Solution to high food prices?

Last Thursday while flipping through the guide on direct tv, I stumbled across a program called "Louisiana agriculture." The thirty minute program is basically a news program for farmers about, you guessed it, farming!

 I recorded tonight's show so that I wouldn't miss it. On the show tonight, one of their segments was about the rising cost of food and "food desserts."

While talking about the food desserts in urban metropolitan areas, they made mention of community, school, and small backyard gardens, and how more and more people were planting vegetable gardens. 

The show then turned to focus on the rising costs of food. They interviewed a variety of people at a local produce market in Baton Rouge. I remember one lady saying how just the other day she had purchased a small package of chicken wings for about 12 dollars and thinking to myself that sanderson farms poultry plant, or as sky and I refer to it as the "chicken death farm", is right up the road. 

While I was listening to the interviews and other topics on the program, I couldn't help but think on the topic of high food prices and came up with a solution. 

I understand that gas prices keep rising, which baffles me since Louisiana and Texas are two of the biggest manufacturing ports of oil and gas in this country. I still don't understand, completely, the dependancey on foreign oil. I do understand the greed of the oil companies and our government, but that's a topic for another time. 

So,with the cost of fuel sky rocketing out of control causing the price of food and other essential needs to go up and the "food desserts" in poor neighborhoods and metropolitan areas, the solution seems to be a no brainier.

Aside from buying only locally grown vegetables, fruits, and meat from small local or family farms, which everyone should be doing anyway, we should all be growing,and /or,raising our own food. 

I know not everyone has acrage or even large backyards, but you really don't need them for a simple private vegetable garden or even to raise a couple of hens. 

When you grow your own vegetables, the bennifits really do cancel out any downfalls. Think about it, when you grow your own produce or even raise your own meat, you know exactly what goes into the soil for the plants, where the plants came from, what fertilizers are used 

(Whether chemical or organic), what types of pest control was used, and what, if any, diseases the plants may have had. The same goes for livestock, you know what the animals are eating, if they were vaccinated, sick or healthy, where they came from, how old they were, how well they were cared for and treated, and how and in what manner they died, not to mention the money saved from growing or raising your own food. 

Now granted, you can't live solely on your own vegetables....... At first. You know, there's that whole planting and waiting for the plants to grow stage.Then you have to wait for the vegetables and fruits to start growing and ripening. A person could starve to death while waiting for the garden to grow...lol. 

So this is where buying locally grown food comes into play. While waiting on your garden to grow, only buy from the local farmers market for your produce and if your farmers market has a local farmer selling his/ or her own farm raised meats,eggs,and dairy products you're in luck, if not find a local livestock farm that sells to the public. The reason for this is that, not only are you supporting your local farmers, but the prices are usually better since they don't have high shipping costs tacked on to the price of the food, the food that you are buying is healthier for you, and it's fresher then what is normally found in the grocery stores, God only knows how long those "fresh" meats have been frozen for or if it's been sitting there on the shelf for two weeks because it didn't look bad and the stock crew didn't think it necessary to rotate the stock that morning.its also not usually genetically altered or pumped full of chemicals and steroids. The other best part about buying from local farmers is that 9 times out of 10 you are either buying directly from the farmers themselves or you can sometimes visit the farms where your food came from, which is nearly impossible to do if your produce came from another state or country. 

Basically all of this boils down to knowing where your food comes from, saving money on your food bill while eating healthier, and being (to some degree) self sufficient.

 Remember, you don't need a huge backyard or small farm to grow vegetables or raise a couple chickens. Even if you live in an apartment or condo, You may not be able to grow vegetables outside, but you can grow most vegetables such as tomatoes indoors with the help of grow lights. And unless you have some strange, unrealistic land lord most apartment complexes and condos will allow you to have plants on patios or balconies, although they may not feel the same way about you raising chickens... I'd save that for people who have houses and even a small backyard...lol.

There is NO excuse not to at least grow your own produce. 

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. 

