Apple-Cayenne (actually the recipe was for an Apple-Jalapeno mix) called for Granny Smith apples cooked down and then strained. I bought a strainer/mill earlier this year (lesson learned from last year’s tomatoes) and decided to try it on the apples. It’s a wonderful tool!

I pulled about two cups of jalapenos this morning and still have 5 cups of blueberries from yesterday’s haul. I’m pretty sure this is the last of the blueberries so I’ll be mixing them together for my next run of pepper jelly. With this run I’ll have 50 or so half pints put up. Don’t think that’s going to be enough given that my daughter and son-in-law have discovered them.

Managed to get some more pesto put up; my 10 basil plants produce about 8 cups of leaves every 5-7days and this, when mixed with garlic, parmesan cheese, walnuts and oil produce 4 half pints. I’m thinking the basil will be a little more productive once it gets taller/broader, and I can get more stored before season end. At the current rate of production/consumption I’ll not be able to store any!

Zucchini is ramping up. This is the garden’s sneakiest plant; I can check the plants twice a day every day and pull everything I see and then one day find a zuc the size of my forearm lying in plain sight. I’ve got some sliced thin and seasoned with oil and paprika in the dehydrator right now. I’m thinking I can get several months dried and jarred before the plants give out. There are so many different recipes for zuc chips that many varieties will grace the shelves of my pantry soon!

Much goodness is beginning to be gathered out of my little garden; peppers, blueberries, basil, garlic, and cabbage are the latest placed under seal.

I gathered several cups of wild blackberries and canned up what I’m calling ‘Black-Jap’. This is a jelly made by combining 4 cups of blackberries and 10 diced Jalapeno peppers. Around here we’ve grown accustomed to calling the Jalapenos ‘Japs’; thus the ‘Black-Jap’ moniker. I had some of this great jelly spread across hot biscuits yesterday morning and will definitely be making another batch! I think 16 or so half pints will last about a year.

I’ve also put up a batch of pepper jelly made of green Cayenne (as the heat producer), bell and banana peppers. It actually is just a tad more spicy than the Jalapeno pepper jelly, but the flavor is significantly different; for lack of another descriptors, I’ll call it more ‘smokey’ in taste.

Our daughter, son-in-law, granddaughter, and a couple other kids came up on Saturday to fart around with the cattle. We broke out the the jalapeno pepper jelly, cream cheese and crackers and they put a couple of bottles worth away in a single sitting. They left with a ‘care-package’ composed of two types of pepper jelly (cayenne and jalapeno), some blueberry jam, cabbage, and some basil Pesto.

I’ve made several types of pesto so far this year, but the one I like most is basil with walnut. I did arugula earlier and while it’s good, it doesn’t match the basil. With 10 basil plants producing this year I’m shooting to get 2 dozen half pint jars frozen. I’ve pulled 50 plus head of garlic and have them hanging in the barn to dry. The key to good pesto is freshness. Fresh basil, garlic, parmesan cheese, walnuts, and extra virgin olive oil all come together to make this a delightful snack.

I pulled in the few heads of cabbage I’d planted. They’ve been sliced and diced and placed into quart jars to ferment into sauerkraut. I didn’t get enough planted to make more than 8 quarts. According to the farmers almanac I can get a fall crop in if I plant more again this week. Think I’ll try that out. I planted Napa cabbage to make Kimchi with, but the heads never formed tightly., so that’s a bust.

The okra and zucchini are beginning production and I’m beginning to see color in the tomato crop so will be busy this summer!

We did get a good amount of slow steady rain for the last few days and the coming week looks promising as well.

The blueberries are hitting on all cylinders and I’m picking off ripe berries and canning them into delicious jam every other day. I’ll be picking and canning again today. I’ve put up 24 half pint jars from the three batches thus far, about half of what I’d like to have on hand for eat’n and for gift’n.

The jalapeno’s are at the point where some will need to come of the plants soon. I’ll be putting these up as slices and as an important ingredient when salsa making time rolls around (another month?). Right now I’m looking at making some pepper jelly out of them. I’ve gathered several good recipes all of which call for bell peppers (which are rare in my garden right now) and none of which call for banana peppers (of which there are some few more), so I’ll be experimenting some as I put these up.

