Caterpillar Village

(Note: I began this post in 2021. For some reason, I never finished it. Well, caterpillar season is almost here, so I thought it would be a great time to get this thing published. -A., March 2024)

Today was a banner day for finding caterpillars. It was overcast all day today so the ‘pillars were easy to spot and also pretty darn active.

The first one I saw was big! It was over three inches long. After looking online, I believe it’s the caterpillar of the White Lined Sphinx moth, Hyles lineata. At this size, they are ready to burrow underground to pupate. Interestingly, there are many different color morphs of these caterpillars, so my caterpillar may not look like yours at all, colorwise. They can also be quite black.

The next caterpillar was found on my toadflax plants. They are wildflowers here and one year I discovered that there were all of these little caterpillars munching away on them. I had to identify them and found they the Common Buckeye, Junonia coenia, a truly beautiful butterfly.

As I was looking at the Buckeyes, I found another caterpillar I hadn’t seen before. This was a Tobacco Budworm, Heliothis virescens. True to its name, it was eating the buds of a toadflax. I think I’ll go pick him off later. I don’t need anything eating my buds or flowers. At least not this one. These caterpillars tend to take on the color of the plant they are eating on, so again, this one may look different from one you find.

Next we move onto some more annoying agricultural pests. These feed on cole crops, like broccoli, cabbage, kale, bok choi, etc. First up, the Cabbage Looper, Trichoplusia ni . Ugh. They have tiny little heads but eat like they are the size of an elephant. Gahhhhhh, these drive me crazy. Please note the tiny, wasp-like thing. I have no idea what it is but 3 years after taking this picture, I just now noticed it!

Now let’s go to my other enemy, the Cross-Striped Cabbageworm, Evergestis rimosalis…This one is just as destructive and there are usually far more of them found together than the Looper. They are the worst! However, I use a Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) spray by Monterey that works wonders. You can also use a spray containing spinosad, but I haven’t tried this. The absolute SECOND you see holes in your crops, spray it down! You’ll be able to keep things like kale even throughout our horrible Texas summers if you do (unless the drought gets them of course. At least it won’t be caterpillars!).

Now the next one is what I’m pretty sure is a Saltmarsh moth (Estigmene acrea) but I’m not positive. That year, we have a ton of them crawling all over the roads. They come in just about every color, so it makes it harder for me to identify.

Last of all, we have a freshly molted mystery caterpillar. I think it may be a Yellow Bear AKA Virginian Tiger Moth (Spilosoma virginica). What do you think?

Thanks for taking the 2021 tour of the Caterpillar Village with me! I hope it helps you to identify some of your caterpillars this year. If you are a book-a-holic like me and you need more caterpillar ID in your life, I can’t recommend the book Caterpillars of Eastern North America by David L. Wagner enough. I use this guide every single year. It is for species east of the 100th meridian (see below):

Otherwise, I use Google Lens through my camera app on my phone, but it’s iffy in some cases so I just go home and refer to my book. That’s Gen X for ya!

Now to see what the 2024 ‘pillar season will bring!

It’s Colder Than A…

Welcome to January in Texas, where it’s 70 degrees on a Saturday and 18 on a Monday. A magical and wonderful place where there were bell peppers growing up until this past week and today it looks like a frozen tundra. It’s supposed to be a blistering -1 with the wind chill tonight. I don’t mind it getting cold, but negative digits? Even temps in the teens are rare here, thank God, or at least they WERE up until 2021. Now we’ve seen them almost every year since. Anyhow, I’m now laid up on the couch, swaddled in sherpa, flannel, microfleece, and F-Uggs (fake Uggs). Last night I decided to play “camp out” and sleep in our living room. I got into camping equipment a few years back and decided to break it out and give it a trial run.

If you’ve ever tried sleeping on an air mattress in cooler weather, you will have quickly learned that it will suck the heat right out of your body like a straw. So, for this experiment, I tried out my Klymit Double V sleeping air pad (see pic below)

and combined it with some camping quilts from Sam’s and a Kelty Mistral 20 degree women’s sleeping bag. I also got to try out my Flextail Ultra mini air pump that I bought in December of 2022 when I was in a flu-induced semi-psychotic state while laying in the sun on our front porch floorboards. Note to self: Disable my Amazon account when I have a fever of 102 degrees or more. I cannot be held responsible for purchases made under these conditions.