 

 

Learn something fascinating everyday : Honey Bees

As soon as I started making my raised vegetable boxes on the farm this year, I had a new curious little garden helper, a Honey Bee. This little Honey Bee would hang around close by watching me build the boxes and plant the veggie plants. After I'd finish a box and plant the veggies in that box he would go around to every plant checking them out but never really landed on them, not even the tomato plants that had open flowers on them. When he was done buzzing happily around me and my Vegetables he would leave and show back up the very next time I went out to do more planting, repeating the same little routine and always by himself.

I welcomed the little Honey Bee's attention just like I welcome the attention from Big Ben and any other little garden helpers that may come around. In a slightly off kilter way, the Honey bees' seemingly pleased approval made me feel like I was doing everything right in the garden.

Here are a couple of interesting facts that I have learned about the Honey Bee over the years.

How can you tell when your Honey bees are Happy?

Well according to some Bee Keepers, When the Honey Bees are happy they emanate a Lemon like scent throughout the hive and within close proximity to the hive. If the Bees are unhappy or angry they emanate a Banana like scent which aids as a warning before an attack on predators.

How is Honey classified?

Honey is classified by the flowers that the Bees pollinate most. If the honey at your local grocer is labeled clover honey, then the bees that made that honey primarily pollinated clover fields.
There are other types of Honey as well, like orange and apple blossom Honey where the bees primarily pollinated an orchard of either Orange or Apple trees. There is also what they call wildflower Honey which comes from the bees having a large array of wild flowers to pollinate from where one flower is not more prevalent than the others.

Big Ben the Barn kitty

I've mentioned Big Ben on the blog before. He does not belong to us but to a neighbor down the road. this past week or so Big Ben has been hanging around the farm watching us garden, walking through the garden beds once I've finished planting them, getting his undivided affection, and even rolling around in the garden beds on newly planted cucumbers. Recently we've noticed that he had injured his back leg. The sore on that leg looks as though a small dog or other smallish animal had grabbed his leg. It's healing nicely though and it doesn't seem to slow him down one bit. I seem to have this feeling though that he is staying under our house pretty much day and night as he feels safe there. With the last couple days being cold I'm pretty sure he stayed at his house. We have come to love Big Ben and I do worry about him daily. I've also learned that Big Ben is very self sufficient for a cat. I always feel bad when I forget to bring him some food. However, I kind of stopped feeling bad since he has proven to be a very skilled hunter, even for a cat.

We had gone out to the farm last weekend to do some gardening and while walking to the garden beds I noticed a very dead half eaten mouse in my path. I immediately knew it had been Big Ben. I didn't think too much of it even though I felt bad for the mouse. Later that day big Ben made his usual appearance and when he tired of his affections and got a little hungry he went off and caught a sparrow to eat. This didn't sit well with me as I feed birds and put up nest boxes for them as well.

The next day we go back out to the farm and as soon as I pulled up I could tell Big Ben had caught something. I get out and walk over to him and see that he had caught yet another medium sized mouse. He dropped the mouse and it was then I realized he hadn't yet killed it, but had only severely wounded it. Before I could walk away he grabbed the mouse again and this time finished it off right as Sky had walked up. I felt bad for that mouse too but I realized that Big Ben was doing us a service by keeping them out of the house.

As sky and I walked away to begin gardening we looked back at Big Ben just in time to see him throw his prized kill high up into the air and leap after it to catch it. In some weird way it was almost comical to watch as the now dead mouse seemed to be attached to an unseen string being pulled up by an unseen hand.

Like I said before we really do love Big Ben. I  may not agree with him hunting birds, which I've only caught him doing once, but he's more than welcome to all the mice he wants. Don't get me wrong I actually love mice, but I don't love mice in my house,being we've had a mouse problem before and these two mice Big Ben has caught seemed to be headed toward the house I don't mind one little bit.

A simpler life

Hey guys and gals, 

I know I've been away from the blog for about a week or so now. I can't say that I've been real busy, more like preoccupied. 

