first pack of the season

How I've missed the sweet sounds of the coyote packs. When Sky and I first moved to Albany,la on a 2 acre piece of land, we had two regular coyote packs that would run through. The packs were small in size about 6 adults to each pack. They always stayed close to our tree lines when they'd move through and their howls and yips were somewhat eerie and comforting at the same time. One morning I accidently mistook a lone coyote for a fox. In my defense the grass in the tree line was really high and I couldn't see his feet and thought he was lounging on a fallen tree trunk. The animal I saw in the tree line watched me slowly closing his eyes unthreatened as I approached him. He didn't seem to care that I was getting slowly closer and seemed to be just as curious about me as I was about him. It wasn't until I was about 10 feet from him that he jumped up and turned to run off deeper into the woods. That's when I realized he was not a fox but a coyote. I probably should've been a little more Leary about approaching a wild animal, but I didn't feel threatened by the coyote in the least and he didn't seem threatened by me at all.

Well tonight was our first encounter with a very large pack of coyotes on the farm. Jack had been acting up like he does when he needs to go out. I had asked Skylar to take him out yet again. She wasn't out there but a minute when I jumped up off the couch and told Sean something didn't sound right outside. Before I made it to the door Skylar was rushing Jack back inside. I asked what was all the noise outside and Sky's only answer was coyotes. So I grabbed Sean and out the door we went with flashlight in hand. Little did I know we were in for a Huge surprise. The coyotes, never seen of course not even the reflections of their eyes, had surrounded the house and were moving through the tree line of the farm. The majority of the pack just off to our left heading toward the front of the farm. Their Howls were so loud it was almost deafening. I heard at least 20 distinctly different howls all sound off at once like a war cry had been sent up. My only thought was that I didn't know where Big Ben had gotten off to and hoped that he had hid somewhere safe. My next thought after the howls had died down was to jump into the truck and to let Big Ben's owner know that a pack was moving through and to check on his chickens. Sadly though Ben's owners weren't home so I left and came back home.

Even though Coyotes can be a nuisance to livestock and to small family pets and small children, I do love having them around. I love their howls in the middle of the night and the fact that they eat snakes. In the years we've had coyote packs move through we've had less problems with poisonous snakes. Of course anyone who owns persimmon trees, probably don't care for coyotes too much since the coyotes like to eat the persimmons. However, the persimmons make the coyotes rather sleepy and a little more docile.

Quick, easy, and Delicious roasted veggies

Now for this recipe I just used carrots, but you can use the same recipe for any vegetable. 

All you need is:

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt 

Pepper

Mixing bowl

Roasting pan or glass Pyrex tray

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees

Clean and wash veggies (when doing carrots peel them a little first)

Cut up the veggies ( when using longer vegetables like carrots,zucchini, squash, and bellpeppers cut lengthwise)

Place in mixing bowl pour in the olive oil.

Mix the veggies until well coated

Salt and pepper to taste

Transfer to the roasting pan or Pyrex

Place in oven and cook for about 15 minutes until veggies are soft but still firm be careful not to burn them. 

As a substitute or for some added flavor you can also add mrs. Dash original seasoning or Tony's Cajun blend. If you have some fresh herbs and spices growing in the garden you can throw in some fresh basil, thyme, pineapple sage, parsley, and oregano. 

Dig it and they will come??

Before moving onto the farm somewhere between moving the house out there and putting in the septic system, I decided to put in a small three foot deep "pond". It's really more like a three foot deep 10 foot wide hole in the ground. Anyway the pond was intended for our two turtles, the female, sneaker, was a large red ear slider and the male, stubs, was a small yellow Belly slider. We had found sneaker maybe about 6 years ago after hurricane gustav under my upright dresser in my bedroom. How she had gotten in the house, past us, past the dog, and all the way to the bedroom in the back of the house was beyond any of us and the house never did have any water come into it. So I kept her and decided she needed a friend so we went searching canals and stumbled upon stubs. He was appropriately named because he was missing a back leg, a defect from birth. He and sneaker got along very well although I'm pretty sure stubs had gills because sneaker would always sit on top of him and never seemed to move. 