Anyway, the good news is that everything performed beautifully and I wouldn’t hesitate to take all of stuff on a chilly camping expedition. Now for the bad news…

If you’ve lived in Texas for any time at all, you will come across cowboy wisdom-isms…usually on a t-shirt or some sort of decorative wall plaque or magnet. One of those sayings is “Don’t squat with yer spurs on.” And after last night, I have another. “Don’t sleep in a sleeping bag after you have eaten two bowls of broccoli soup.” Please trust me on this. You do NOT wanna do this to yourself or to the ones you love.

Let’s chat about more pleasant things, though. Though this season is fairly blah in the garden and outdoors, there are still beautiful things around. One of the best things is firewood, and a heck of a lot of it. We brought up a lot for this storm and put it on the porch. Side note: Jason and I made grapevine wreaths and swags this spring, and then I gathered the yarrow you see here and made this wreath. You can’t tell, but it’s painted a deep gold with some gold glitter.

Purty Thangs:

So what grows in the garden in early January? Well, a lot, actually. Here is some Waltham broccoli (transgressor!!!). I won’t be planting it again. Not due to its effects, but because it didn’t form very good heads. I’ll go back to Packman if I can find it.

In this bed, which my daughter grew, we have Japanese red giant mustard greens, curled kale, snow peas, Dutch cabbage and Swiss chard.

Here’s one I haven’t tried yet: savoy cabbage. If it survives this stint in the deep freeze, I can’t wait to try it!

Here’s a closer look at that red mustard! It’s so pretty in the garden.

Next are some Asian greens that have just decided to replant themselves. I think it’s Chijimasai greens from Baker Creek, but they could be hybridized by now. Either way, they are delicious and laugh off the cold weather.

Last peppers of the season! It was a terrible drought year in ’23, so I wasn’t surprised that the peppers kinda sucked for fall/winter. Usually I get TONS in November and early December. Oh well. I am excited about the persimmons, too. They are delicious and seedless! Hachiya…that’s the variety.

Last of all was a view from today at our local lake. Anyone fancy a Polar Plunge?

Now, dear readers, it’s time for me to feed the fire and finish up dinner. One item which will definitely NOT be on the menu tonight is what I’m now dubbing “Toot Soup”. It was an experimental concoction that I dare not repeat.

I’m hoping that you all are staying warm, friends!

I’m still here!

Well, despite the threat of my last post, I am still here in Texas. This past summer was far worse than the last, with some days getting well above 100 degrees and no rain. It was like living in an oven for three months. While winter is a common time for people to develop seasonal depression, I think summer is worse for me.

Extreme heat, wet-blanket humidity, a plethora of stinging (and flying) insects, no rain, and watching your entire yard collapse into a brown crisp (formerly known as a garden) is depressing to me. I love to be outside and Texas summers are just brutal. But despite the searing heat and no rain, some things survived and even thrived in the garden. And if they weren’t thriving in August, they were resuscitated with some late September rains. So who were the superstars of the drought?

A friend gave me some gladiolus corms this spring, and here they are in June, alongside some Rudbeckia. They were the cheery greeters of the early summer this year. I hope the corms survived! We still had some rain in June, but the last measurable rainfall was June 26th for our summer. 😦

The garden two days before our last rainfall on June 26th:

The veggie winner would have been the yard long beans this year. Even in the heat and sparse rain, they put out new beans constantly. I took several pictures of the almost mature beans, only to discover later they are all grossly out of focus. Oh well. You get the idea. As for taste, they are delicious! I steamed some and roasted others. They are extremely mild and crispy.

Baby yard long beans:

There were some very close contenders to the 36″ mark!!!