My veggie boxes are done for now, well at least until we get a little warmer weather here to stay. I have a total of five raised beds planted and completely covered with breathable medium grade plant tarps. I still have one last raised bed to plant. So far I've managed to plant tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, strawberries, squash, onions, and a variety of herbs. I hope to be able to plant my corn, potatoes, and watermelon soon. Just can't wait to get them in the ground and growing. 

Since I've been away from the blog, I have stumbled across an awesome little website that just sent happy little tendrils of excitement down my spine. 

The website is www.lehmans.com.

They cater more to the Amish way of living and although I'm not particularly religious myself, I do really admire the way the Amish live. 

The Amish are very simple and though many may think them to be behind the times, they actually have a way of life that has been long forgotten by modern society. With those values and old ways of doing diminishing rapidly our society is slowly crumbling. 

Sean may have kind of thought my cheese had slid way off my cracker this time, but I think he could relate and seemed to even encourage me.

I went and purchased from this website an old time wash board, a gift basket of old school laundry products for the wash board, two beautiful oil lamps, an old style pitcher, a honey pot, broomcorn seed, dragon carrot seeds, an apple peeler and corer, and an old fashion bushel basket. I wanted to get the butter churn aswell and almost did but decided to wait being that I don't have the faintest idea how to make my own butter.... Nor do I have milking cows, or any cows or even goats for that matter. 

Lehmans had everything from wood burning and duel fuel antique replica stoves and refrigerators to farming equipment. Anything you could imagine for a more simpler life they had, even a compost toilet!!!

Yes, I even considered getting a composit toilet briefly..... Until I thought about being anywhere in the vicinity  of the bathroom after Sean had been in there. Sorry to say that alone changed my mind really quick:) 

I must admit though that I do really get into the old ways of living and eventhough I can't love without my cell phone or my computer, I really do wish at times that we could all just go back to the days of horse drawn carriages and the old ways of living. I myself am sometimes guilty of always trying to find an easier way of doing things, but I usually never shy away from hard work especially when it comes to farming and gardening.

Gardening for small backyards

You don't need a large backyard to have a garden. Here in south Louisiana many people have small vegetable and herb gardens. Growing up it seemed everyone had large backyards and many had gardens of some type. As I see more and more Subdivisions going up I've noticed that the new homes are missing one crucial element that make a home a home and that's a backyard. Some of these new nice subdivisions have beautiful houses but the backyards seem to be almost non-existent with barely enough room to barbeque and enjoy the outdoors, and it's pretty sad. I'm not sure why contactors and architects are overlooking the backyard now a days, I guess they've forgotten what it's like to sit outside on an old swing, or barbeque and entertain family and friends on those hot summer southern nights. The nights we use to look forward too growing up as kids. None the less if you have one of these small backyards and want to be able to plant your own garden it's still really easy to do. Everyone by now knows I love raised beds for my gardens, but they're great for small backyards too. If you're wanting to try the raised beds in a small backyard make the beds smaller somewhere in the vicinity of a 4x4 square bed or smaller. If you don't have enough room for a square bed depending on the layout of your yard a rectangular bed works well too and you can make it as narrow as you need too. If you don't care to do the raised beds and your yard is fenced ( which now a days most are) you can plant your veggies and herbs about a foot or two away from the fence. Fencing in your small garden works really well for plants such as cucumber, melons, grapes, squash, and merllitons. If you have a chain link fence it works a little better with these type plants because when they start to vine out all you have to do is thread the vines through the chain link. If you don't have chain link and have a wooden fence you can add pegs to the fence boards using either wooden dolls or nails long enough and close enough for the vines to climb upwards helping to keep the fruits or veggies off the ground.
When not planting in a raised bed it is always a good idea to have some type of border around your plants to protect them from the lawn mower and that crazy weed whacker. When planting herbs in your yard, planting them closer to the house is usually a great idea. You can plant rosemary on all four corners of your house as it makes a nice addition to any landscape and smells great when it rains.