So I had decided that sneaker and stubs needed to be outdoors in a real pond instead of the large plastic container they were housed in for the past 6 years. So the "pond" was dug specifically for them, unfortunately neither of them ever got to enjoy it. We lost sneaker last June only a week before my wild rabbit, sweet pea, had passed. As far as we could tell sneaker died from a combination of old age and some kind of parasitic worm. 

Stubs held on until about February of this year. Poor little guy tried to stay but he seemed heart broken and lost without sneaker. He was having problems climbing on his rocks and logs and on occasion we'd find him flipped over on his back not breathing and fearing he was dead until we'd flip him right side up and he'd start breathing again, but sadly we eventually lost him too. I think Skylar was more heartbroken than the rest of us, but both turtles had a great life. 

Well since we've been on the farm the pond has been used for watering plants and home to a ton of frogs. This morning I noticed something small and bright white crawling out of the pond. As I was too far away to tell exactly what it was I walked over to the pond to investigate. To my surprise it looked as though we had small fish in the pond, some looking like they were belly up. I walked to the edge of the pond and realized what I was seeing were the tadpoles. Of course at this point they look like some weird small fish with legs. So I picked up a very thin twig and started to play with them lifting them up gently with the stick until they jumped back into the water. As I was watching in sheer child like fascination I just happend to look down and inches away from my bare feet at the edge of the pond I saw this small creature looking up at me. It took me a minute to realize it wasn't one of the tadpoles, but a medium sized crawfish. So I took my twig and put it right in between each of his claws to get him to play. Which to my delight he did. He grabbed onto the small end of the twig with one claw and tried to pull it into the water with him. 

I was so excited, I ran back to the house and jumped onto my bed like an excited child to wake up a very tired and Unenthused Sean. He had just gotten home an hour before from the night shift. 

I was so excited I made him get out of bed and go out to the pond with me so he could see the crawfish. Of course the crawfish never resurfaced and I was only able to show him a very tiny crawfish I happened to spot near the very spot the larger one had been. 

Well, in my defense Sean said he wanted to have his own crawfish pond so we wouldn't have to keep paying high dollar for crawfish. This year the price of crawfish in Louisiana is $4.00 a pound!!! Usually we only pay 2 dollars and some change and even that's kinda pricey for things you can find in just about any ditch  or yard in Louisiana 

The brown floppy dog that wasn't

I must have forgotten at some point over these last two years what it was like living on a farm out in the country. The different things that make the country magical and full of life, like the birds, bees, critters of all kinds, the fresh air, the trees, flowers, and the deer.

A couple weeks ago, while looking out the window at the garden veggies and fruit trees I spotted what I thought was a dog out in the field but when I looked again it was gone. Yesterday, while sitting in the hammock in the morning watching the birds I glimpsed what I thought was a large brown floppy looking dog in the field about in the same area as a couple weeks before. Well, yesterday afternoon I went looking for tracks and sure enough what I had seen was a small doe. I really did miss seeing the deer run through the yard while we were living in a subdivision. Now of only I could get the raccoons, foxes, wild turkeys, and the rabbits to come out I'd be in heaven, wouldn't mind seeing the bobcats on occasion either. 

Looniness and the art of dentistry

Well today finds us at the oral surgeon today for Sean. Nothing real major just has a really bad tooth that needs to be gotten rid of. 

Sean is one of those guys whose a comedian to begin with, get a beer in him and he's even funnier, get valum in him before surgery and he's hysterically goofy.

The oral surgeon he's seeing today is wonderful and just as funny as Sean. His motto is that he wants you to feel really good before you come in and when you leave. I've been to this oral surgeon myself and have to say he's quick and absolutely painless. 

As for Sean..... He was loopy when we got here I can only imagine what he'll be like when we leave. 

Youtube

I will begin this post by saying I am NOT a fan of youtube. Youtube does have some good points, although I find them few and far between, and no one else in the house really shares my opinion.

Sean seems to love youtube and Sky seems to always be on it too. While youtube has informative how to videos on things like hairstyles, instrument playing, how to fix it, documentaries, and gardening and drawing videos, there is also the less appealing side of Youtube. Sean, being the curious MAN he is, likes "the retarded policeman" videos which is made by a young man who has down syndrome and while I am happy for the young man for having the courage to make these videos while making fun of himself, I find them rather degrading to other individuals with down syndrome. While the "retarded Policeman" is off colored and is done by an individual with down syndrome I should not complain. I don't have to watch it and I don't but these videos are the least of youtubes problem.