For flowers, there were two big winners this year: Celosia and gomphrena. I cannot imagine not having these in my future gardens from here on out! They laughed at the drought and while they did flag a little by August, when the rain came again in September, they put out blooms full force! I had several types of celosia, but the most impressive was a giant fuchsia cockscomb type that came up right by our side door:

And the gomphrena was out of control. This is a variety called Atomic Purple from rareseeds.com:

I had two other varieties; one was a light lilac and the other was white. Such a fun flower!

The other veggie winner was this cool pepper. I have no idea what variety it is; I actually planted it in spring of 2022 as a seed and ended up not planting it. Feeling bad for it, I overwintered it and planted it spring of 2023. It has rewarded us with tons of small purple and red peppers. There are so many different colors on the same plant.

Once again, the watermelons took over and the Ozark Razorback cowpeas went bonkers. Those are definitely surefire winners if you are facing a drought! I also had my Senator zucchini make a comeback as well as lemon squash and some Japanese eggplants.

Here’s a mullein that popped up. They have been reseeding themselves in the garden since we have lived here. I always enjoy seeing them!

So here’s to the 2024 gardening season. May we receive a lot of rain and may the summer temperatures be mild! My biggest challenge is figuring out a good watering set-up. I really need a drip system but since my garden is very “here and there and everywhere” it’s going to be a chore to run the lines the way I need them to run. Still….better than hand watering! That’s my most dreaded chore in the dead heat of June-Sept.

Are you planning a garden next year? Do you have a fall/winter garden this year?

Another drought & I’m out.

I told Jason after 2011 that if we ever go through that again, I am leaving Texas.

Well, here we are eleven years on and it’s looking pretty 2011-ish. While we did have a few heavy rain events this spring, it wasn’t enough overall. We are only considered “abnormally dry” according to the U.S. drought monitor, but everyone in Texas knows when June hits, the tap turns off unless you get a hurricane or tropical storm. And to add insult to injury, our temps have already hit 100 and remain in the high 90s, so I am calling this month Jaugust. And I’m sure next month will be Juaugust, then August, then Saugust.

So that’s why I am going to go back in time to our winter/early spring garden, in far less crispy times. I think we had a nice fall/winter garden and I hope you will enjoy the mini-tour.

I find that fall and winter gardens are easy to do for our area, with the occasional annoyance of having to cover your plants during freezing temps.

January/February tend to be our coldest months. It would be best to plant in mid to late September, but as I said before that’s the month I call Saugust and my least favorite because it’s still hot and soooooo dry. Honestly, who wants to plant in hot dust? Not I. So I usually end up waiting until mid-October when we get some rain.

So below is a pic from December, when I had my beds wrapped and Team Cilantro was in full force. It reseeds itself yearly, so I let it do its thing. The cabbages are Bonnie’s Best hybrid that were transplants. You can see that some cabbage worms made small holes, but these are quickly taken care of with a Bt spray. I use the Monterey brand and I had the RTU (ready-to-use) kind. I won’t be without this spray! It kept my kale happy and worm-free from spring through the next spring.

The next pic is of some more cabbages, carrots, and one of our very favorites: kohlrabi. If you like broccoli and cabbage, you will love kohlrabi. Even if you don’t like broccoli or cabbage, give it a try. It is milder that either of those two and is SO GOOD just steamed until tender. I don’t even add salt. But definitely peel it unless you enjoy chewing on twigs/shoe leather.

Now I love this kale! It is called Black Magic. It just produced seed this month (June; and it’s in its second year now) and it tastes great! I use it in soups, casseroles, stir-fries, salads, smoothies…anywhere you can stick it. Just cut out the rib and slice it thin to use. Trust me, it hides easily in everything and has a great taste. We also roast it sometimes, and yes, it makes great kale chips, too, if you enjoy those.

Broccoli! We love it. This broccoli is looking a little sad and wilted because it had been covered and when I took off the cover, the humidity it was used to dropped rapidly. I ended up re-covering it slightly to help it. I got these as transplants and I think it’s Lieutenant. I used to use Packman and they did away with that. Then Green Magic and they switched again. I also had Artwork, but I haven’t found that in a couple of years. This is why it’s so important to know how to grow your own! Growers aren’t always going to have what you want.

