Now Appearing in Random Order..

Saturday's Happenings....

 







Rooster Cogburn

 OK, I posted his picture just because.  Not much to say other than, ain't he cute!

Remember earlier this season we used water troughs to plant lettuce, up off the ground.  Well, I have to say, I don't think they are doing all that great, compared to lettuce I've previously grown in the ground.  While working and not having to bend over is REALLY nice, the growth of the lettuce is much slower.  It's even planted in great from the bag soil!  I haven't yet been able to even take a cutting for the dinner table.  I don't have a picture of the spinach, but they came up and stopped growing altogether.  So far, thumbs down!

We had some new friends over, including the Dragon Lady who worked all day, and they wanted to cook dinner in our outdoor pizza oven.  I should have taken a photo of the marinated venison and veggies.  It was awesome!  Slow cooked for several hours.  The oven performed magically.  Now, we're just waiting on some cooler and drier weather to stick around, so we can finally finish/decorate the outside.

 

Our new friends have access to mulch and wood.  These three piles are all oak.  It's from the cuttings by a local power company, and they drop it off at The Compound for us.  Did I mention FOR FREE!  First of all, yeah, we no longer have to run to the local landfill.  Second, it's actually chopped up much finer than the product at the landfill and third, we don't get oak logs for the fire pit or stone oven from the landfill.  This is definitely a win win.  Now it just needs to be hauled to the garden.  I'm not complaining.  The Moose and Spud figured out a way to make our lives easier.  They made a larger door opening on the side of the garden.  Now we load up, and drive a trailer load into the garden.  Nice..

Berta and Miss Corrie
 

I mentioned last week that these two are now best buddies.  Rarely do you see one and not the other close by.  We stuck around until late Saturday, and spied on the Cotton Club and Hooligans with a flashlight before we left.  These two girls even sleep next to each other at night!  I mean, right next to each other, and no one else is on either side of these two.  We're still trying to figure out how Pennie of the Hooligan's got up on top of the roof of their shelter.  It's up at least 6' high!

It was an easier weekend for us, more socializing than anything.  I think we all needed the break.  Besides the weather was wonderful, cool breeze, low humidity.  We're finally heading in to the really nice time of year to live in Florida.  Now, if I could just find a way to get some apples from Sista's tree..

Life at The Compound

Some times pictures speak volumes, here are some from this past Saturday.  With help from Spud, we got the mulch off loaded.

Here are the Hooligan's, all snuggled up taking a break from all their shenanigans!

I do believe Miss Corrie is Lucy's daughter.  What do you think? 

 

Corrie's comb flops over like Lucy's, and she's equally calm and easy to pick up.  She's just got her Daddy's coloring. 

 

Here are just some other random photos.

 

 

Have a good week everyone!



Rubber Boot Weekend

The Compound is completely soaked!  Even the garden which has mulch on it is like a giant sponge.  I was afraid my rubber boots would get sucked in to the wet muck!  It was definitely a rubber boot weekend.  We would not have gotten anything done without them. 

The new Hooligans made the trek to The Compound and the new brooder pen.  They took to the new space like a duck to water.  They scratched up a storm of wood chips!  And noisy!  You could hear them from almost anywhere on property.

 

What was even cuter was when the Cotton Club actually noticed them in the brooder.  It’s hard to explain, but they came back in to the run area to eat some veggie treats and as soon as one of them noticed the chicks, they sent out a strange call, then another one made the same call, and so on until the entire group was making the same noise and all looking up at the three new Hooligans.  Its times like this, I wish I had my camera going.

 

 

We popped back out on Sunday just to see how they did overnight and to see if we needed to make any adjustments to their new environment, but so far so good.

                                                              

We were able to get some more plants into the garden, even though it was really wet.  Tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts and eggplant.

The Moose cleared another area of weed mess, and planted field corn to see how it would do.  Remember a previous post when I mentioned how embarrassing the garden had gotten by way of weeds.  Well, here’s a picture of the remaining area still to be cleaned up and then a picture of the area the Moose just finished.  Total difference!

He added compost and lime. We have a PH problem, and need to add lime to help correct it.  We will be adding more mulch on top to continue with the Back to Eden principals.  We just needed a clean slate to start with again.  Besides, much of last years mulch has already composted.

