Category: SMTL

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.

It’s looking good for fishing here in southern-middle Tennessee! I’ll get the boat out a little later this morning and see if the bass are willing to play along.

I had intended on building a rock border around the 3 fruit tree areas that I had planted up by the garden but the EPA Tier 4 requirements have (again) screwed me over. If your unaware of Tier 4, it’s the rule that requires diesel engine exhaust to meet very stringent requirements; it’s almost as if the emitted exhaust has to be cleaner than the air the engine was using in the first place. To get the the exhaust that clean the manufacturers use an elaborate system (you could think of it being like a catalytic converter that uses a Diesel Exhaust Fluid) to treat the air. It screwed up on the tractor a few weeks ago and now it’s screwed up our Kubota skid steer loader. Here is what it looks like.

The good news is that it hasn’t de-rated, the bad news is that it will need to be hauled to the shop for repair. Last time it was taken in it stayed for a month or more until the techies could figure it out.

Damn the luck, can’t work and I’m forced to go fishing!

This from out in the front pasture a short while ago. The mama’s name is Ginger and she was one of the first calves that was actually born on our Tennessee property. Today Ginger gave birth to her first calf. We have 22 head on the farm right now: 17 cows, 4 calves that have appeared in the last few days, and a borrowed (very, very large) bull. All of the cattle are Herefords.

The calf has no name yet because it seems that the only one qualified to name creatures that appear here in the woods is our granddaughter Brooke. Brooke has named both of our dogs (Dixie Star and Rusty Red) a stray cat (Tom), a huge black snake that inhabits a nearby woodpile (Bob), and every calf. While I can only tell the difference between most of the cows by the ear tag, Brooke knows them as ‘Booger’s mama’, or Ginger’s mom, etc.

Both cow and calf are doing fine. All is good in southern-middle Tennessee

This little guy was birthed yesterday and from the start you could tell his mama was going to have trouble keeping him in tow. At a couple of hours old he was hopping around and running back and forth. All mama wanted to do was nurse and comfort.

As you might guess this morning the little guy was nowhere to be found. His mom was bawling and calling out for him but to no avail. Son-in-law and I got in the jeep and covered all of the pastures and then did a three hour search through the woods that border pastures, through the thickets….everywhere, no calf.

This afternoon my wife and I decided to go up and see if the cow had found it’s calf….it had, kinda-sorta. She was over at the extreme south-east corner of the property, literally hugging the fence line, bawling with all she had. The calf had somehow managed to get through the barbed-wire, but could not get back.

I slipped through the fence about 50 yards away from the calf and walking through the woods to come up behind it and helped it navigate it’s way trough the strands.

Mama cow is happy and nursing, baby calf is happy, and (importantly) my wife is happy. Trust me on this, if wifey isn’t happy, no one is happy!

We had two calves show up yesterday! Here’s a photo of a proud momma and her little boy.

We finally got a break from the insufferable heat that had parked itself over southern middle Tennessee for the last several months.

It finally began raining last night. I don’t think that we’ve had an inch in rain since June. The same clouds that brought the rain also provided a great light show and tremendous thunder. The older of our two Border Collies (Dixie) turned into a baby as the thunder began (around 2: 45 AM) and demanded to be soothed and comforted. This lasted for roughly an hour and a half. My ass is dragging today.

Yesterday I placed the hay-rings along the tree line in the middle pasture and deposited a bale of hay in each. The cows were curious, but were not much interested in feeding on them. This is a good thing as it shows that they are still getting plenty of nutrition from the grass in the fields. With all of the dry weather there really was no way of telling if the grass was sufficient or had been eaten down to nothing.

I did get the boat out on Thursday and Friday anxious to try the fall fishing techniques shown in the video I posted on the 17th. Thursday was a total bust as the wind was so strong that I could not hold position even in the coves. Friday the wind had died down quite a bit but I found that ‘fall’ wasn’t happening: the grasses were not dying back and the bass were not pushing bait fish back up into the coves.

Once I had moved deeper to where the bass were I was far enough out of the coves that the wind pushed me around some. Not bad, but enough that I had to keep a constant watch on where I was and continually correct with the trolling motor.

The water was clear to a depth of 3 feet or so and I did see bass shadowing my offering several times. None were willing to commit.

This week (I’m telling myself) will be different and I’ll be hooking my limit. I do need to take the time to get the right lures on the right pole/reel combinations; some of them were much to light to easily cast on stiff rod outfitted with a bait-caster reel.