Admittedly, I am proud of the following cabbage. It’s some of the first I have grown from seed. This is an heirloom called Red Acre. The heads ended up being nice and dense and very tasty.

Snow peas….I babied these peas. I planted them too late in October, and they grew and grew and grew and I covered, uncovered, and re-covered about 10 times. You can see I even added some Christmas lights/party lights to keep them warmer while under cover. They survived all of the frosts and cold, but ultimately died due to a fungal infection in mid-spring. I did get some pea pods, but it wasn’t worth the hassle. So this fall, I’ll plant earlier and hope for a late fall harvest.

Peas n’ Strawberries. My strawberries got very confused with the very mild winter and produced like crazy. The bad part is that they were mealy and weren’t good over the winter months. If they did this again, I will definitely pinch off all blooms and let the roots/plant grow instead. By this spring, they were tasty. Here in East Texas, you really are supposed to plant your June-bearing strawbs in fall. But good luck finding plants! I had these overwinter and reproduce like mad, so I planted the babies EVERYWHERE. And this year I found a variety that tastes way better: Seascape. Now we are only supposed to plant June bearing strawbs, but these are considered “everbearing”. Whatever. I am going with this to see how it turns out. The berries are bigger and far tastier than these other ones, which I THINK are Allstar.

A December harvest: It’s scant, but it’s food. We enjoy eating the leaves of broccoli as well as the stalks; just peel ’em! No reason to let either go to waste. Throw the thinly cut leaves into a stir-fry or a soup. Also, you do know that broccoli as we know it is the unopened flowers of the plant, right?

Thanks for taking a little detour with me today! Now it’s back to reality and back to dreaming of a well or a cistern for the garden…

Hubris and Humility in the Garden

After my lame summer growing, I kicked it into high gear for the fall garden. I started my seedlings early, I got the beds composted and ready. I was on top of my game this year! Finally!

In September, I happily planted my garlic in the ground. Earliest ever! I planted my greens! Beat my record for planting by a whole month!

This would be the BEST. FALL. GARDEN. in the history of my fall gardens!

But then, it went south. I can just tell you that just when you think you have gardening all figured out, it is gonna throw you a curveball.

The garlic I ordered struggled to root. The turnips and some of my rutabaga never germinated. My carrot seeds laughed in defiance; they mostly failed to germinate at all. Then it was time to plant the seedlings that I had loved on since August.

Something was way wrong.

It took several days, but then it hit me: I had started my seeds in Miracle Gro potting soil. That’s all the store had. On top of that, because I forgot I had used Miracle Gro soil, I had been fertilizing, too! UGHHHHHHHHHHH. Talk about a root killer! So that was the issue with my indoor seeds! Too much love. Never plant seeds in MG potting soil. Just don’t. Use a seed starting mix with no fertilizer. I found some at another store and loaded up. The oldie made a newbie mistake.

As far as my carrot seeds, after doing research, I found that they lose germination quickly if not kept cool/frozen, and mine had sat out for about a year. The turnip seed was six years old and who knows how well I had stored it? The rutabaga? Also old seed. The garlic? Not sure. But I have a story about that.

I asked the seed company on Facebook if this particular garlic took longer to root. I usually only do the grocery store garlic, which I believe is the variety California Early White. For whatever reason, the Sicilian Artichoke garlic just seemed to not want to put out roots. So as I said in another post, I dug up the cloves, took them inside and replanted them in a seedling mix. This brought more success, but still some struggled to root. So fairly immediately the company replied to me on my Facebook post, and asked how I had planted it and what my soil was like. I replied, and then just a few minutes later they said that they would send me replacement bulbs. This was completely unexpected but very much appreciated because not many companies stand behind their products like that. So for that reason, I will very much recommend using Willhite Seed out of Poolville, Texas for your seed needs. Before you ask, yes, they do sell non-GMO seed. I have had no other issues with the other seed products I have bought from them.