My excuse for not posting yesterday is/was the mowing and weed-eating of the front fence line; about 1600 linear feet. The mowing part is easy, trimming under the barb wire and around the T-posts could have been a pain in the ass if it were not so beautiful out. The posting will be less numerous than in the past as I’m making an earnest attempt to avoid shallow political memes; I’ll still throw up a particularly poignant one (or more) if they are enlightening or humorous.

I converted the Blueberries I picked yesterday into jam today. It’s made from the simplest of recipes: 7 cups berries (crushed to 5), 6 cups sugar, a package of pectin and a quarter cup of lemon juice. This produced 8 half pints of the great tasting jam. This was water bath canned for 10 minutes.

In the morning I’ll place it along side of the three types of orange marmalade I’ve put away; one from Naval oranges, one from a mix of Naval and Valencia oranges, and one made from ‘blood’ oranges.

I drove out to where I know blackberries are growing to see if the rain has helped them to plump up some: yea, kinda/sorta helped but it’s going to take a couple of more days of occasional rain to get them into good condition. Maybe by the first week in July the crop will be mature and I can go pickin !

The advances in information technology sometimes leave me feeling like I’m a babe lost in the woods. I’ve been battling a number of attacks on this website over the last several weeks. I’ve not won the war but believe that I’ve found a way to keep the barbarians from the gates.

Thanks to all who have written. I’m good.

The garden is going like gangbusters. I’ve got 40 Roma’s in this year (twice as many as last year) and I’ve put a lot of time into keeping them pruned. Last year I lost quite a bit of crop to pest and pestilence; something that could have been mitigated by having good airflow and sunshine. I’ve planted both Bessers (cherry) and Bonny Best for salads, sandwiches, and dehydrating.

I picked Blueberries some this afternoon and have exactly enough (7 cups) for the first batch of Blueberry Jam. I was/am worried about the wild Blackberries because so little rain has fallen in the last two weeks. We had several passing showers today and the promise of more in the coming days so I’m hopeful we’ll get enough moisture to get them fat and juicy.

Anyway, thanks again to all who sent along well wishes. I’m still fat and happy!

1 May is the average last frost day at my place. Experience has shown that if I put anything that can be harmed by frost into the ground before then, I’ll end up scrambling to get a heavy layer of straw over whatever that might be. Almost always, that will end up being tomatoes and peppers. They are typically out of control before the temps stabilize.

I’m a slow learner, but I got it. 1 May. 27 days from now.

I’ve put a couple of days into rehabilitating my garden plot. Here is a picture I took today of one of my three raised bed areas. It’ll take a day or so to bring this back up to snuff. I could take less time, but the small tiller has given up the ghost again and so each of these 10 beds will need to be turned by hand.

When I get done it’ll look like the area I’m currently working in (below). That little tiller is perfect for lifting into and out of the boxes (when the son-ofa-bitch runs).

I’m thinking that we are past the point where we could get a hard freeze, so I reestablished the water supply to the garden and watered those things that I have in the ground. The lettuce is coming along, I’ve got 5 varieties going.

Strawberries were happy to get a sprinkle of cool water as well. These are a ever-bearing and will produce throughout the summer

Everything is beginning to flower, the strawberries above, the thyme below, and I’ve got so many bees on my blueberry bushes I’m afraid to go near them! I’ve even had one of my apple trees show off a bloom…..just one.

The Thyme (above and below) is getting ready to get some company; oregano. I’ve carved out a space in the box where the garlic and thyme is, dirtied up the soil (if that makes sense) and lined it off with rocks.

Those four blocks in the center of the photo below are seeded with oregano. There’s maybe 25 or 30 plants.

All of those things I had in the mini-green house needs to be replanted. I’ve got my red solo cups all loaded with soil and lights erected.

I may have waited a day or two too long, as some of the seedling are getting ‘leggy’ . Those long legged guys below are cabbage! I’ve replanted most everything that got this far along, buried them up to nearly their leaves in a solo cup..

So now the little mini-greenhouse will be reloaded with the next batch of goodies for the garden: I’m thinking cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini, eggplant, pattypan squash. Just thinking about cool, fresh, juicy cantaloupe makes the whole garden experience worth it!.

Y’all enjoy your quarantine and pray for those that are away from their loved ones at this time. It’ll be over soon enough and we will all be eating cantaloupe.