Today was spent weed-eating and burning a brush pile that had been my collection point for fallen limbs for the last 6 months. The son-in-law is on his way up and we will be loading a calf into the trailer to haul some place or another.

Hope you all have a great week !

Well I rounded up the bales that we made up on Sunday and instead of moving them up to the hay barn at the front of the property, I put them along side of the fence on the east side of the back pasture.

I snapped a couple of photo’s on the cell phone. These two are some of the bales laying in the field.

The photo below is where I stacked the hay. That ‘box’ in the center of the photo is a very, very comfortable (and productive) shoot house that will be soon be put to use.

I threw one bale over the fencing around the garden to replace the mulch in the planting beds and we had a half role that I placed in between the apple trees and pear trees I planted last winter. My plan is to make a more attractive bedding area for the trees once the weather cools.

With the big chores done I’m looking forward to putting the boat back in the water, but it needs to cool off just a mite before I venture that way. The high today is/was 96. Tomorrows forecast is 97 and 90 for Thursday. Friday and Saturday are both sposta be 87 max so I will be planning to get it wet then.

I saw the below on the intertubes and it started me thinking I could actually catch fish!

My neighbor brought the hay rake and bailer up this morning and together we gathered 34 bales of hay. A bail is about 5 feet in diameter and 6 feet long. I’d ran the rake pulled on the back of my New Holland while he pulled the bailer behind his John Deere.

I’ll get the hay spear put on tomorrow or the next day and move the hay out of the field and into a holding area, but there is no hurry as I choose not to go fishing with the weather in the high 90’s (as it is until next Saturday).

This hay is not as ‘clean’ as the bales we put up earlier in the year, it has a lot of mature sage grass in it….cows don’t like mature sage grass, but they are ok with it when is is younger. Lynn advised that we should feed this cutting to them first, in the early part of the hay cycle, when they are not relying on high nutritional content. As the winter progresses we give them the better content hay, big buckets of molasses (100+ pounds), sweet mix, and corn. This keeps them happy and healthy as they nurse whatever calves they are soon to drop.

I did go fishing the other day and tried out the new lures I purchased: caught two bass. Nothing worth keeping, and certainly nothing to brag about, but I went bass fishing and caught bass. Life is full of small pleasures!

It’s hot. Damn hot. I was able to work around my garden plot yesterday and managed weed-eat around the fencing. No small feat when you consider that it had to be trimmed on both sides of 360 feet of fence (720 feet inside and out). It’s a metal mesh fence, so I burned through a massive amount of trimmer line.

I mowed down two of the three 30 X 40 foot planting areas using the zero turn and used the weed eater on the third….it still has about a dozen huge watermelon in it and I didn’t want to destroy those until I gave the kids and grand-kids a final chance at them.

My absentee neighbor (Lynn) drove his tractor and hay cutter over to our place yesterday evening and made a couple of laps in our back field. Before leaving he showed me how to operate the John Deere 6400 and position the cutter. As I was giving him a ride back to one of his properties (as far as I can figure he has three farm/ranch operations going in addition to his full time job with the Tennessee Valley Authority), he says: “that tractor won’t go all the way over on that steep hill, it just rises up some”. I had no idea what he was talking about, but given that it was a much smaller tractor than I was accustomed to, I figured I’d be able to figure it out on the fly.

This morning I set out to mow the rest of the field. Now a cutter is not the same as a brush-hog. The cutter operates from the back of the tractor and cuts from the right hand side. You cut whatever field you’re cutting in a clockwise direction that way you don’t mash down the hay with the tractor wheels. A brush hog operates from the back and is towed along behind the tractor (you can go any direction you choose).

So I get to this fairly steep hill that I had always cut (with a brush hog) by going down nose first…..this time I’m going up nose first and all of the sudden the front wheels were no longer on the ground! They finally get back down after about 20 yards after they cleared ground and about 10 feet before I had to take a right turn. Now I know what Lynn was talking about. I got the field cut, but for a while my butt hole was puckered so tight that had I stood up, the seat would have came with me.

This afternoon I broke out my tractor and brush hog and straightened up a little around the cabins, to the west of my garden plot, and down by the creek bottom. I need to get the weed-eater working, but again, it’s damn hot. Everything in it’s own time.

