Our Family Tree

The tree itself is a little worn and leans a little.  It is not grandly tall nor perfectly shaped. It may even be missing a limb.  Some of the ornaments are tattered and chipped.  All are random and mismatched.
I admit that I have looked a little longingly and sighed at those beautiful "themed" trees in decorating magazines, ornaments all matching, elegant in ribbons, star on straight. Perfect.
Our tree, like our family, is not perfect...and yet it is perfectly us.  Nothing matches and yet all those odds and ends tell a story.  I guess the theme of our tree is simply "us".  It tells our story.

A story of...

Beginnings...

And journeys...



 of Beloved pets...

And Farm Life...

Our ornaments do not match.  They are...

Handmade by  co-workers and children now grown up...



And by friends now passed on...

Collected over time, lovingly preserved, they preserve our history.  Each a story within a story. 

The annual ritual of trimming the tree re-tells and reminds us who we are. Where we have been.

What matters.

And a miracle takes place.  Our tree, now dressed in our imperfect past, becomes somehow beautiful and...

Perfect.

"All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose."  Romans 8:28

Weird Fusion

Beautiful day here...warm, indian summer afternoon. Golden light filtering through golden leaves.  The capris and flip flops come back out, briefly. But just this weekend we had a hard frost.  I covered the peppers, but their tops got bitten back anyhow.  The grass is now almost completely brown.  With the help of my mom, who was visiting, I unpotted and stowed the banana trees, the bromeliads, a few others.  I have more tropicals to move inside.  Why do I always put this off?  I know it will frost more and more frequently now until mild days like this are just a memory.  I don't dread the winter, but at this stage of my life, there is something in me that wants to prolong summer--and maybe that is as much a metaphor as anything else.

In the kitchen tonight, I have put together quite an eclectic supper.  I am a firm believer in using up what's on hand and in season, and what was on hand this evening was quite diverse. Tonight's menu includes :
collard greens-- harvested, with permission, from a friend's flower pots at school.  She was growing them outside her office.  I've never been a big eater of collards, though I should be.  I grew up way down south and then spent my early married years in eastern North Carolina where they actually make cornbread and collard sandwiches. 
turnips--cubed and carmelized.  Why don't we eat more turnips (I mean the root part) in the south?  They are a perfectly agreeable vegetable. These grew happily in my friend's pots and now are simmering in one of mine.
Cajun rice and sausage--Had a pound of sausage.  Always have rice, an onion. Peppers, both hot and sweet from the garden. But I lacked the red beans that would have gone well in it.  Still filling and good.

A Tale of Two Critters

A couple of nights ago, we lost one of the male ducks to some kind of predator.  My research into the way the drake met his end revealed that our culprit was either a possum or a raccoon.  We haven't seen any raccoons around the house, but several possums visit nightly, waddle onto the front porch and consume whatever is left of the cat food.  We can hear them crunching and usually turn on the light to identify which of the several ones around has come to dinner. Silky?  Blacky? Stubby?   But I digress...

I was not happy about the loss of the drake and was totally unwilling to lose another.  The ducks are really close to the house, the idea being to deter predators.  I turned on the outside light and tried to keep watch.  Indeed a possum did show up just after dark, but all he was eating was leftover duck food.  I ran him off.

Last night, I sat in the den with one ear cocked.  I'd moved the duck food hoping the possums would stay away, but then just after dark again, I heard a duck in distress.  I flew out the side door, down the steps, tripped over the garden fence, lost my reading glasses and confronted an awful sight.  A possum, finding no leftover duck food to munch, was chewing on the duck's leg instead!  I flapped my arms at him and he reluctantly let go and backed off.  My yelling brought my husband and daughter.  Hubby volunteered to either shoot or remove the varmint, but I know he didn't really want to have to shoot it.  I was torn.  "He's a duck killer!  He should be shot...Oh, just catch him and get him out of here." 

He was fairly easily cornered in the duck shelter and transported out of the pen by the tail.  We depositied him into an empty bucket with a tight lid.  We were in the process of deporting him a couple of miles down the road when we had to swerve to miss a small round feathery orb in the road.