The gardens are coming along

I've actually gotten all four boxes for this section built and planted. The third box pictured here is mostly herbs of various kinds including rosemary,lavender,chocolate mint,and cilantro. In the fourth box in this set which is not pictured yet( forgot to take a pic yesterday) I've planted all of skylar's strawberries. A few of the strawberry plants already had berries started. I have even managed to plant the second bundle of onions.

Being that the temps will be in the thirties tonight and again tomorrow night I will be covering the strawberries later today to protect the plant and the berries from the cold. Strawberries, which are cold hardy, can withstand temps as low as 22 degrees when dormant. However, when the strawberry plants have new leaves,buds, and even berries anything around the low 30's can set the plant back into a dormant state causing the loss of the berries or even the entire plant. 

I have also started on my second 4 set of raised beds. Meaning I built the box and threw in two bags of compost. I seem to need more veggies for the garden so in these next 4 boxes I will plant broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, more squash, more bellpeppers, and perhaps maybe even some garlic. I'm saving my seed crops for last and each seed crop will have its own box. The seed crops so far include corn, white potatoes, and water melon so far. 

The new veggie and herb garden

I had a great day for planting yesterday the box on the right has tomatoes on the back row, bellpeppers on the row in front of the tomatoes, and the rest of the right box is sweet onions. I had never attempted to plant onions before and really didn't know how, but I got two bundles of onions anyway not knowing you had to seperate every single onion and plant it. The sweet onions in the right box is only one of the bundles I had bought. The box on the left is the herb box. The herb box has pineapple sage in the back row, cinnamon basil on the row in front of that along with lemon thyme,oregano, there's a  one Rosemary in the corner a sweet basil and some squash right in front. I still have some herbs that I wasn't able to plant today, I didn't have anymore room. Tomorrow I will build a few more boxes and get a few more bags of compost. I may actually end up with about two boxes for herbs. I will also be building a box just for watermelon, one for corn which is going to be huge, one for potatoes,and a small one just for the rest of those onions I bought. I like putting all of my veggies and herbs in boxes because it's easier for me to plant. The ground at the farm is pretty hard and most of it is clay. Being we don't have a tractor and only a hand tiller, right now it's my best option. As I get the next boxes built and more things planted I will post pictures and let all of my wonderful readers know what I've planted. I know I seem to have a ton of tomato plants and onions right now and not much else and still I know I will need way more of everything in order to get the amount of crops I'm hopeing for. 

Pruning The Orchard

 We finally had some decent weather this weekend so I started both days out in the Garden. Yesterday I had planted my two Anna apple trees in pots since they were the two bare root trees I bought on Thursday. Lucky for me Sean has a stock pile of good garden soil and extra large planting pots. Not sure why he has a stock pile of the pots and soil as he didn't have a garden of any kind until he met me, but I'm thankful he did. So today, since the weather was really nice and the temperature tonight was going to be in the 50's, I decided to prune all the trees and my rose bushes; or as I like to say they all got their "winter hair cuts." Basically, when I trim my trees and roses, I take off as little as possible. Anything that is dry or dead gets clipped off. When I do my fruit trees I always clip off the old fruit stems. Pruning your plants, trees, and bushes helps promote healthy and faster growth , it also helps them to bush or branch out so that they become fuller. When a plant or tree has a dead branch, for example, the plant or tree still uses some of it's energy on trying to get that limb or branch to grow. The energy that the plant is using to do this with can be put to better use somewhere else, like producing flowers, fruit, new growth, or leaves.

Gardening tips for the environmentally conscious

Here's some good ideas for gardening while recycling. I personally like to use raised garden beds for my herbs and some veggies. There's two reasons for this, the first being that I'm ADD and tend to be absent minded, so when I use the raised beds I can remember what plants are in which bed. 2) it helps with keeping critters out (to some small degree) and with weeding. It also helps when I go to cut the grass I don't have to worry about accidently running over the plants.