Surprisingly, I had cabbage appear in the seeding tray last night. Hard to believe that what should have taken 10-15 days to appear, showed up in 2. I started 10- seeds of two types: ‘Early Golden Acre‘ and ‘Ferry’s Round Dutch‘. The former is an early variety that harvests in 60 days, the later in 71. Again, my thoughts are to put out more than I need in case the sky falls in and we ramp up the number of folk that garden needs to support. Cabbage can be stored for a couple of years if fermented (sauerkraut) and canned so what isn’t immediately needed will be available for the next crisis.

All of the pepper’s are up and growing in the tray except the California Wonder (green bell pepper). I’ll be moving these into solo cups this week to make room in my mini-greenhouse for the many other seeds that need to be hurried along.

I drove into Redstone Arsenal yesterday to collect the wife’s meds. They have kinda/sorta figured out how to do drive by distribution. It was slow and clumsy but I felt much better about collecting them that way then walking into a crowded facility where everyone was sick. The Asian market is about 4 miles from the Arsenal, so I stopped by there and picked up some more kimchi sauce and a Korean Radish for another batch.

I got a note from Victory Seed Company this morning letting me know that my most recent order has shipped. This will get me egg plant, dill, Napa lettuce, and arugula (alternative to basil for pesto) and a few other things.

Now if the weather will just cooperate, I could get all of the beds conditioned and primed tor a great gardening season.

It dried out over the last couple of days and was able to put good effort into the border around my fruit trees and working on the early season lettuce. Storms will roll into my little slice of the planet this evening so it’ll be at least Tuesday before I can give the unprepared planting beds the attention (tiller) they need.

For the fruit tree boundary I collected 26 railroad ties from our burn pile using a chain and the tractor to snatch them out. I could use the tractor to get them near where they would be placed, but all of them needed to be moved by hand once they were in the general area of the trees. If it’s been awhile since you’ve manhandled railroad ties or you’re a novice in this field let me say there are no words that can do justice to the task!

The ties are heavy, dumb, and spiteful. I’ve got weed-block and mulch down in two of the three tree areas and would have finished off the last one, but the wind was strong enough to make that more of a challenge than I was willing to signup for today.

I thinned the planted lettuce that was in the garden, using the excess to begin second and third rows of plantings. I don’t think I’ll need that much lettuce all at once (I’ll still need to plant at 2 week intervals to have fresh all year through) but with this ‘rona shit all about If the kids and grandkids need to pop smoke, there will be plenty to go around. I put another two lettuce varieties in the beds along with broccoli.

I’ve consolidated most of the reemerging strawberry plants into one planter (30 or so) and part of another planter (10). These are a gift as I had no expectation that what I had planted last year had survived.—actually what I planted last year did not survive, what I have this year are the runners that were generated by the original planting. They are now flowing and will begin to produce in May and run through August.

Today I started 40 Roma tomato’s, 6 Oregano, 10 head of cabbage in my little seed starter greenhouse. Tomorrow may be a good day to begin building out the shelving and stringing up the lighting for all of those plants that will soon be graduating from the little seed starter rig to the solo cup jungle.

I’m proud to announce that I’ve fathered the first pepper plants of my season: Cayenne. The little guys appeared last night, six days after planting. As I recall they took 10 days last year to break soil; I attribute their early appearance to a change to the way that I started them.

I used a one of those cheep 72 space planting trays I pick up at WallyWorld and packed the little soil holders with a seed starter mix (last year I used potting soil).

Once I placed two seeds of five types of pepper into their new temporary home, I placed the entire tray into a cabinet that is heated by a 70 watt bulb. That bulb keeps the interior of the cabinet between 78 and 82 degrees.

These Cayenne peppers are called ‘Thick Cayenne’ because the fruit is about 4 times the size of normal Cayenne peppers. I did not order new seeds of this variety last year and did not plant seeds for it, the plant just suddenly materialized among some tomatoes. I saved the last few fruit of the season and captured the seeds.

Here is a photo of the Basil that I mentioned the other day. Only three days in the soil (under the heat of the lamp) and they popped up.

Everything in this tray will get replanted into plastic ‘soho’ cups once they get their first set of ‘true leaves’. When that happens they will go under a set of shop lights that I’ve managed to keep for the last 4 or 5 years. 1 May is my planned garden planting day

I didn’t look at my notes from last year, but I’m certain that the seedlings did not push through the soil in 3 days. I’m exactly 6 weeks from my spring ‘last frost date’ (1 May) and this variety is a very large plant—this means I’ll have the joy of the sweet smell of basil throughout the cabin for the last 3 or 4 weeks of their indoor growth.