The other day I mentioned that I got the boat into the water and farted around on the Elk River between Hwy 72 and the Wheeler Reservoir. What I didn’t mention is that as I was pulling my boat from the water an old man, maybe 75 or 80 was bringing his flat bottom boat into the dock. I pulled out and he backed his truck and trailer down the ramp and then went back to his boat. I figured it would probably be easier for me to help him load his boat than it would be to make a statement to the po-po or emergency responders when the old man fell off his boat/trailer/truck set-up (each component of which appeared to be of questionable serviceability) and cracked his skull. So I gave the guy a hand.

A short while later, after he had pulled off of the ramp and I was stowing gear on my own boat, he walked up to me and, as God is my witness, looked like a drug dealer that was marketing his wares. He pushed his shoulder up against mine and then looked quickly around to make sure no one was watching before opening his hand and showing me this:

Now, I’m a pretty poor fisherman. I’ve kinda fallen into that cycle where every time I go bass fishing I do so poorly that it’s followed by 4 or 5 trips out to catch catfish (something that requires less skill than dropping rocks). Having someone share what lure to use and both where and how to fish it is rare. I had to listen to another 15 minutes of fish stories about all of the fish (size, location where they were caught, time of year, weather, etc) he had caught with it, but I was willing to pay that price.

Anyway, I picked up one of these at Cabela’s today and another that is similar but with slightly different markings. It sure would be great to go bass fishing and actually catch bass. I’m optimistic. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Still way behind the curve here at my place and it seems that small problems have a way of cascading into more and increasingly challenging issues. Earlier last week I was mowing a filed near the cabin and the tractor went limp. Three alerts flashed up on the instrument cluster at the same time; the dreaded red “STOP” indicator, a contaminated Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) warning, and the engine de-rated symbol.

After running through the fault troubleshooting/clearing decision tree in the owners manual, the fault cleared for roughly 2 seconds and came immediately back on. Damn.

When a New Holland tractor gets ‘de-rated’, the computer will not allow the engine to rev beyond idle. Once de-rated, the pencil-necks that designed the electronics figured they would give an owner three attempts at fixing the problem. Once you use up your three tries, the entire system, including engine, shuts completely down. The trouble is that what it counts as an attempt may not actually be one. For instance; turning the key ‘on’ without starting the tractor, then off again and waiting 15 seconds before turning the key on again and starting the tractor counts as an attempt. Being the conservative that I am, I was unwilling to risk attempting another reset on the off chance that it would be read as the third.

After chatting with the son-in-law we agree that we get the pro’s involved. For a small nominal fee (normally your first born male child) they will travel the 60 or so miles out to our place, pick up the tractor, and off they go to both their facilities and the bank. So far so good.

On Friday they bring the tractor back and while pulling onto the property the driver takes the corner to tight coming in the front gate….the trailer that the tractor is riding on catches the gate and not only bends the two mounting bolts that attaches the gate to the 8″ by 8″ post, but also “tilts” the post so that it is no longer perpendicular to the ground. Just for clarity, I now have a 14 foot gate hanging on a post that wants to wiggle when the gate is moved. No way to keep the free end of the heavy gate from plowing into the ground.

The worker unloads the tractor by the barn and he and I return to assess the damage to the gate: It’s pretty hosed up but in my estimation fixable with some bracing and ingenuity. I send him off. As I go to hook the tractor back up to the brush-hog, I notice that while the stop light had cleared and the engine de-rated symbol was off, the contaminated DEF warning was still on. WTF? Apparently the dealer determined that it was a bad DEF sensor that caused the engine to de-rate, but did nothing about the other sensor that was indicating contaminated DEF. In other words, fix the fucking problem

Bottom line on the tractor is that I do not know if the DEF is good or bad and so now need to drain and refill that system. I spent a good part of Saturday, pausing for the Alabama/Duke football game (Roll Tide), bracing and adjusting the front gate. It turns out that the mechanical/physics related portions of the repair were easier, but not easy, to execute than the electronic adjustments. It took me three attempts to set the mast and close limits for the gate, but finally got it so that it does not try and rip itself apart as it opens and closes. Given my experience with this gate, that’s a wonder all into itself.

So everything is all good—mo better (I suppose). My beloved tractor works well enough for me to perform corrective maintenance, Alabama topped Duke, and wifey can get in and out of the gate without getting in and out of her car.

Life on the farm is nothing but sweetness and light!

It’s been damn busy around here for the last couple of days and tomorrow is shot finishing up on work I started today.