Back to my failures:

The seedlings that I did plant outside are slowly making it. Probably because now they are in good compost and not sitting in a chemical/salt-laden cesspool. After a couple of nights under a plastic cover, they have really begun to thrive. Especially the carrot seeds; I’ll remember that for this spring! The turnips never came up: Old seed. The rutabagas did start coming up after the plastic cover was in place. The garlic is now coming in. The grocery store garlic came up easily and I planted it all over the yard, in various beds. I mean, can you EVER have enough garlic?

The garden is looking better, despite my “help”. Plants are amazingly resilient.

Update: Most of the transplants have made it. LESSON LEARNED!

I don’t have a pic of the garden right now, but here’s some adorable metal plant stakes that my “big sister” got me for my birthday!

A Fall Garden

After my summer of B.L.A.H. (see last post), and feeling the pressure of the current supply chain crunch, I’m all into my fall gardening. We are in gardening Zone 8a; a very nice zone for fall and winter gardening. It always has surprised me that more people around here don’t do much fall gardening. And no, mums don’t count. Most people plant for the summer garden, and that’s great and all, but fall/winter are very productive, too.

This year, I’m trying out a few new varieties of veggies, mostly from Seed Treasures and Baker Creek. Some of the new things in the starter “greenhouse” are: Red Acre cabbage, Goliath broccoli, Chijimisai greens, Purple Lady bok choi, Chinese Pink celery, He Shi Ko bunching onion, and Sweet Spanish onion (from seed). Brassicas and greens do especially well for us during fall/winter, and they are so good for you! I use all the parts from my cabbages and broccoli; even the leaves. They are great in soups and stir fries, and very easy to dehydrate for later use.

I start most of my seeds inside in a cheap little “greenhouse” that I got from Tractor Supply. It has 4 shelves, and on the top three, I have a seed heating pad and two grow lights per shelf. The heating pads are from Amazon, and I have used Wal-Mart’s linkable grow lights. Right now, the temps inside are such that I don’t turn on the heating pads, but I will in December, especially, as I start my seeds for February plantings.

I use plastic containers from leftovers and salad mixes, mostly, with a soil-less seed mix. I am bad about planting stuff too deep, so this year I was extra careful, and only had to replant a couple of things. I found that spinach is especially picky and so I barely even covered it, misted it daily, and it all finally came up the second time around. I leave containers covered with a clear lid (or even Saran wrap) until the first true leaves come in, then I remove that.

I should have planted two weeks earlier to get everything to the right size for transplanting (I really want everything in by this week), so I’d recommend starting your seeds for most fall things no later than the last week of August if you are in my zone.

Some things you don’t want to transplant, like carrots. In the outside beds, I planted these seeds: Kohlrabi, turnips, two kinds of beets, radishes, chard, carrots (4 types), potatoes (an experiment), and garlic. Kinda miffed at the garlic.

I ordered garlic for the very first time and it was PRICEY stuff. With shipping, it was $25 for TWO HEADS. Yikes. Anyway, I planted it several weeks ago and….nothing. I got impatient and dug some up on Monday. Several had rotted, five pieces had rooted, and the rest were just sitting there and had done NOTHING. I replanted the rooted ones, chunked the rotted ones, and took in the ones that had done nothing. Earlier this year, I had rooted some garlic indoors and transplanted it later on and it did well. So that’s what I’ll do again. I have the ends of the pieces barely in some soil and I’m making sure the soil doesn’t dry out. Since the container is clear, I will be able to watch the roots develop and I’ll transplant them when I see good roots. Angry at the garlic priced like gold, I went to Wal-Mart and grabbed a sack of garlic like I usually do, and planted it all over our gardens. It doesn’t need covering when the cold comes, at least not here, so you can plant it wherever it will get full sun. UPDATE: A week later, about seven more cloves of garlic had rooted. YAY. I planted it yesterday.

What’s in your fall garden?