I'll sign off for now, with a few photos of Corrie and the Cotton Club from this weekend.  As you'll see, they are all doing much better.

 

Garden Update - September

The garden had been put on the back burner for a couple of months due to some unforeseen issues.  So I know we’re behind and will not be able to plant anything that would not harvest in the next 90 days or so.  We had our first freeze last year, just before Thanksgiving. 

Last weekend the Moose put up a water gutter for me to house small items, like salad greens.  They were up in 3 days.  This helps so I don't have to bend over as much for smaller items like greens.

 

He put up three more gutters for me this past weekend, and shaded another area too.  I was able to plant, peas, spinach, radishes, lettuce, herbs, beans, squash and carrots.  I also transplanted tomatoes and pepper plants. 

I still have more tomato, cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts and cauliflower to transplant, but that’s for the upcoming weekend project.  I have heirloom watermelon that sprouted (see the bottom of this photo) from seeds that came along with the chicken coop compost and are well on their way.  That was the easiest bit of gardening I’ve had to do..

Now we wait and see. 

I have some asparagus growing, has anybody worked with it before?  What do I need to know?

Proof of Life

It was a very busy Saturday at The Compound, when isn’t it really?!   Started out pretty typical, taking care of the chickens, and mowing part of the acreage.  We’ve decided to try and divide the mowing up in to sections, a little each weekend, that way it’s not too much at one time.  We also worked on cleaning up the garden, pulling weeds and spreading out the mounds of chicken compost we pulled out a few weeks back.  There should be loads of nutrients to pass into our garden.

 

We were surprised and happy to find some already growing watermelon plants.  Since the Hooligans were regularly fed watermelon, I guess it was only natural to find some new growth in their compost.  We've left them undisturbed.

 

 

 

We placed down cardboard in some of the really weed ridden areas, and put mulch on top to help kill them off.  The cardboard will decompose over time, and we should see a reduction in weeds.  This picture looks great, but it basically looked like a hay field, but it was covered in weeds.  Maybe I'll get over my embarrassment and take a photo or two of the remaining areas that need to be done, just so you can see how bad it actually got.  We need more mulch again.  Not looking forward to that work.

 

 

The Moose also helped me by setting up some additional shade cloth so I can grow some of the more delicate plants like lettuce and peas out of the direct sun.  They just don’t do well at The Compound in direct light.  We also set up some water gutters along the walls, so I can plant lettuce, herbs, etc., avoid weeds, and make it one less thing we need to bend over to harvest.  I’m not a spring chicken anymore!  We got this idea from a preppers meeting we had a few months ago.

During the clean-up of the garden the Moose discovered two of these squishy eggs!  Yuk!  They were snake eggs.  I’m wondering how big the snake was to lay these eggs.  They seemed to be about the size of a robin’s egg. 

 

 

 

Finally, while the Moose was rearranging the pond covering, he found this Tilapia.  Proof of Life!  We have some good sized fish in this pond!  There are also plenty of small frys and fingerlings.  OK, not sure on the spelling, but a baby Tilapia fish is called a fry, to make that plural are they frys, or fries?

 

We left exhausted, and actually disappointed we couldn't get more done.  I'm behind in planting the garden, but thankfully I have some seedlings almost ready to go.  There always seems to be one reason or another for not getting the garden planted in time.    Say a prayer that we have warmer weather, longer than the past two years, so we can actually harvest the veggies we plant.

Knock on Wood - Robber Bees

I'm beginning to wonder if we're dealing with our own "7 plagues" out at The Compound.  The water hasn't turned blood red, grasshoppers have not taken over (knock on wood), but we've had our share of situations, that I frankly am tired of dealing with.

Without our knowledge, we hosted a standing room only party in our pond for the area storks and egrets.  They cleaned out our Tilapia.  The Moose subsequently had to create a netting roof over the top.  So far so good on that account.  We have plenty of fish. (knock on wood)

Of course a few weeks ago we lost the entire group of Hooligans.  A predator chewed through the roof and killed them all.  We spent three weekends putting on a metal roof.  That's done, and so far no other attempts on the new flocks lives have been made. (knock on wood)

Just when we hope things will start going our way, we discovered our hive of bees, empty.  It appears they were robbed.  Dead bee bodies everywhere, and a chaotic swarm of bees, signs of a robbery in progress.  By this time it was too late.  We opened up the hive, no workers, very little brood, and no queen. They put up a good fight, but there just weren't enough of them to hold off the masses.