What concerns me most is that youtube doesn't seem to have any kind of filters or rules for what you can and cannot upload to their site for anyone to view. They have videos of animals "abusing" other animals..... I've seen them. They have videos showing people abusing animals, I'm sure if I looked, it wouldn't be hard to find people abusing children or porn of any kind.  All of which are accessible to children.

I don't approve of Skylar on youtube, However, she knows this and understands my reasons. She is also old enough, smart enough, and knows the consequences of viewing things that are not age appropriate. Not to mention that Skylar has some of the same feelings about youtube as I do.

Sean, on the other hand, While understanding my feelings about it, is a grown man and stays away from the more distasteful videos on youtube.

I guess I'm just trying to make sure that people realize what is on youtube and what their children are viewing. 

New Tomatoes

 

This is our first large tomato of the season. I was actually surprised to see any tomatoes on the plants today. They definitely weren't there on Monday. At last count on all of the tomato plants we have a total so far of about 7 tomatoes, all of which are smaller than this one.

Strawberry Jam

Strawberry Jam

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a relatively easy recipe for Strawberry Jam that tastes better than store bought and is cheaper in the long run. This recipe makes about eight 8 ounce jars, so make sure you have enough jars on hand. 

To get Started you will need:

7 cups of granulated sugar

8 cups of  fresh whole strawberries ( may use frozen)

4 TBSP Lemon Juice ( fresh is better)

1 package (1.75oz) regular powdered fruit pectin
 

As always place 8 clean 8 oz jars on a rack in a boil water canner ( you can also use a deep stock pot that is at least 3 inches deeper than that of the jars.) Fill jars and canner with cool water that reaches the top of the jars. cover and bring to simmer over medium heat. Do not boil. Do the same for the lids and bands and keep warm until ready to use.

Measure Sugar into a bowl and set aside.

Wash and drain Strawberries in cool water. Dry the Strawberries thoroughly.

In a flat pan mash the strawberries with a potato masher or your hands. To make this part easier slice and dice the strawberries first. You can also use a food processor, but make sure you put the setting on chop. you want strawberry pieces in the Jam. When you are done mashing the berries you should have 5 cups of Strawberries.

Place the strawberries into a large stainless steal pot.

Add in the Lemon juice and pectin and stir until pectin is completely dissolved and all the berries are coated.

Bring the strawberry mixture to a full rolling boil over high heat stirring frequently. Add in all the sugar at once, stirring constantly, return to full boil that cannot be stirred down. Boil hard for 1 minute. Remove from heat and using a slotted spoon skim off the foam.

Remove the jars from the canner, emptying the hot water back into the canner. Using a funnel, ladle hot jam into the jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. place lids and bands onto jars tightening the bands and place back into canner.

Bring canner to a full rolling boil and boil for 10 minutes, remove jars and you're done.

Note: if the jam tends to be a little runny due to a slight over measurement of lemon juice place in the fridge after the jars have been canned and completely cooled. This will help thicken the jam.

 

The wash board

I now fully understand why we have invented the washing machine. I really do love my washboard, but I miss my waging machine more;). I don't mind doing a quick small load of a few clothes on the washboard, but a full load of laundry kills my lower back everytime. However, I've learned that if you want your whites really white, the washboard and a bar of dove soap works wonders. Well I guess it's back to the washboard until my washer gets fixed.

Good zydeco music

Down in the swamp, my home away from home:). The family and I had a great day today at my friend Lori's swamp tour. Lori owns the Cajun pride swamp tours down in La Place,La. Today was her annual crawfish boil cook off:). Skylar, Sean, and Myself stuffed ourselves with the biggest crawfish of the season, jumbalya, alligator sausage, fried chicken, and a little chocolate cake, and for us adults we washed it all down with a little beer. Along with all the fixens today Lori had local zydeco ( Cajun ) musicians come out and play. The music and food was great! Sky even learned how to play the "wash board" also known as the rub board, and got to play it with one of the musicians. 

I have to say zydeco music is one of sky and I's favorite types of music. There's nothing like it anywhere else. 