Dill and Pak Choi
Lettuce!
The greenhouse with the linkable grow lights

Cannin’ and such – The end of summer 2021

Here is a short list of things I don’t like:

Humidity
Oppressive heat
No rain
Wasps
Fleas
Stinkbugs in the garden
A summer cold

And here is a short list of things that always happen during Texas summers:

Humidity
Oppressive heat
No rain
Wasps
Fleas
Stinkbugs in the garden
A summer cold

At least I can say that summer 2021 DID have more rain, at least through early July. Plus, we didn’t have but a few days of 100+ degrees.

I was not inspired this year to do much in the garden. Last year, I grew stuff like there was no tomorrow (and frankly, who knew?). But this year was the summer of B.L.A.H. (Being Lazy And (probably) Hormones (because frankly, when do they NOT rule our lives?).

Even so, I did get some things accomplished.

I planted enough cucumbers to make almost a years’ worth of pickles. I made a few “spicy” jars this year.

We grew some apples! You don’t hear about Texas apples, do ya? But it can be done! Despite me running over the tree two years ago on the UTV, our tree survived!

Our muscadines produced really well, due to all of the rain we got this year. I still had about 21 pints of grape jelly from 2020, so I couldn’t figure out what do. Then, it hit me: JUICE. Who doesn’t love grape juice? Well, duh. So if you are into making jelly or juices the ONLY way to fly is to get a steam juicer. Throw the fruit in, add water to the bottom pot, heat, and POOF! You get beautiful juice that can be canned as is, or made into beautiful jellies. Don’t even touch the fruit on top; don’t squeeze it with a spatula or you get ugly jelly, like I did in 2020. It puts sediment into your juice and makes it cloudy.

This picture is when I was juicing “Carlos” bronze muscadines. They are amazingly sweet and remind me of those expensive “cotton candy” grapes.

On the left is the finished juice of the “Carlos” grape, and on the right is the finished jelly of “Noble” – a purple muscadine. See how clear the juice/jelly is? So easy with the steam canner. Worth every cent. (Mine is no longer available on Amazon. As of 9/23/21, they have a Roots & Branches brand for $69 that looks nice! It’s one quart smaller in capacity than what I have, but I paid over $125 for mine, thanks to the 2020 canning frenzy)

And in the Weird files, which, admittedly, are very thick over here on the farm, I had a mystery squash come up in my orchard along the fenceline. It grew all over my grapes and I just left it to see. Well…it was a spaghetti squash! What the heck! I could have planted a million of those seeds and probably never grew a vine as nice as this one. I think we got 6 squash from it and they are delicious. So I think I’ll plant some sketti squash next to my grapes on down the fence next spring. Why not? A little cabbage worm ate off some of the skin, which is what you see here, but it didn’t hurt the squash at all.

So maybe it wasn’t my most productive summer ever; oh well. Now I’m just ready for the rains to come to break the official spell of dryness that always hits us in September. Meanwhile, the insane amount of seedlings I have started for our fall garden are sprouting and growing. I have promised them that I’ll not fail them when it comes time to get them in the ground.

Goodbye, summer of B.L.A.H.! Here’s to a productive fall!

Showers N’ Flowers

Today I am sitting at my desk at work, contemplating why I even attempt to re-ink a stamp. The frugalista in me says, “Why buy a entire new stamp when a bottle of ink is three dollars?” The realist in me says, “Every time you re-ink a stamp, you end up looking like you were booked and fingerprinted MULTIPLE times in the county jail.” I now have ink on my desk, my face, all of my fingers, my pencil cup, my mouse, and the book I was reading. Luckily, I wore a black shirt today.

But let us discuss more pleasant and pretty things. My yard, for example!

This spring was chilly all the way into the first of May. Not that I’m complaining, HOWEVER, my corn I planted never came up and my cream peas were lackluster. My tomatoes were sad and took forever to grow. Even so, now that it’s warmed up, things are filling out. Let’s take a look around:

View from our porch. It rained today for the first time in a MONTH, PTL! I was already tired of watering. Yarrow and daylilies are at the forefront:

View of the house. The front porch will eventually be screened in the front, and closed on the sides with big screened windows. I call it my future three season room. You can see that the blanketflower (on bottom left) really took over. It is all over our yard now.