It's back to square one, and another delay in realizing our sweet dreams of honey.  We'll likely have to wait until next spring to get another colony.  It seems to be one thing after another and I'm just plain tired.  I'm usually the optimistic type, but right now the glass is half empty.

Heirloom Vegetables and Garden Results

The spring garden is officially over, caput, finito.   We’ve used the Back to Eden principals of gardening, which is basically laying down a thick layer of mulch, 4-6” and allow it to compost as you go.  Planting this first time was different than what was shown, but in time should become easier.

It definitely made walking around easier, no more mud bogs to suck off your rubber boots, and weeding was much easier; in the beginning.  Now they are creeping in, like most of the vegetation at The Compound with the recent rains.  We will need to either add cardboard or layers of newspaper then more mulch in the really bad areas.  Otherwise, I just need to spend a considerable amount of time pulling weeds to get things back in order.  I’ve just been too busy lately with other projects to really devote the time needed.

I really enjoyed the heirloom vegies the best.  They have a much fresher taste than the cheap seeds; they also germinated at a better rate.  Here’s a list of what we grew;

·         Tomatoes – cherry, Brandywine and Roma.  All heirloom, all germinated well, and the product was good. 

·         Cucumbers – heirloom, grew fast and provided great tasting produce

·         Lettuce – mescaline mix and romaine, both heirlooms.  Only issue was the heat, as soon as it got too hot the romaine bolted.

·         Carrots – not very good this time.  They never really grew.  They look like squashed wine corks.  I’m going to leave them alone and see what happens.

·         Strawberries – we’ve had these for 2 years now, and this year’s production was much better than last year, except when the critters beat me to them.

·         Squash – butternut, pumpkin and zucchini.  We got quite a few butternut, and only a couple of the zucchini, and 1 pumpkin.  I think it was too hot for them.  Heirloom varieties

·         Beans – bush and pole.  I will only plant pole beans.  Saves the back from bending over, and they were plentiful!  They tasted just as good to me as the bush beans.  Heirloom varieties.

·         Peppers – terrible, they grew, but no peppers.  Not sure what happened here. 

·         Watermelon and cantaloupe – heirloom varieties, the watermelon are huge, and taste awesome.  The cantaloupe, only a few grew, tasted delish, but unfortunately the bugs really liked them too.

·         Sweet corn – 3rd try for us, and again, no real success. 

·         Broccoli, cabbage – heirloom varieties.  Germinated great, but I think it was just too hot.  I was really experimenting this season, and it’s really not worth the effort.

We did actually get quite a bit of produce out of the garden, and were able to share some with family and friends.  I would have liked to have more, so I could do more canning, preserves, etc.  Maybe next season.

Other than the weeds, and the heat, it was bugs, bugs, more bugs and raccoons.   We'll get the weeds back in order, and will investigate some options for the bugs.  Raccoons will likely never end.  We’re going to try and put up some more shade screen, similar to what we have over our strawberry pyramid, to help keep the direct hot sun off of the plants.  I don’t think the books or articles about gardening really take in to account the type of direct sun we get here in central Florida.  I’ll keep you posted as I get ready to plant starter seeds in July for the Fall planting season.

Garden Update and Tilapia Release

Just a quick update on the garden.

The tomato plants are about done.  They are dying back.  I have a decision to make;  leave the green tomatoes to ripen, and risk the raccoons getting them, or pick them green and ripen off the vine at home.  I'd like to make some tomato sauce, but haven't had enough at any one given time thanks to the furry bandits.  My cherry tomato plants, planted later, are just coming in, and boy are they good!


I am getting more cucumbers each visit to the garden.  Between the Moose and I we can not eat them fast enough.  I'm gathering recipes for making dill pickles.  I like my dill pickles a little on the tangy/spicy side.  Any recipes you'd be willing to share?  I will be trying one my Great Aunt Marceille in Wisconsin just gave me, but trust me, I have enough cucumbers that I can make more than one recipe to find my favorite. 








The watermelon, cantaloupe, butternut squash and pumpkins are also doing great.  They just keep expanding out, and it's hard now to walk around the vines without stepping on any. 