"Was that an owl?  I think that was a screech,"  my husband said backing up the truck.  He hopped out and by the light of the headlights rescued the stunned bird, placing him in yet another bucket with a lid that I had in the truck.  (Which just goes to show you can never really have too many buckets).  The bird flapped around in his bucket while we went on to the release site and let the surprisingly calm, duck-killing possum free. I hope no one around there has ducks.

Back home we opened the bucket and removed the screech owl with gloved hands.  They can deliver quite a hurt with claws and beak.  This one was fairly calm and probably a little dazed. We are guessing he was bumped by a car.  After taking photos and dubbing him Owl Gore, we left him on the porch with the bucket on it's side as shelter.  We kept an eye on him for a couple of hours, but sometime around 10:30 he must have gotten his wits about him and flew off into the October night. At least we hope that is what happened and that he didn't become the latest victim of the killer possums.

The chewed duck is recovering.

Owl Gore

Today From The Porch

It's good to live in the mountains...especially in October.

Preparing for First Frost

I thought we were temporarily out of harm's way.  I thought that the night to fear frost during this, our first dip into fall's chill, had passed and we were safe.  I thought wrong.  I just checked the weather and, indeed, we are under a frost advisory tonight.  Maybe it will. Maybe it won't, but I was out the door to the garden in a flash, picking off peppers and spreading out remay frost blankets "just in case".
What a beautiful weekend it has been.  If it frosts now, who could complain?  We have enjoyed an abundant summer garden.  A promising fall garden is in the ground and growing.  We may lose peppers, basil, a few tired tomatoes, but the lettuce and peas love the cool weather. And we gain cooler temps, radiant trees, apple cider and pumpkins in the bargain.   One pleasure gives way to another. Most likely this will be a false alarm, or the a frost so slight that the thin "blanket" will protect and the plants will live on a few more weeks.  It is three good weeks shy of our "average" frost date.  At any rate, I have done my best by the peppers and tomatoes.



My not-so-scary scarecrow watches over the fall garden...mostly for artistic effect

Rescued peppers

Romaine and brussel sprouts well underway

My garden dons an early halloween costume--a ghostly cloak of Remay which I save and use as many years as possible

Lasts and Firsts

Today I harvested what may well be the last of the sweet corn for the year--a few little nubby ears on some pretty stunted looking stalks.  I guess we just didn't have enough rain.  The first planting was good, but this second one...well, Bea, the goat, and her daughter, Luna, seem to be enjoying them anyway.

But the garden is not "done" yet. Not by a stretch. The fall peas (above) are looking good.

 One of the ways we make efficient use of our small garden beds is to keep planting.  Above a fall planting of mixed leaf lettuces is just getting started.  Late potatoes and some carrots are in the background.

 Today's small harvest of corn, beans, Italian squash and cayenne peppers sits alongside starts of red cabbage and broccoli.  One season in the garden ends, but another begins.  a fall garden in our climate zone stretches the growing season into November or perhaps beyond with cole crops, lettuce and greens. 

Autumn Abstract

The rain stops, takes away heat and leaves autumn in it's wake. We lose 20 degrees by the thermometer.   Giant puffballs squat like fat toads on lawn and pasture.  The grass greens from the rain, but the trees begin to choose their wardrobe from a different palette--yellow, red, orange. I move my lounge chair from the back to the front porch vowing to find time during the next few weeks to sit and view the spectacle. I hear crickets chirp in the daytime, and that is always the moment I know autumn has arrived on our farm.  They are to fall what katydids are to high summer. 

The summer squash and the tomatoes slowly give out, but the brussel sprouts and romaine shoot up in the cooler nights, and I finally succeed in getting cabbage and broccoli to sprout.  It's time to plant garlic.  And meanwhile we continue to harvest and put up for winter all the goodness we have been blessed with this summer.

A stray shows up in our yard, but not the usual kind.

Eggs slow down a bit as days grow shorter and the barnyard is a flurry of feathers as my hens enter moult.  I have always found it strange that they moult right when the weather turns cool.  Wouldn't they want to keep their feathers then?  But they'll have a new down coat by winter I suppose.  We've lost one of the barred rock hens to a hawk or an owl.  Why do they always choose the most valuable poultry to snack on?

The goats are getting out of their pen...again.  I am remembering why we have gotten rid of so many goats in the past.

The Blessing of Rain

"He gives rain on the earth, and sends water on the fields."  Job 5:10

It's raining.  Really raining.  Not just a spotty little shower, but a soaking, splashing, dripping, puddling rain. 