I set out Wednesday AM to the bank and the road between my place and the ‘real road’ was blocked by a downed tree. There’s maybe 10 cars a day that use the road and everyone knows that if you backtrack there are two other ways to get out of this rural area. All ten of those cars also know that if they leave the tree in the road long enough someone else will clear it.

So I backtracked, detoured, did the bank thingy and returned about 2 hours later and the tree is still down. I guess it was my turn to be that someone else..

So I detoured again and worked my way around to my place gathered the chainsaw and some strapping and headed back out to clear the road. Job done. Wednesday morning gone.

Wednesday PM I pulled the last of the jalapeno’s, 5 more pints worth, and canned them and since I had the canner out and working I put up two types of ‘triple berry’ jam. One was strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry, and the other was strawberry, raspberry and blackberry. I was able to put up 18 half pint jars. Man that stuff is good. Anyway, Wednesday PM was shot. Come to think of it, between football (Roll Tide) and putting the canner to work on more jams, this coming Saturday looks like it’s toast as well.

Today I decided that the yard work I need to get to (we’ve had 4 days of wet weather) could wait until I put the boat into the water and relaxed some. I farted around on the bottom reaches of the Elk River and followed it out to the Tennessee River (Wheeler Reservoir) and back up to the launch point. Thursday morning…..gone.

This afternoon I powered up the zero turn and got about half of the weeds mowed before the light began to dim. PM gone.

I’m no psychic, but I can see what my Friday looks like: mowers and trimmers. Any open time I can manage to create will be spent on harvesting seeds from what remains of my garden.

All of this, dear reader, is my long winded explanation of why (as the Soup Nazi would say) NO POSTS FOR YOU !

Y’all enjoy the balance of the week and I’ll see you again on Sunday or Monday.

One thing I learned a couple of years ago was that you don’t skimp when it comes to farm tools. That’s not to say that I learned this quickly, I didn’t. I’d been going through a weed-eater each summer until I broke down and bought a commercial grade Stihl three summers ago. The pictures below show the fine job this powerhouse does.

This is me all decked out (snake boots and long sleeves) to work where both poison ivy and poison snakes abound. Gloves are leather and trousers are of a heavy canvas material. Hotter than blazes out so I stayed hydrated.

The electric fencing to the right in the pictures above mark the edge of the lower pasture where cattle roam everything to the left of that fence line (about 60 acres) is mostly wooded.

The photo below gives a little more perspective on the gully I was clearing out. The concrete drive on the bottom of the frame runs up to where we have the cabins (left). If we were to go to the right would take us off of the property, on to a ‘hard-ball’ road, that leads to a real road, that leads into civilization after about 5 or 6 miles.

These pictures show about half of the gully, the balance is to my back (west) of where I’m standing. All went well!

Slow postings today folks, I’ve been gathering from the garden and canning up batches of salsa. I pulled in a couple of hundred Roma tomatoes, about a hundred Jalapeno’s, some bell peppers, banana peppers, parsley, and oregano. I’ve got bunches of salsa put up in pint jars and expect that a couple hundred more tomatoes will be ready to pull tomorrow as well.

A good day is any day that you’re able to can veggies straight from the garden. I’m havin’ good days!

Postings will be up to snuff once I get this bounty onto the shelf.

I may have mentioned that the neighbor just to east of my place is a big-time hunter. He spends all year working on different areas of his roughly 500 acres of woodland; feed plot here, roads going there, fields in beans or corn. Normally he and his friends come up on a Friday and work through the weekend.

About 11 this morning I get a call from my son in law in Huntsville (50 miles away). It seems that one of the guys that was working had gotten a truck stuck and ‘went down’ in the general area of ‘along the trail on the northeast portion of his property. Somehow he was able to get a text out to the property owner (also in Huntsville) about where he was and that he was in trouble. No other info available and, given the very spotty cell service here, no other info would be available. So off I go.

I find the guy and he is down ‘hard’ he can’t get up, and owing to his more than 300 lbs, I can’t get him up. I drive over to where I heard the another guy working a skid-steer in the woods. Even if he had cell service, and he didn’t, he would have never heard his phone. We go back to the guy that is down and use the bucket on the equipment, slid under the big guy to get enough leverage to get him on his feet. Leaving the big guy with the skid-steer we go down the trail another 5 or 6 hundred yards and yank the stuck truck out of the ditch.

None of us are as young as we used to be. When it gets hot and humid out and you find yourself in an area that will likely not have cell service…don’t do stupid stuff! Wedge a little margin for error in all of your plans, take water, have a firearm handy.