Lettuce is done and started to bolt.  Temperatures are just too hot now.   I'm still getting green beans from my run of pole beans.  I pick enough for 2 meals for us, 2 times a week.  I continue to freeze them, as we can't eat enough, fast enough of the veggies we get each week, and I'll look forward to the beans later this fall.






We dropped the new 200 Tilapia into the pond this week.  This time, we received a variety of sizes, some as large as 3-4" in length.  Hopefully, we'll be able to harvest some in 4-6 months from now.  Better us, than the storks and egrets!




At this point, there are no major projects on the list for this weekend.  But there is still a couple more days..  I'm sure we'll come up with something!

Busy Little Bees!

First, we didn’t get as much rain as we had hoped, maybe a total of a ½ to 1”.  I’ll take what we can get, but when we were watching the radar, it seemed like we got hammered.  It did save me the time of watering the garden, and the mushrooms have started popping up all throughout the garden, which is a sign the mulch is composting as it should.

I picked another basket full of veggies.  Nothing better than home grown!  We also have tiny watermelons and cantaloupe on the vine.  I planted some more lettuce, squash, melons and strawberry popcorn.  We’ll see how they do, now that we are moving into the hot summer months.

We saddled up another hen this past week; Apple Brown “Betty”.  She was looking very rough, with a patch of red skin showing.  The other hens we took care of a few weeks back, are finally growing some feathers back.

The Hooligan’s Class of 2012 are really growing, and it seems all in the legs.  They are so excited to see the Moose and I.  Of course we bring them cold watermelon and red grapes!  Spoiled!

Finally, the bees are amazing!  We just started them this past Wednesday afternoon, and by Saturday morning, they have almost one full bar of comb built.  I forgot my camera, and didn’t want to bother them again later, so sorry, no pictures of this little miracle.  Who would have thought they’d take less than 2 days?  Busy little bees!  I did get this simple video. 

I spent some time watching them, come and go.  When they leave they actually circle around the hive a couple of times, and then head off in a random direction.  Random for me, but I’m sure they knew where they were going.  The guard bees do come out and see what you’re up to.  I am still a bit intimidated around them, especially when you hear the loud buzzing from the hive, or one circling around your head! 

I gave them a small container with watered down honey on Wed., just to get them started.  It was completely dry!  Not even sticky.  I gave them some more, but will let them source their own pollen and nectar for honey making in the future.  I need to move the wall divider back to the end of the hive, this week, and then take a look and see if the Queen is laying eggs, and if so, how well she's doing.  If not, or poorly, then a new Queen needs to be ordered.

Have a good week!  Thanks for following along!

Finally a Green Thumb!

After some much needed, deep rooted rain this past week or so, I feel like our garden is finally reaching its potential.  Of course, if we could keep the raccoons from their open air buffet, we’d have a bigger return.

Up until recently the garden seemed very anemic.  Unless I added Miracle Grow, leaves turned yellow, and were thin.  Now take a look!  The only other thing I did differently was taking the wood chip bedding from the chicks and applying it at the base of my tomatoes.  I know, they say make sure it composts first, but it doesn't look like it hurt anything, and it didn't go directly at the roots of the plants, it had to work its way down through the mulch.  Maybe it finally made it to the root system?

 I may yet end up with enough tomatoes to actually try my hand at canning them.

Back to Eden - Garden Update

We began the Back to Eden gardening adventure on October 29, 2011.  Here's what we've experienced so far.

The number and amount of weeds is drastically reduced.  However we have dollar weed, and another grass/weed that I can not get control of.  No matter how much mulch I place on top.  It is recommended 6".  We are at least that if not more, but still they will not abate.  And no matter how often I pull them out, they just return, and more.  I'm convinced for each one I pull, three more show up.

There are no more mud problems. Although we haven't had much rain to speak of the past several months, and we're under "red flag" warnings, but when it does, it is easy to maneuver around.  The mud was so bad it would capture your boots and pull them right off!

There are definitely more spiders.  I wonder if this is because of the mulch itself, or that I can now pick them out because of the mulch.  They haven't bothered me yet, and I know they eat some garden pests, so they will stay right where they are at for the time being.  Like I have anything to do with it.