I’ve checked on the lettuce I had planted in the garden, two varieties are going like gang-busters and I’ve got something poking it’s head above the soil in the two areas I was concerned about; I don’t think it’s lettuce, but won’t know for sure for a few more days.

I wandered down to the south side of the property a little earlier today to see just how bad the rain/storms had ravaged the area where I used to have my garden planted.

I’m standing on what was a waterfall we had constructed all the rabble and rock in the foreground is what has accreted in what was once a pool that was 2 foot deep or so. You can see how the water has blown out the far side of the fall and ripped away at the hillside in the background. What cannot be seen is the post that existed on the far side and the cattle panels that crossed the ‘dam’ that kept the cows on one side of the fence (or other).

The picture below is where the garden was. I’m standing pretty close to where the picture above was taken from. This area was previously filled with raised beds and dirt filled tires. The blue objects in the background are 50 gallon drums that I used to water the garden. I connected a small 12 DC pump to a battery and pumped water out of the creek into the drums.

I ginned up a manifold system on the barrels so I could water the entire garden by opening and closing valves. Here is what the area looked like before I ripped everything out and moved it to the hilltop near the cabin. It got dark down by the creek.

Just to the right of the drums is the area of the creek that I pumped the water from. Notice how dark it is in the creek.

Had this area not set down in a valley and only received 6 or so hours of sunlight daily, my garden would still be there. With the water fall noises in the background I could piddle here all day every day.

There was no real planned bottom line to this rambling other than noting that things are in a constant state of change. I guess man could properly be called ‘changlings’, as we not only change, but constantly note the change. With all this said, I guess I begin working on changing out of my winter weight!

Have a great evening.

Really did not have much time to enjoy the fauna around my little patch of the earth. I did catch this little guy working for his meal just off of the back porch. Clever little fellow blends well with the tree.

It rained for several days last week and tornado’s slammed through middle Tennessee a ways north of here. Hate to see the damaged property and lives, some small solace in that it was not in my region of Tennessee (this time).

Once it dried a little I got out to the garden and began digging it out. Here is a view of what good dirt and moderate fertilizer will produce in an un-mulched bed.

The good news is that only 3 of the 27 beds were unmulched. I worked to get two beds into shape for an early planting of lettuce and carrots. I started by ‘harvesting’ the decomposed manure and hay that I laid out last spring. The source is from the photo below:

We have two hay rings out and each will have an area around them that is thick with manure and hay/straw mixed in together. I cleaned this up last year and laid the material out in a row that is roughly 3 ft wide, 300 ft long and 2 foot deep. Yesterday I began shoveling up the ‘stuff’ and placing it in containers on the back of the jeep.

After adding this to the beds I ended up with what you see below. The two closest beds are planted with 5 different types of lettuce, two types carrot and bunching onions. I added the screens over the lettuce to prevent rain from washing the seeds out of the planted area.

Amazingly, I had parsley that overwintered (the green splotch in the second bed).

I may have got the lettuce into the ground a little early, only one way to really find out (plant it !).

Blueberry’s are blooming and more and more buds are showing up on the trees. Looks like I’ll be gathering fruit off of the peach and plum two years early. This is one of the peach trees:

As Walter Cronkite would say: And that’s the way it is…..

Looks like spring is just about here; our forecast is for rain for the next 4 or 5 days and temps will be in the 50’s and 60’s. Nothing can be done outside around here on rainy days, except ensure the cows stay well stocked in hay.

I went up and checked on trees in the garden; the plum and peach trees are really beginning to bud out right now. The pear trees not so much, and the the apple trees not at all.

I’ve decided to border the three tree areas with recovered railroad ties, using the tractor and chains I snatched a dozen or so out of our burn pit earlier today. I’ll need 40 and I’m thinking that there are that many or more that can still be ‘harvested’ from the pit. With the weather the way it is it’ll be next weekend before that little project can be continued.

Guess I’ll use the down time to brush up on my camera skills and post here!

I went out to the rive on Thursday and fooled around in the boat for a while. I’d like to say that I went fishing, but that would imply that fish were somehow involved; that, sadly, was not the case!

I was able to snap a couple of photos of the same type of birds that I posted a few weeks ago. This time they were at a distance.