Front left side of porch. From left: Indian hawthorn (covered in blackberry I can’t kill), blue/black salvia, daylily, and then my lemon trees I grew from seed five years ago. Also, a couple of geraniums.

View of what I call “The Salad Bowl”. Jason leveled the front yard, and this required making a hill around the driveway. I have really been working on this hill with tomatoes, wildflowers, asparagus, and Drift roses, among many other things. Trying to keep it covered to prevent erosion. Also, it is 100% ‘sugar sand’, so I am slowly digging out sand and replacing with compost. The flat ground is where we will plant big thing like corn and okra, and you can also see my sad peas and my rows of green beans. The flowers are brown eyed Susans, which I love!

Raised metal bed that Jason built. The plan is to trellis indeterminate tomatoes here. This is a 10′ bed, but a 20′ is in the works. I will put anything vining or trailing on these.

Prime-ark Freedom blackberries! Only 2 yr old vine and producing tons of huge fruit. I love this berry!

Backside of the ‘rose garden’. Time to clean up the old bulb leaves. Once they are brown, they are fine to remove.

Iris bed with orange, purple, and white irises. Also have some daylilies and crocosmia planted.

The ‘rose garden’, with a few unidentified roses, but also has “Trumpeter”, “Electron”, Mutabilis, “The Fairy”, and “Dolly Parton”. I put assorted impatiens in the empty spots just to fill space.

Another view of the iris bed. You can see the lighter green crocosmia taking over, but it’s so gorgeous here in a few weeks, who cares? The little tree on the right is a lemon tree that I planted from local seed. There are two lemon trees in Jacksonville that I know of, and both are ancient. I got seed from both trees about five/six years ago, and one tree is just now fruiting! We are sooooo excited. BTW, the Coors can you may see isn’t mine; it’s for the slugs. Yes, I am a bootlegger for slugs. Only kidding…slugs are apparently addicted to cheap beer and they will come by the hundreds to a beer-filled dish only to party and subsequently perish. Try it for yourself if the slugs are driving you crazy!

Hope you enjoyed the tour! In the next month, things will start getting crispy out there and I’ll only come out “when the sun hits the pines”, which is to say, either before sun up or after sundown!

Year nine on the farm: Older, fatter, and furrier

October 2017 marks two milestones for our family; we have now been on the farm for nine years, and I turned forty.

Turning 4-Oh

Something about turning forty has changed me. With any luck, I hope to live another forty years. It would be a gift of another lifetime! With that, it got my little pea brain churning, thinking about:

The importance of living every day to the fullest
Celebrating every birthday, and that sending birthday cards to family/friends is no longer optional
Planning for a life we’d like to live after the kids have moved out
Becoming debt-free so we can work minimally and live to the max
Maintaining our health so we can enjoy life to the fullest

I also think about how I have already lived four years longer than my own grandfather did, and how every day is truly a blessing.

On a funnier note, I am trying to understand why, at forty:

My body has begun to cling to every single calorie like a person dangling from the side of a cliff
God decided that visible nose hairs are not optional just because you are a woman while simultaneously they become more prevalent/darker…yet at the same time, I am losing the hair on the top of my head
Any new hair I DO happen to grow on my head is either white and silky or a thick and extremely unruly black menace that sticks straight out
I can throw out my back by simply standing up and moving my leg half-inch in the ‘wrong’ direction

These are the things I ponder now.

Year Nine on the Farm

With this year, we are still working on paying off our debt, maintaining the home and grounds, and now we are downsizing.

While I did keep some baby chicks hatched this year, the new goal is to continue to downsize the flock until we have a nice number of laying hens. Let’s face it: I do NOT get $100 worth of eggs a month that I’m paying for the feed at this point! We do have some older layers as well as several hens who are more like pets, but as usual, we also possess a disproportionately large number of roosters who are getting fat on my dollar.

Now for a review in photos!

October 2016:

That time that everyone got ticked off after playing Sorry:

November 2016:

The cold and wet beginning to our square foot beds:

Our living room/library area after bringing in the ferns for the winter:

Fall foliage:

December 2016:

A beautiful winter sunset!