Luna moth

I hadn't seen one of these beautiful Lunar Moths since I was a little kid about 8 years old or so. The last time I saw these moths was on my grandmothers farm on a summer night at just about dark. There were so many of them flying around that night and they seemed to actually glow. Skylar had found this guy and had never seen a lunar moth before. She had heard me talk about them and only knew what it was by the color and size of him. If you see these moths take as many pictures of them as possible because you never know when you'll see another. 

Update on the Farms progress

Thought I'd start this post off with a picture of Big Ben. For those of you who may not know, Big Ben is actually the neighbors cat, but I don't think Big Ben knows that. Big Ben hangs around our farm and helps us tend to the veggies and the orchard along with some light mouse hunting, his daily doses of much deserved affection, and of course his daily handout of food. His idea of helping today was to lounge and roll around in the strawberries as I was picking the ripe ones, and before you ask....yes, I had to lift a leg or two off of the strawberry plants in order to check for any strawberries he was hiding.

So far, with Ben's help of course, we have managed to actually get some fruit trees into the ground.... a total of 6 to be exact. We have the yellow delicious apple tree, the Jonathan apple, both olive trees, a Meyers lemon, and a grapefruit all planted.

This tree here is the  Yellow Delicious Apple. It's the first apple tree that has gotten any blossoms on it so far and I'm hoping to have apples started soon on this tree. The yellow delicious and the Jonathan apple are both self pollinating and both  will pollinate my two Anna's apples along with helping to pollinate each other. When deciding that you want to grow your own apples you really need to do your homework and even though some apples are self pollinators you still should have at least two apple trees. You also need to know what types of apples will grow in your area.

 

 

Here on the Farm we currently grow two different types of strawberries. The strawberry pictured above is a Tristan Strawberry. The Tristan Strawberry has Pink to reddish flowers and  will produce medium to large Strawberries throughout the growing season, which starts early Spring and goes through mid to late Summer, and you can usually pick a good handful or so every other day. The other variety of Strawberry we grow is the Quinault Strawberry. The Quinault Strawberry is a much larger Strawberry. This variety of Strawberry has a white flower and does not Produce as many Strawberries as the Tristan. the Quinault Strawberries are the ones most commonly seen in the groceries stores and have a sweeter taste than the Tristan, but both varieties are easy to grow and very low maintenance.

 

Our Tomato plants now have flowers on them although I was unable to get a good picture of them. I am hoping for a good tomato harvest this year aswell as a good crop of blueberries. I have planted my Dragon carrots recently and they have started to sprout. Dragon Carrots are a purple carrot with a slightly peppery to spicy taste, unlike the sweet taste of the regular orange carrots we're all use to.

The onion's I planted last month are starting to make bulbs, the squash and cucumbers are hanging in there and I should have a few bellpeppers this year too. I also managed to plant my watermelon seeds and am hoping they do well. The only thing I have yet to plant are my regular corn seeds and my broom corn.

 

Well that's all for me for tonight, Guys, and Gals. So hopefully ya'll will have a great night tonight and I'll keep ya'll more up to date with the Farm now that we have gotten internet out here. 

 

 

Internet!!!

As of this morning we now have internet on the farm!!!! Now if only I could find the box with the wifi router in it we'd be completely set up. Well I'm happy to announce that I will be back on the blog more often now. I will also have a new post this afternoon sometime about the orchard and veggies that we have growing. The post tonight will be complete with pics to let y'all see our progress :) 

Why AT&T sucks

I usually don't do any kind of negative posts on my blog. Usually my blog is upbeat and happy. Today however will be alittle different.

As many of ya'll know by now we do not have internet at the farm yet..... We barely have cell phone service.

As it turns out, while trying to get internet service at the farm, the ONLY company available to us Is AT&T, unless I want to pay an arm and a leg for Hughes net which can be extremely sketchy in the more rural areas. 

So I had Sean call AT&T yesterday to set up internet service since I had previously talked to someone online at AT&T who had informed me that we could get DSL at the farm. When Sean called yesterday and spoke to someone they said that there was no available service for AT&T DSL Internet because their box was full. When Sean said all they had to do was either add another box or add another junction to the box the operator told him that they could not just send a tech out there for that since AT&T was phasing out the DSL and strictly going to u-verse. 