Be prepared and safe as you enjoy your weekend.

I did get the chance to raid the Jalapeno plants earlier today and pulled about half a grocery bag of those beauties. I was only pulling those that were roughly 3 inches long or better and there is probably 3 times as many peppers left on the the plant as those that were harvested. All plants are still flowering so I’ll have a lot of canning to do in the coming days and weeks. Today I put up 6 pints using a simple recipe where the brine consisted of 6 cups vinegar, 2 of water, 2 Tablespoons of Canning Salt and 3 large garlic cloves. As I packed them I added 1/2 teaspoon of pickling spice to each pint. Will know in a couple of days if this is the mix I’m looking for!

Bad News: The many quarts of pickles I put up over the last couple of weeks have got to be trashed. All of them, because of the hot bath processing time, ended up soft and mushy. By the way, I’ve also found that the fresh dill sprigs that I was so excited about will quickly overwhelm the other flavors of the pickles if you use too much. I used too much by about 3X.

Good News: The cucumber plants (beds) are producing like crazy so I really haven’t lost the opportunity to get a years worth under seal.

Last evening I put up 7 pints and processed them for 5 minutes (quarts were processed for 15). Dill seed is impossible to find right now, so I pulled some fresh dill from the garden and used it judiciously. I also used 1 teaspoon of ‘pickling spice’ per pint and decided to forgo the pepper elements (jalapeno, cracked red, and pepper corn).

Jalapeno’s are next to be canned. My four bushes are producing like gang-busters so will be up robbing those plants later in the day.

Will let you know how it turns out.

Well, my 4th of July weekend is over and I’m back at the controls of this ship of fools! I hope that each of you were able to enjoy holiday and that you’ve eased back into the grind.

We had a Black Lab puppy, about 4 or 5 months old, wander onto our property on Friday (5th). He kept wanting to get into the jeep and I thought that his owner was somewhere nearby. I drove off and returned about an hour later and he was still here. When I opened the door he jumped in as if I was his owner and he was now at home! I ran him back to the house, fed him and gave him some water. The big, awkward clown (all paws and legs) had been trained to basic commands: come, sit, down, etc. I noticed that he had been neutered so I packed him back into the jeep and ran over to the vets in Leoma TN. No chip ! Back to the house we go .

Wifey is home now and, of course, falls immediately in love with the animal. I make up some ‘found puppy’ signs to posted them on the nearby roads. Wifey decides that we can keep him in the laundry room overnight. We do and find that the big guy is house trained. The next morning (Saturday) after taking the dogs out for a walk, where I discover that he loves to play ‘fetch’, he come back into the cabin as if he had lived there his entire life, jumps up on the sofa and, placing his head on the arm, falls asleep.

So now we have a real problem: my border collies do not appreciate the intrusion of this newcomer into their space. ‘Buddy’ (as I was calling him) went back and forth (he did not cower) with the collies for the next two days. We needed to find the owner or someone willing to care for Buddy quick. We were able to locate a rescue group on Sunday evening and called them on Monday morning. The kind soul that agreed to take Buddy in and keep him for a couple of days until either the owner could be found or a new owner could be identified. She asked us to bring Buddy to her home where we spent a little time introducing Buddy to her large poodle (Cooper). Late Monday afternoon she sent pictures of her kids and Buddy together and said that her husband fell immediately in love with him.

I sure hope Buddy is able to locate his original owner. It’s reassuring to know that if that does not happen then there are good folk out there that are willing to open their home to such great big loving clowns like Buddy.

I hope all of you are having a great start to your Tuesday morning and I really hope that you can manage to wrangle a few days off to celebrate the founding of our great nation.

Not much goings-on around here except pulling in (and putting up) whatever nature’s bounty provides. I was able to get 3 quarts of blackberries from the neighbors place and picked enough cuc’s to can six pints of pickles. This pickle run was mostly small (length and width of a thumb). These are a great change of pace when the ‘eatn’ begins. Of course they were pickled with jalapeno’s, peppercorn, and cracked red pepper (dehydrated cayenne peppers).

I used Google Earth to get a rough estimate on how far I was walking to harvest blackberries; it was two miles straight line distance (albeit not in a straight line). It’s probably double that when you account for walking into and out of the wood line.