We needed it badly.  The pasture grass was getting crunchy.  The leaves on fruit trees and brambles were starting to curl.  The garden was drying up.  I had tried several times to start lettuce, broccoli and cabbage, but despite watering every day they just either didn't sprout at all or wilted as soon as they appeared.

And it's cooler too. Not even 70 degrees as I write this from our front porch.   

I know the naturalistic explanation for the rain:  Lee has churned us up some moisture from the gulf.  A lot of moisture.  I know, too, that the west needed this rain even more than we and didn't get much of it.  I am sure there are faithful people in Texas praying for rain that hasn't come.  I don't try to explain that. But I do pray for those people.

 What I can tell you is that every day for the last several weeks, as my family came to a dinner of summer's bounty, we prayed for rain. Rain means a lot to people who grow food and draw their water from a spring.   So for me, the rain is an answer to prayer.  It is mercy and benediction.  I see in scripture that the sending and witholding of it sit squarely in God's sovereignty.  I am reminded how dependent we are, all of us, on His sending it. How dependent we are on Him for everything.

Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful rain.

Saving Summer
Often even our small garden gives us more than we can eat fresh.  Today for example, as I surveyed my kitchen I realized I had a few tomatoes that need to be used up, some zukes, some green onions, and several bell peppers.  One of my super simple solutions to a glut of such vegetables is to prepare and freeze a vegetable sauce. 
You will need about half a dozen tomatoes to make this worth doing. More is fine. Wash, core, cut into chunks.  No need to seed or peel--the seeds and peels are good for you.  Put them in a blender and puree smooth then transfer to a saucepan. You could just use tomatoes, but I always throw in whatever else I have that needs to get used up.  Today I had a zuchini, a couple of bell peppers and some green onions. Eggplant is also a good addition.
 For the peppers I did remove the stem end, seed, cut out the pith and cut into chunks.  The zuke was young and not too seedy.  I just cut off the stem end and cut into chunks.  All those green veggies went into the blender to puree and then got added to the tomato puree.  I added a little salt, pepper and italian herbs.  Go light on your seasoning.  They will become stronger as you cook the water out of the mixture.  You can add more seasnoning later when you serve it if needed.
Bring the mixture to a boil and then turn it down to a simmer.  Reduce it (simmer the water out of it) by about half.  This way it takes up less room in your freezer and you can add water later. Stir frequently as you reduce and the sauce thickens.
Once it is reduced, cool it by placing the pan in cold water, being careful not to let water get over the rim of your sauce pan into the sauce.  Stirring will help it cool faster.
Once cooled, pack into freezer containers, label with contents and date.
You now have a taste of summer to add to your winter soups and stews or just to serve over pasta.  The sauce has a garden fresh taste that is unequaled by anything you can buy at the store. 

Garden Reboot
Time to make some tough decisions in my little garden this week.  In such a tiny space everything has to pull its weight...

So out come the zuchinnis. One because I think I have enough shredded and stashed in the freezer to make a winter's worth and of zuke muffins.  And two, because though the plants are still pretty healthy, their production has slowed way, way down.  So out they come to make way for fall crops.

And here's a trick for tired tomatoes:
My tomatoes are still producing well, but blight has killed the lower leaves and the vine is outgrowing its support.

First I removed the lower leaves from the tomato vine.  They were not in good shape and the fruit from the lower portion of the plant had already been harvested so nothing is lost.

Next I dug a trench across the bed and laid the vine in it.  This is just the bare vine part, not all the way to the

top.

Then I covered up the vine and watered it in.  Because of the design of my beds, I was able to just move the support pole to the other side and reattach the now much-shorter vine. Roots should form along the buried portion of vine which will give the vine a boost that should take it up to frost.

Pullet Surprise

The new hens, the five lovely barred rocks I have left after the "whatever" got so many of them, have started laying.  There is a marked difference in the size of pullet eggs compared to regular hen eggs.  The eggs will get bigger as the girls mature.  It seems a little early for them to start.  I wasn't expecting them to lay for another month at least, but every breed is different and I have not had barred rocks for years.  The eggs are coming in abundance from the older hens as well.  Sometimes when it is this hot they really slow down, but for some inscrutable chicken reason that has not happened this time.

