After the Storm

After Passage of the Front...


I know it could have been much worse; everthing is relative. Saturday morning greeted us with sunlight filtering through the bamboo blinds, blue skies, cool-dry air. Lovely! But sooo wet!!! The Weather Channel the night before went on and on about Shreveport - something like 15 inches in some areas. We only received three inches. But it comes at a bad time for us and I've seen this movie before. The grass we had hoped to cut for hay now stands in saturated ground that would not support the hay equipment even if it (the grass) were to dry out enough to cut, and much less the pickup truck and trailer to haul the bales out of the field. The garden has sections of standing water - I usually hill up the whole field so it will drain during the winter, but this time I was lucky to get the fall cover crop tilled in and another one spread before the rains of last week made it too muddy to work. The last time we had this sort of weather foolishness, there were no strawberries planted, and I can see that happening again. But there is good news as well; the Australian Winter Peas that I spread and was unable to cover have remained so wet that they have worked their little primary roots into the mud and are spouting nicely, along with the crimson clover and sprinkling of mustard and turnips that I spread at the field margins.













Although pictures only a farmer could love, these sprouts promise to cover the field with green going into the winter and ought to pay dividends in the spring when they break down into humus. I wandered across the front of the field where we have planted a modest winter garden for us (modest, if you think two can eat 40 broccoli plants). Of course that is the problem when you start plants like these from seeds; it's hard to resist planting all of the starts - and we really only planted about half of the cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and brussel sprouts plants - and this time gave the rest away before they were too old. Yet, there are flats remaining...

These on the left are more lettuce, some parsley, some cute little violas, and white and yellow California daisies from seed collected and given to us by a CA native - yes, Loree, they are indeed spouting. The flat below is more cabbage that we will probably give away because we are out of room.












But, back to the garden...
Here's a look at the ready-to-munch lettuce and the shot below that is the cutting celery that made it through the dry summer and is now mired in the mud at the wet end of the garden. This is some hardy stuff and I would recommend it to anyone who likes celery flavor.

On the right is shot of the turnips; already thinned
for greens and about two weeks away from nice roots to cook with bacon and cane syrup (a Cajun technique). There are more pics of the garden to come later, but I wanted to post a couple of zinnia and butterfly pictures. With the relatively warm and very wet weather, the yard has a spring look to it and I meant to take a couple of pictures of the giant marigolds that are in full bud, but we will have to do with the zinnias, Mexican sunflowers and fall butterflies. Till next time...Will.

Deer Bones In The Yard

Here we have a hunk of dead deer. If you are already nauseous, just don't read this post, ok?
Poor old Dude, who doesn't get around much, apparently can smell a freshly gutted deer from a mile away. We have neighbors who hunt deer. That's just what they do. Hey - anyone who loves a venison roast should just man-up about this...because this is indeed where it comes from!
So the neighbors (and probably friends) go deer hunting. They clean the deer, and don't use the hind quarters for anything, so they toss them into the nearby brush. Dude wakes up from a nap and thinks "hey! I smell deer!"
So he goes way over to the neighbors property (its not THAT far, but it's pretty far for this old dog). And next thing you know, he had dragged a whole deer leg into the yard.
Will calls out and says 'Hey! Bring a cookie sheet!'...at first I'm thinking...oh no. He says..."we can either let it rot out here or we can roast it!" And then I'm thinking ...'uh...roast it? you mean, like...'
Of course not. He was thinking that Dude will drag it over, but we both know he won't actually EAT it. Not unless it's roasted, of course. I am guilty of roasting meat for this dog on a regular basis! ok, fine.So Will brings it into the kitchen and into the oven it goes! I must say, a venison roast smells yummy. A raw deer leg, not so much. Matter of fact, it smells pretty rank!
In the end, old Dude has three large hunks of deer to much on. I'm so glad it wasn't intended for us because, well, you know.
This morning I took the last one out of the outside fridge, but made sure to take a picture before I put it down for Dude. This probably looks very yummy if you're a dog...ok..I promise...no more blog posts about meat in the yard!

Cover-Cropping...Let's Do It Again!

Of the two of us, only Will takes the deep breath and cranks up the tractor...to mow down the very last of what we have been hanging onto from the summer garden. Well, first of all, only Will drives the tractor, but secondly, it just kills me to see things go - which is why he is the farmer of course.
I suppose if it were up to me, we'd just have a big gnarly mess of old vegetation until it dried up and eventually became compost(!) (with a bunch of weeds). That anything is left at all after August 1st is only because Will is humoring me.

Here we have the last things to go:

italian basil in it's last throes, and huge yellow cosmos as a backdrop...

goodbye to that, right? nothing like a clean slate
(pay no attention to the herb beds at the end of the field -
even Will can't mow down the celery leaf. Next comes the cover crop...

very exciting if you're into that kind of thing. Happy soil, happy plants next time. a few weeks later, and you have the mother of all cover crops!! Knee-high and dense, ready to plow under (if the weather cooperates). Lo and Behold! We actually have time to do it all again! It's mid (to late) October and - hey...two cover crops are even better than one! Out comes the tractor and down go the peas! The other evening, Will was out there walking back and forth, back and forth - with the bag of seed and his little device that spits it out when you crank the handle round and round.
He walked and walked and it got dark and he was still walking. But it was going to rain (and it did) and the seed had to be down. Didn't have time to till it in, but it ought to come up anyway. Pictures later for those of you who think cover crops are groovy.
I promise a blog post about something a little more colorful first. Like, maybe, zinnias!