I’m off to the store this morning to pickup canning supplies: quart jars, vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil, pectin, peppercorn, and pine nuts are all needed. While it’s 25 miles each way to the store, and most of those miles are on back roads, I really don’t mind that much. Before I retired I was traveling 50 miles each way from here to Huntsville AL for work . Because the trip is along country roads (for the most part) the slow going allows me to peek into the backyard of folks and see if they have a garden in and how it’s doing.

Anyway, got to get up and get about my day. Have a great week and be safe over the holiday.

A got an email from Roy this morning (thanks for the note Roy) that reads:

Saw your posting on vultures, thought you might like to see this?
Who knew?? The black and turkey vultures are federally protected??

So I followed the link and found that Fox carried an article on the damage that they can cause. They are in fact covered under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The article goes on to explain that for $100 bucks a year you can get an annual permit to shoot them.

This kinda/sorta proves out the truth in the meme I posted a few day ago:

Now I live in an exceptionally remote area and, apropos to no subject/topic in particular, when I first moved here one of my absentee neighbors said to me. “If you see anyone messing around with my cows just go ahead and shoot them. Won’t nobody ever find the body.” I’m fairly certain that it was said in jest.

With all this said, I do appreciate Roy letting me know of the restriction (thanks brother)

A few photos taken over the last couple of days here in Southern Middle Tennessee. The first two are of a vulture that decided the best place to dry out his wings was on one of the wood fence posts around my garden. My best guess is that the wingspan on this bird nearly six foot.

The red headed scavengers are ok to have around. The black headed ones will actually group together and attack a calf if he’s separated from the herd. Calfing time for our herd begins in September so I’ll be loading 4 shot in the 12 gauge and keeping it close at hand.†

What Saturday and Sunday was like around here (shown below)

A neighbor came over and mowed, raked and bailed the hay in two of the pastures. I used the tractor and 15 ft. brush-hog in the cleared areas around the cabins that are not pasture and then the zero turn mower to around the the hillsides and tree’d areas. Not shown are the weed-eater. With roughly 80 trees in the mowed areas around the cabins, it has now become an extension of my body.

I panicked in the garden on Friday when I saw the cut worms chewing at both the tomato plants and tomatoes and so got some Sevin spray out and gave them a good dousing. Today I fertilized using Miracle Grow granules diluted in water. Each tomato plant got 32 oz (50 plants or so) and the 25 pepper plants got 16 oz. Strawberries got 8 oz. I followed up about 4 hours later with a good soaking from the hose.

Just when I think that I’ve gotten the last of the blueberries off the plants and into the freezer I see that bushes are continuing to push out great fruit. I ended up with another quart of them today. Not bad at all for something that was not expected to fruit this year. The reason I notice the blueberries was because I was harvesting cuc’s and the bushes were nearby. I pulled a couple of pounds (maybe enough for 3 or 4 quart jars worth) and will gather them again tomorrow so I can pickle them up.

I also pulled a few strawberries and I guess I’ll get a couple a day until August arrives and the second production of ‘Everbearing’ is said to occur (I really don’t know, but they are flowering up well again.

Finally, I chipped away at the basil plants and put almost 3 quart bags full of leaves in the freezer. I am now a Pesto maniac !

Y’all enjoy your 4th !

I started out on a Blackberry quest this morning at around 10. It’s the first day this year that I gave out before the berries did. I pulled a quart off of my place and a little more than a gallon off of the neighbors, working my way around the field about halfway (along the tree line) before the thunder signaled that I should be moving on. As a guess,there is about a week, maybe 10 days before the berries will be finished for the year. If I stay on top of them I should be able to get 4 or 5 more gallons.

I hit the cucumbers yesterday and again today. I did re-can 5 quarts into simple dill pickles yesterday evening and I have enough cucumbers on hand to put up another 8 to 10 quarts this evening. This go-round I’ll adding some kick to the pickles by including jalapeno peppers (pulled from the garden today), cracked red pepper (Cayenne peppers pulled from the garden and dehydrated last year), black pepper corn and mustard seed.

The cuc’s have to be harvested daily if we want the vines to continue to produce. If just 1 cuc is left to ripen on the vine then the whole vine shuts down and dies. Finding them is the challenge as they have an amazing way of camouflaging themselves among the leaves. When it comes to cucumbers, diligence is it’s own reward.

Next batch? Bread and Butter Pickles !

Well the pickle making crashed and burned. I had gotten 6 quarts in the canner and it was rapidly coming to a full boil when thunderstorms rolled in and we lost power.