Above: a cooperative rooster puts himself in the fire ring. BBQ chicken?















Midsummer

And now comes that pause all gardeners know. The early crops long ago succumbed to the heat and the cukes sit pickling in jars.  We ate the last of the first planting of the sweet corn last night and the third planting of green beans is just above ground.  The tomatoes, which are wonderful this year, and the relentless zukes still bless us, but everything else waits.  Every day I thump the "not quite" watermelons, but they are holding out for August.

In the flower garden rudbeckias are wilting in the heat while crepe mytrle and zinnias seem to eat it and thrive.  I have a few blooms on an intrepid old rose by the porch and the tropicals on the porch are happy as long as I daily give them gallons of water. 

This morning on the shaded front porch there is a coolish breeze.  Hummers visit the feeder.  The flower border and trees move with finches, shy buntings, titmice and wrens.  A head-down nuthatch hangs comically from the overhang, determined, it seems to do things the hard way.  It is supposed to be in the upper nineties today and the humidity has been saturating.  Water vapor hangs in the air hiding some mountains I can usually see and muting the others.  The rooster crows down below in the barnyard, not because it is early, but just because he feels like it. Another at a neighbor's answers. Katydids clack, clack, clack.  Such a hot sound.

One of today's tasks is to wash and groom Pico, our mountain of a dog.  He will hate this and it will take two of us and we will need a third which we don't have.  Most likely  the goats have gotten out of their pen on the hillside where I am trying to get them to stay and eat brush.  They don't leave the pasture, but I really need them to eat the hill where we can't mow.  But then goats almost never do what you need them to do. Picasso, the cat, got a respiratory infection and had to be taken to the vet.  He is recovering.

The breeze on the porch has now died.  The day is bracing for the heat. I feel it.

Soon we will need to think hard about a fall garden.  I have already started some seed.  We will need to order more.  Soon the sumac will start to turn and the school busses will start to roll.  But soon is not yet.  Now is pause.  Most everything about gardening and farming is flux, so I stop and observe and enjoy these brief  static moments.

Live Deep
"Live deep instead of fast" --Henry Seidel Canby

This week with the fourth behind us, I am keenly aware that we are now deep into summer.  The days evaporate like the droplets of an afternoon shower, and I tell myself to stop and breathe, to savor, not fret.  I vow to make time to sit on the porch and read, to take walks, to stay up way too late, to sit in the sun and enjoy the sensation of being warm all the way through. I vow to eat juicy, ripe fruit and enough corn on the cob with real butter to satisfy me until next summer. I promise myself to take at least one more road trip somewhere, to stick my feet in an ice cold mountain creek and to spend at least a few evenings around a campfire with friends contemplating life and watching fireflies dance .  Summer, like each season in its turn, is a gift.  We offer God our best thanks by living each moment fully.

 

My nephew wades in to the swimming hole near our farm

Happy Fourth of July!

Must be summer...I just picked the first tomato. The four "patio" cucumbers I planted were staging a garden coup, but I showed them...

Taking full advantage of all the great, local food that abounds this time of year.  So far, besides the pickles, we have put up peaches, blueberries, blackberries, a few green beans, not to mention loading up the freezer with local beef.  But the thing that gives me the most sense of accomplishment is when I can put together a whole meal completely from our land, like the chevon pot roast with carrots, potatoes and chard which we enjoyed  earlier this week.

Filet Beans and Aspargus intermingle in the garden

The Season Progresses

Over a month since I last posted.  I am spending every spare minute after my "day job"   either in the garden, working on pasture maintenance, or rounding up some misplaced chicken. I hope to have my chicken issues resolved this weekend as we are planning to build a chicken tractor for the barred rocks who are currently living with the ducks.  The pen was designed for the flightless ducks, and even though it is covered with bird net, the chickens find ways out.  Almost every morning I have to go on a chicken round-up before school. 

It has been breathlessly hot, as I know it is everywhere in the east, and we have had little rain.  I am watering the garden already--ominously early.  But the garden is growing.  We have already had green beans, new potatoes and cukes.  Seems early for all that to me.  Of course the lettuce and spinach have bolted. I still have a few pumpkins and winter squash I want to plant, and I will keep making plantings of summer veggies.