 The best way to build a raise bed is to use either old wooden pallets or recycled lumber either from a fence that's being replaced or an old dresser that someone is throwing out. A couple years ago I didn't have enough lumber for the size boxes I was building so in addition to the lumber I had, I used a couple of large logs that were left over from when we cleared some property that I had lived on previously. Old tree logs work well too and help give your garden that old rustic look and they tend not to rot as fast depending on the size log. When the log does eventually rot it helps make the soil a little more fertile. 

Depending on how big you want your boxes to be will depend on how much wood you'll need, obviously. You can make these boxes taller to keep the rabbits out if the bunnies tend to be a problem or for asstetics and better drainage depending on what you're planting. 

Another good material to use in the garden is plastic. Everyone has plastic groceries bags or if you're a person who feeds the birds plastic seed bags. You can cut the bags down one side, from top to bottom so they open up and lay flat. Once that's done you can place them in any garden bed, I use these for my flower beds, then make a hole in each one so that your plant can be easily planted in the ground with the plastic around the base of the plant . Then all you need to do is add your dirt and mulch on top and it helps keep the weeds out of your beds. The thicker the plastic bag the better success you'll have with this technique. The other thing the plastic will do is hold moisture so that even in the middle of summer you won't have to water as much and won't have to worry about being in the garden weeding for hours. It also repurposes the plastic bags so they're not sitting in a landfill somewhere for years to come. 

Use recycled materials you have at home whenever possible in your garden, whether it's paper, plastic, or wood. This way you're not only helping yourself with cost and time you're also helping out the environment :) 

Happy gardening y'all 

The awesome Honey Bee

I believe that Albert Einstein once said " If the Honey bee was to ever disappear, within 4 years the human race would cease to exist."  and he was right. We need the Honey Bees to pollinate the trees, flowers, vegetable plants, herb gardens, even the grass that feed our cattle, pigs, chickens, and horses. Sadly those beautiful Honey Bees are dying and their numbers are dwindling. Bee keepers and bee farmers will tell you that they've seen whole colonies of  bees wiped-out unexpectedly and without explanation. In regards to some of the commercial Bee farmers who drive whole hives to different parts of the country, it is my belief that some of their bees suffer from a degree of stress due to being shipped and from pollenating areas that those particular honey bees are not natives of. What about our "local" Honey bees? well here's the problem with our local bees, as well as commercial bees, Pesticides. Pesticides are everywhere, we use them in and around our homes, some commercial farmers use them on their crops, we in Louisiana even have local agencies that come out and spray pesticides for mosquitos. We all know that pesticides are harmful not only to us but to the environment, but no one really stops and thinks what would happen if honey bees disappeared because of pesticides. One of the things I'd like to do on my farm at some point is have a Bee keeper come out and place a couple of honey bee colonies on the farm. I have a couple reasons for this, 1) so that the Bees can help pollinate my fruits and veggies,  2) to help  the colonies grow bigger and produce more colonies, 3) because I love watching the Honey bees work, 4) hopefully the bee keeper will allow us to keep some of the honey the Bees produce. Believe it or not Honey from Local bees have some amazing health benefits. If you must use pesticides, please be mindful of our sweet amazing little honey bees and only use natural pesticides. A natural pesticides would be using Lady bugs to keep aphids off your herbs and plants, or burn fresh lavender to keep mosquitos away. Believe it or not the Lavender works way better than citronella on those little blood suckers.
In short, Honey bees are our life blood and without them we'd cease to exist.

citrus trees and hard freezes

I have found that most gardeners don't know this simple trick to protecting their fruit trees. When you know a hard freeze is expected make sure to soak your citrus trees from top to bottom making sure the entire tree (leaves and all) are completely drenched right before the  freeze hits. I know it sounds kind of silly but when the water on the trees freeze it actually forms a protective layer of ice on the tree which then acts as an insulator and keeps the tree from freezing. If the hard freeze isn't expected to last more than a few hours any fruit on the tree will be protected as well. However, if the freeze lasts longer than 8 hours you may want to pick the ripened fruit as the cold will cause the fruit to become somewhat mealy in oranges or turn to a mealy soft mush in the case of lemons. This trick also works on most other trees.