Damn

Power is now back on (obviously) after a few hours of down time. Will see what can be salvaged of the first canning of the season.

Well, the most opportune fishing times for the week have passed without me getting to the water. Today and tomorrow are covered up with garden and farm work and I abhor putting in during the weekends. It’ll be next week before I can head out that way.

The Ball Waterbath Canner came in yesterday along with the food-mill that I ordered. So I ran both through their paces to see how well they work. In short, Beautifully.

I was able to get two quarts of blackberries out of the bushes and into the freezer; one from my place and one from my neighbors. There were three places on my farm that I did not pull from, and one on his that I have yet to visit so with a little luck I can get another two quarts in today. I chatted with another nearby land owner and have his blessing to pull from his ranch as well. Both of these landowners are ‘absentee’. The one I visited yesterday has a little over 500 acres that he uses exclusively for hunting. The other neighbor (the one I’ve yet to visit) has 60 or 70 acres in pasture. He has 50 or so head of cattle here and owns a couple more farms where he raises also raises cattle. Because I don’t wanna be dead, I checked with both before wandering onto what is theirs.

I went up to the garden and picked the first cucumbers of the year; I guess it’s about 10 or 15 pounds worth. Now that I have the canner (and know use it) I’m much more motivated about getting them in and put up. There are three varieties of pickling cucumber (there is a difference between a ‘normal’ or slicing cucumber and one that’s used for pickling) that I’m growing: Boston Pickling, National Pickling, and Rhienish. My slicing cucumber is ‘Straight 8’.

The first round of canning will be a simple dill recipe: water, vinegar, canning salt, and sugar to make up the brine. Garlic and dill stuffed in each jar as they are filled. I stopped in at a supermarket and picked up some fresh dill and have plenty of garlic from the garden.

I suppose that I’m fortunate to have gotten any blueberries at all this year as I planted in February and they are said not to produce in the first year. For several days I had been pulling a pint a day. On Sunday and again yesterday it was a half pint. Today and tomorrow will be the last of them. The type of bushes are called ‘Rabbiteye’ and I planted several varieties (Tif Blue, Climax, Premier,)

The kids left Sunday with a couple of quarts, so the amount of jam making I’ll be engaged in limited. On the up side, blackberries are really kickin, I’m out at the canes daily now and have been bringing a quart a day. The plants are really packed with the berries so I expect that I’ll be getting a couple of quarts a day for several days before they have given all they can.

The one thing that I always dislike about canning was the challenge of managing all the things that need to be working on the stove top at any one time. The long pole was always the canning pot. An electric stove top has a hell-of-a-time keeping the large canning pot hot enough to process whatever I was canning.

I saw that Ball had produced an electric canning pot that may cure this ill. At a little over a hundred bucks I scraped up what few nickles I had laying around and ordered one. It will be here next Wednesday, just in time to start putting some pickles up. It’s pictured below.

Ball describes this thus: The Ball® 21-Quart FreshTECH Electric Water Bath Canner is ready to accommodate large batches of canning, fitting 7 quart jars or 8 pint jars comfortably at one time. The bath canner frees up your stovetop, allowing you to can any time of the day and it uses 20% less energy than the stove. It can also be used as a stockpot for pastas, soups, and stews, or as a steamer for vegetables and seafood. Heat-resistant rubber-coated handles on the cooker and lid offer a comfortable non-slip grip for easy maneuvering. Storing the electric water bath canner is easy too, the base detaches and nests for compact storage and makes cleaning a simple task.

The reviews were mixed with most of the poor reviews having been made more than 2 years ago. Whatever kinks were in the canner seem to have been worked out and it has very few poor reviews since. Video below gives a good depiction of how well it works

Yesterday, between bursts of downpours, I was able to get to the many places around the farm that have blackberry canes in production. They were just beginning to produce ripe fruit and I pulled in a quart of fully ripe berries.

I’ll need to revisit each plant daily over the next couple of weeks to harvest each berry at it’s peak. I’ll fill the freezer with all the goodness this natural treat provides before the canes fade back into a thorny and troublesome bush. You freeze blackberries the same way that you do blueberries. Lay them out in a single layer on a cookie sheet to freeze and then transfer into quart freezer bags and return them to the freezer. They’ll last a year like this, which is when next years crop will be in full production— the great circle of life on the farm.

Plan is to make jams and jellies with most of the harvest. Will leave some frozen for wifey and her pie making later in the year.