Tri-Color "Green" Beans and Yukon Gold new potatoes

The roses were so gorgeous this year, but now they have given way to the daylilies and rudbeckia, things that can really take the heat.



climbing rose from a cutting collected from old homestead adjacent to our property

While I was writing this post a thunderstorm blew up from the west.  I sat on the porch and watched it roll in across the mountains.  It's been raining for almost 3 hours now.  We needed it and I do appreciate it, but it now appears that lightning has struck our pump (sigh).

An afternoon t-storm rolls in across the mountains

Of Stinger Goats, Chicken Thieves and Blacberry Winter

Poor Pico hasn't had a very good week.  I think I wrote last time that he has been hanging around the goats' stall, "guarding" them, touching noses with the kids through the stall door, and trying to go in to socialize every time the door is open. I finally felt like the goats were settled enough to be put out on pasture in their moveable electric fence which I set up near the barn for starters.  Pico was excited that the little goats were getting to come out to "play", but he stayed back nicely and let them go in their pen.  Once they were in the fence, he took up his post next to fence--but not too close because Pico does hate to get a shock from the fence.  All was well until one of the little goats came up to the fence trying to touch noses with him.  Pico moved forward.  I could see what happened next coming a mile off, but I was too far away to stop it. Simultaneously, as they reached out to touch noses they both touched the fence.  The goat went hopping and "maaing" back to it's mother. Pico went yelping all the way to his pen and went inside, looking back at me reproachfully like I was at fault.  Maybe I was, as I had brought those awful "stinger goats" to Pleasant Places to begin with.  Since then I have noticed that Pico is not so keen on being around the goats.  In fact, now that I think of it, he's been avoiding the barn completely.
And as if it wasn't enough to be "stung" by a goat kid, Pico has let something make off  with most of the young pullets that I just put down in the hen house a few days ago.  I don't know what it is, but it leaves almost no trace and it has quite the appetite for young chicken.  I am sure they are quite succulent.  Unlike last time we had the predator problem, this time it's not leaving any chicken bodies behind at all. Fortunately it has left the hens alone, but it has been disappointing to lose so many of the little ones I just got started.  I had a talk with Pico about the importance of staying near the hen house and guarding the chickens, but he much prefers to hang out with the horses, especially since the great goat fiasco.  He reminded me that he never said he was a working dog, and that I did, after all, get him from a subdivision.  Well, so be it.

Meanwhile, I hear there is a slight chance of frost tonight.  I doubt that it will, but I have covered the garden beds just to be safe.  It would be terrible to lose beans and potatoes at this stage.
The irises are in bloom and the clematis is just finishing up.  Both have been simply stunning this year.  I didn't realize I had so many colors of iris, but I find myself wishing I had even more.  They are quite possibly my favorite flower of all.

How Many Shades of Green Are There?

Catching Up

It seems I can either write or I can "do", but I have trouble balancing the two.  This past week was spring break, and I spent my week off from work, well, uh, working.  But a week out of the kitchen and on the farm was a welcome change of pace anyway, if not exactly restful.  I accomplished quite a bit.  Here's my week off...in pictures.

My main project this week was to build a yard for my three remaining khaki campbell ducks.  Theys seem to like their new digs.  They have a place to swim a bit (though not strictly necessary for this breed) and the top of the yard is netted to keep out hawks.

The barred rock pullets are growing fast.  We lost one this week when the lid blew off the brooder in a bad storm one night, and they all got wet.  I have decided that I probably still have too many and will be selling some in a few weeks.

The garden is growing well and most everything except the really warm  weather crops are in the ground.  The lettuce is ready for us to start harvesting (above). In the foreground of the second photo, potatoes have poked up above ground.  Several weeks ago, my husband outfitted all the beds with hoops, making it easier to put on frost protection or bird netting.

Goats have returned to Pleasant Places!  These three girls, acquired this weekend,  will be kept for brush control...and because I like goats.  They are unregistered, but they seem to be mostly Nigerian Dwarf, which is what we used to have several years ago.  We are calling the dam "Bea"  because my mom asked if I was going to milk her, and I said that if milk went any higher she was "Plan B"...Bea.  It seems to fit.  The daughters are Hermione and Luna. 

Pico is becoming an outstanding farm guardian.  Here he is on patrol around the barn.  The goats don't know what to make of him, and are unnerved that he hangs out near them, but he's just doing his job.