Really? Kind of funny how the phone operators tell you one thing and the online operators tell you something completely different and they're all looking at the same tools. Not to mention that they still offer DSL Internet pricing. 

To make this rant perfectly clear, AT&T has a monopoly on the internet service industry in the U.S. It doesn't matter if you use charter, cox cable, time warner, verizon, direct tv, or anyone else, they all go through AT&T for their internet. AT&T also does whatever it can to legally steal your money, they either do this by charging your bank account and then sending a bill with the same charges so you unwittingly pay them twice, they try to bundle everything so that if you have direct tv they're suppose to pay direct tv from what you pay AT&T except direct tv will not get their share of that payment and bill you as if you never paid. The other thing they do is say there's no more DSL terminals so that you will do whatever it takes to get the new U- verse just so you can have internet and they can charge you way more than what they'd get for the DSL.  My favorite is AT&T's land lines. They will charge you as much if not more than your cell phone for a land line you rarely use. They also think that people don't carefully go over their bill, so they'll sneak in collect calls or calls overseas that the employees make and charge you, the paying customer.

AT&T does the things it does and trains their employees, in my opinion, to play dumb. They do this because they can. They don't care about the customers and  make people use their services because the other companies don't have the billions AT&T does. AT&T only cares about the money and I can remember a time when it was south central bell when the phone companies took care of the employees and we're not nearly as crooked as they are today. They also believed in customer service. That all changed with the formation of AT&T the new super company in America and they know it.

I wouldn't use AT&T for anything if I had a choice in the matter. However, We need the internet at the farm mainly so that I can pay my bills, do our taxes, and Sky can do her school assignments, and because NO other company will service the area and we and or neighbors have tried to get the other companies to come out to no avail.
 

Moving two houses into one

Between moving and no internet on the farm, life can be a little hectic. It's never easy to move from one place to another, it's even harder when you're merging two houses into one. Life on the farm right at this moment is a clutter of boxes. 

Over this past weekend we merged and moved two houses..... Well almost. Between sky and I bringing boxes over a little at a time over the past two weeks and the one haul with the 27 foot u-haul truck on Saturday we still have things that need to be moved at the old house. It amazes me that not everything is at the farm. We had 5 adults and 7 kids all helping us load and unload, and yet there is still stuff that needs moving including my last few trees for the orchard.

Unpacking is just as bad as moving. I know for a fact that when we packed the boxes they were all labeled with what room they went in and what was basically in them and for some reason I can't seem to find anything. Will be so glad when we are completely done :) 

No concentration

I have absolutely NO concentration today. The weather today if wonderful, all be it partly cloudy, and all I can do is go stir crazy because I'm here at work instead of packing and loading more things into my truck to bring to the farm. I know today is Wednesday already and we actually start moving on Friday but it's just one of those weeks that seem to crawl by probably because I want it to fly by and then slow way down starting Friday morning.

Things that sort of just fall in your lap

Yesterday while at a friends house picking up a furniture cart, I noticed what I thought was an old enamel basin lying there on the ground. It' wasn't, but that sparked an interesting conversation. During the conversation I learned that my friend had a 1947 International pick up truck back in the yard. So we took a walk over to see the truck and even though it was basically a rusty shell it was in really good repairable condition. When we asked our friend what he was planning on doing with the old truck, he said he was planning on bringing it to the scrap yard in about a week or so. I was mortified!!! So with my love for really old cars and especially trucks, and the way my eyes lit up like I had just inherited a billion dollars Sean decided to ask how much our friend would take for the truck. He wasn't sure what to say so Sean asked if we could buy the truck for what the scrap yard would give him for it, which was about $200 buckaroos. I could have been knocked over with a feather I was so happy. This was a beautiful truck even with the rust that was on it. It had an extended bed and a running board along the sides. Which amazed me even more was that this friend had never mentioned the truck before and we never even knew he had it. Trucks this old in this great of condition or even worse condition go for thousands of dollars fixed up and restored they can cost almost $ 200,000 or way more!!! I couldn't believe we were getting it for so little not to mention that it's a dream come true. I've already told Sean that we will get the truck in good working condition. It doesn't have to be restored to original condition or even painted as long as she runs well. Heck I'd clear coat over the rust and just leave her rust colored.