Y’all enjoy your weekend !

UPDATE: Thyme Teas sucks! I gathered some Thyme and seeped it in boiling water for 10 minutes. I poured it into a glass full of ice and added a teaspoon and a half of lemon juice. You may like it but I found the whole exercise to be a waste of good water!

The ground (actually the soil in my planting beds) finally got dry enough for me to plant my garlic. I’m going to cheat and say that I put these out on the shortest day(s) of the year even though the 24th was longer by a few seconds than the 23rd (which in turn was longer by a few seconds than the 22nd).

Day	Sun Rise	Sun Set
22	6:53 am	4:41 pm
23	6:53 am	4:41 pm
24	6:54 am	4:42 pm

I put in about 80 cloves, which will yield 80 heads; more than enough for my needs. They went into the planter where I was growing ‘Besser’ tomato’s and Thyme last summer. The tomato plants are long gone but the Thyme is thriving.

I’ll be getting some of the small leaves from the Thyme plants to make tea a little later this morning, but first I need to get some hay out for the cows and check the lower fence lines.

Well, after three consecutive days of unending rain, it’s finally stopped.  The sun is still not out, but I’ll take slowly clearing sky as a sign of better things to come.

The ground is well beyond being saturated and I expect that we’ll have several trees toppled over from last nights winds.  Unless they fall on the road or across a fence they can wait until this spring to be cleared. I put hay out for the cattle yesterday and had to carefully pick my way across the pasture, avoiding low areas, to keep from chewing up he wet fields.

The rain also kept me from putting my garlic into the soil.  I really wanted to get the garlic planted yesterday (22^nd) to align their planting with an old almanac’s suggestion that it should be planted on the shortest day of the year (winter solstice) and harvested on the longest day of the year (summer solstice).  Given that the winter solstice is actually pretty close to three days long (three days of equal length from the 22 through the 24, give or take a minute or two), I guess that I’ll still be doing right by the old wives tale if the soil is dry enough by tomorrow to plant.

Last year I planted the cloves on the end sections of several of the planting boxes; this year I’ll put them all in the same 4 X 12 foot box.

I spend more time contemplating God, His Spirit, and the meaning of Christ during this three day period than I do all year long. I can understand the reason the old timers moved the celebration of Christs birth to the winter solstice (although I believe they missed the mark symbolically).

A few weeks ago I mentioned the 50th Saying. It has a lot to do with light. Closely related to it, and also on the subject of light, is the 83rd Saying in the Gospel of Thomas. It goes:

Blatz:
Jesus said: The images are revealed to man, and the light which is in them is hidden in the image of the light of the Father. He will reveal himself, and his image is hidden by his light.

Layton:
Jesus said, “Images are visible to human beings. And the light within these (images) is hidden by the image of the father’s light; it will be disclosed. And his image is hidden by his light

Doressee:
Jesus says: “Images are visible to man, but the light which is in them is hidden. In the image of the light of the Father, it will be revealed, and his image will be veiled by his light.”

As you can see there are subtle differences between the way the verse is translated. These differences can significantly change what the verse imparts. Given that life is a mystery, I see no reason that these saying, despite being seemingly simple, should be any different!

As with all of the sayings within this gospel, there is a website (here) that lends many ‘expert’ voices to what they saying may mean. The most esoteric on this site was offered by Gerd Ludemann, he says:

“The logion defines the relationship between image, light and Father. Cf. Gospel of Philip 67: ‘The truth did not come naked into the world, but came in types and images. It (= the world) will not (be able to) receive it otherwise.’

I originally posted the photo below on a separate page (here), but liked it so much I wanted to bring it forward.

Enjoy your Monday.

It turned out to be a great day; overcast, but in the low sixties. I put my boat in the water with the intent of running a little fuel out of it and then filling it with fresh gas. As it turned out it had almost a full tank (20 gal.) so I ran up the Elk River for several miles and then let the current and wind carry me back down.

About halfway back down to the launch site it saw a sandbar covered in pelicans. Amazingly, the photo’s came out. Given the long focal plane, slow shutter speed, moving boat, moving water and moving birds it’s a wonder I ended up with anything but a blur.

A little (very little) post processing that did nothing more than reduce the light resulted in the images below.

A few more photo’s (with mods): Here

It’s that time of year here on the farm where all of the heavy lifting is done for the year and I’m able to shift into ‘maintenance mode’.