From 65 degrees to 48 in 47 minutes!

January 2017:

One day, as I was hanging laundry, I looked up to see this ‘mackerel sky’. I made myself pretty dizzy trying to take a good pic.

This year marked the beginning of new beds and a new gardening method: Square Foot Gardening. I love it!!! Jason built the beds. The soil you see was just, well…crappy, but it’s all I had. Now it has much better soil.

2017 was the Year of the Annoying Ladybug/Asian Ladybeetle invasion. Here is a group in our barn, but there were hundreds in the house. Yuck. Glad they do eat aphids, but it would be lovely if they would hibernate outdoors like REAL ladybugs!!!

February:

Being sensitive to sodium nitrate (Read: gives me major migraines), I can only eat uncured meats. Let’s face it, when you live in the sticks, things can be difficult to find. Our local Wal-Mart decided to stop carrying ‘my’ bacon, so I was forced to drive thirty miles to find some. Jason came to the rescue with my Valentine’s gift!

Ladybug invasion continues in the warm sun:

A true ladybug! I found several Twice-Stabbed ladybeetles on our pear trees. Yaaaay!

March:

Another ‘true’ ladybug, the Convergent Ladybeetle. I probably learned more about ladybugs this year than in my last 40 years!

April:

April showers and all of that!

May:

May’s warmth brings out the reptiles! Anoles and rat snakes are in full force!

June:

A cicada emerges!

Swedish strawberry cake:

A new friend emerges from the woods! My first photos of Eleanor, the wild cat.

July:

Happy Fourth!!!

We add another new family member. Meet Esther. Note: Esther is the one without the beard.

August:

Esther enjoys robes and hiding in the mini pantry. This behavior was not endorsed by yours truly. No one likes cat hair in their cereal.

September:

Another new family member! Meet Milo:

2017, so far, has proved to be the Year of the Cat! I also have declared it the year of Returning to the Homestead since I have now deactivated my Facebook account and suddenly have hours and hours added to my day! Amazing, isn’t it? Hope you enjoyed this year’s re-cap.

On to 2018!!!

Down at Ye Olde Noodle Hole

Buying a home is an interesting experience. You are certain to come across some surprises from time to time. For example, one year our washing machine was draining slowly. We ended up digging up the PVC drainage pipes and rather than use a joint fitting to get the water to go where they wanted (down the hill), they simply…bent the pipe.

Yes, friends, who needs a 22 degree joint when one can use their brute force to just BEND THE PIPE almost in two? Well, now THAT certainly won’t cause issues. So after the pipe was fixed, it did lead to the discovery that our greywater from the house drains into our hillside. This is all the water you use in the house except the potty. Now this was actually a pleasant surprise! Greywater can be used to irrigate plants for your gardens as long as you are careful about the soaps and cleaners you use, assuming you do your greywater recovery correctly.

After the greywater drainage discovery, it wasn’t long that we also found that our dogs had come to the same conclusion. Yes, all of the kitchen waste that accidentally makes it down my sink does flow out by the hillside. And yes, dogs find this delectable, especially when we have a dish like spaghetti. Thus: The Noodle Hole got its name.

The screams of “The dogs are in the Noodle Hole again!!!” were pretty frequent in the first year we lived here. After running dogs out of the Noodle Hole, away from donkey dung, and out of the chicken manure, I decided that dogs are just gross. I pray to God that they don’t have taste buds.

But back to the Noodle Hole! For some reason, this year we have tons of tomato plants that have decided to set up camp by the Noodle Hole outlet as well as the washing machine drainage. I guess I had some tomato seeds in my pockets? Who knows. But there are about seven giant tomato plants, covered in green tomatoes out there now. Unfortunately, our first hard freeze is coming later this week and so I am going to pick the green fruit, take some cuttings, and cover them just to see how long the vines will make it. I have had tomato vines through January before!

Since the ‘maters enjoyed their laundry/kitchen water so much, we are planning a tiered box which will utilize the greywater and keep our tomatoes watered through the hot summer.

When life hands you a Noodle Hole, make a greywater recovery system!