We borrowed the neighbors seeder and planted wheat in the front two pastures. It went in at roughly 75 pounds per acre across 50 acres of pasture.

We now have eight calves birthed and if all goes well 4 more will appear between now and the end of the year. We’ve put out 4 tubs of a molasses and grain mix and have put the hay back into the rings. The cows are consuming 4 bales a week.

I started work on the fruit trees that I planted last December. First order of business is putting down some fertilizer and getting the planting area further established.

I put out a cup of 8-8-8 fertilizer beneath each tree. and then put week-block and hay on top of the entire planing area. The above photo was taken before I began, the one below about half way through completion.

I’ll finish the rock perimeter in the coming days and then begin working on trimming back the branches. The Plum and Peach Trees should be trimmed to the ‘Open Vase’ method. The ‘rules’ for getting there are shown in the graphic below.

Now, here is a close up of what my Plum and Peach Trees look like. I’m a fair way away of having them trimmed out right.

The apple and pear trees need to be trimmed as well, but they are clipped differently. The photo below is of the 4 Apple Trees.

They will need a lot of work to get them to look like the ideal central leader trees shown below.

Anyway, there is a lot to be done to get the trees into shape but well worth the work if they produce to their potential.

Win my gratitude, solve this puzzle!

It’s gotten colder over the last couple of evenings and my lingering issue with the heat/air system in my cabin has once again surfaced. Here’s the problem: two central air units that will not work in tandem. The entirety of the problem is related to a 20′ ceiling in the living area. It looks like this

The living area downstairs actually uses the upstairs unit to heat/cool. There are 6 air registers from the up unit into this area: 2 on the ceiling of this room, 2 on the walls in this room (on the left) and 2 on the wall in the sun-room (in the background on the right).

The downstairs unit services the kitchen (in the background on the left), the downstairs bedroom, bath, and laundry room. I’ve place two 5 foot ceiling fans suspended 4 feet beneath the ceiling to move air ‘captured’ in the high ceiling. An additional 4 foot ceiling fan is in the sun room to push the air out of that room. Here is another view of that area.

The picture below is taken from the other side of the room. The there are two registers in the ceiling (between the rows of lights) and one register, that cannot be seen) above and to the right of the window on the right.

Besides being a pain in the ass, it gets expensive trying to heat this room. Right now, I’ve got the upper air unit set on 71 and the lower set on 66. Even with the unit set on 66, it is roughly 70 degrees in the rooms serviced by the lower unit.

Any suggestions you can provide would be great!

It’s been about a month since I last posted; the pause was a welcome break from the grind of posting a dozen or more meme’s daily for months on end.

I had always planned on being more thoughtful on this site but, dammit, the world seems to be unfolding as if were a fantasy in the mind of a loonie while our national discourse has become something George Carlin would reject as to foolish to describe by monologue.

These are indeed strange times. Such ignorance across the land…..sheep to the slaughter. Graft so grand within our body politic that I wonder if the knuckleheads that are feasting at the national teat won’t rip the nipple from the breast.

With all that said, I’m back and will make an earnest attempt to lighten the mood during this time of madness. Just as the Titanic had someone to rearrange deckchairs, I’ll be doing pretty much the same here as our ship of state goes down in flames. After all, I’m a Journalism !

Postings will be a little slow/low again today; I’m sanding, caulking, and re-staining the cabin. Cows are calving, leaves are turning, and Garry is staining….all is right in my world.

I did take the time to get the boat into the water yesterday, going out around 11 or so and fished (without luck) until about 2 PM. Fishing mid-day sucks, especially if it is a clear bright day.

I snapped a couple of photo’s of a hillside with some limestone outcroppings as I thought that the caves were interesting. I don’t know how deep into the hillside these openings go but I could almost picture native Americans inhabiting them, or at least using them when passing through the area.

The white outcrop is about 40 feet off of the water and the water is 25 feet deep where I’m sitting.

This is a blow-up of the first picture. The largest opening is roughly 10 feet wide and maybe 4 foot high.

Down river, about a hundred yards or so is another series of the same type of limestone features. Again, the openings are roughly 40 foot off of the water.

Blown-up it looks like this.

And a little further zoom:

The trees along the river haven’t gone into full color yet. When that happens (another week or so?) I’m going to get out and fill myself with a little more of God’s handiwork.