At this stage, our garden is a bit anemic.  My plants are not abundantly green, or bushy.  I have had success growing beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini at this point, however they are not the size plants I would like to see.  Our soil is extremely acidic, and before we started the BtoE program, we never got a handle on that problem.  There doesn't seem to be enough lime on the planet to help correct this issue.  We cheated a bit as well, and have tried to use up the Miracle Grow we had in inventory to help the plants along.   It helps for about a week, and then the plants yellow up and thin out.  The purpose of the program was to help eliminate the need for chemicals to make your garden prosper. The jury is still out, we'll keep going as it may take a year or two to get the kind of results we really want.

We are having good success with romaine and spring mix lettuce.  Really no problems here.  See the photo, notice the friendly dollar weed?

We're also getting a good return on the pole beans.  We have to pick the tomatoes early, otherwise the raccoons (we have confirmed they are our problem) pick them off the vine when ripe, take a bite and leave them on the ground, as they pursue their next victim.  But I do go home with a small basket of fresh veggies for the Moose and I.

The butternut squash we planted are also taking off.  At this point, it looks like the watermelon, cantaloupe and pumpkin will do fine too.

Other than that, we'll keep you posted on the BtoE program results.  In the meantime, we had a whirling dervish in the corn.  A twisted up, broken off mess!  That ends corn for the season. It wasn't doing that great anyway, but it's sad to see it happen after all the energy needed to work a garden.

The pond level is seriously down, we really need rain.  The water used to cover the bucket with an inch or two over the top.  Palm fronds are in the pond to help create a shady area for the tilapia, just in case you were wondering.

One final note;  here are some photos of the Hooligans Class of 2012.  They are now three weeks old, and a very friendly group.  Still to be named, except for one who is Elmer.  He had a case of pasty butt.  Can you figure out why he's called Elmer?  The Moose came up with that one, and it stuck. (no pun intended)

Off to our daughters graduation in Gainesville!  Have a great weekend and thanks for following along!

You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato

Did I get you signing that song?  If you did, you're welcome!  If you didn't then you're just a whippersnapper.  Like my choice of words lately?!

Anywho, my Back to Eden garden is looking excellent.  Hardly any weeds; except a couple of nuisances like dollar weed.  I can't seem to get a handle on them.  I think they'd grow on a rock if they didn't have any other choice. Any ideas? 

We'll have way more tomatoes than we need this season.  Everywhere I look there's the making of more and more tomatoes.   I did plan it this way on purpose, as I want to learn how to can this season, and what better to practice with than tomatoes.  (If I have too much, guess what the family gets for Christmas this year!)  I also want to harvest the seeds from these heirloom varieties;

Beefsteak, Brandywine, Yellow Pear and Speckled Roman

Otherwise, we have the start of peas, green beans, cucumbers and lettuce.  Also coming up are watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkin, corn, carrots, onions, radishes, and Swiss chard.  Some of these are doing better than others.  It may be a combination of soil conditions as we've only just applied the Back to Eden principals and the mulch has not composted enough yet, or we planted some of the varieties too early.  It wasn't cold, they just prefer it warmer.  I experimented with some of the typical cool season crops like cabbage, and they are not doing very well.  They are typically grown here during the cooler fall months.  I may need to stick with that plan.

We may experiment in the next few months with putting up shade cloth over parts of the garden to see if the plants fair better.  Our strawberries did much better last summer after we put up the shade cloth.  Otherwise we were losing plants every week, and not from lack of water.  It was actual burn out. 

I'm very happy with the results in the garden to this point.  We'll see come harvest time how things look and taste.  Happy Gardening!

The Compound in the Back to Eden Newsletter

The Compound was included in the quarterly newsletter distributed by the Back to Eden folks.  Here's a link to view the newsletter;

Back to Eden Monthly Newsletter

For those of you who haven't yet viewed the video;

Back to Eden Film

You can view it in sections, or all at one time. Or if you like, buy a copy to help support their efforts.  Dana Richardson and Sarah Zentz, the Directors did an amazing job putting this together and of course, who doesn't like Paul Gautschi. 

Thank you BtoE for including us!

Hogs Going Wild!

Let me start first, by saying THANKS to those of you who follow this crazy blog!  I appreciate the comments, and welcome the feedback.

It's official.  We have hogs!  Take a look at the mess they created in our yard over the past couple of days.

There were hundreds of holes, in various locations of the yard, some extremely deep.  Yes, they even got close to the hog pen Padre and the Moose built.  We took the time to fill the holes in otherwise, either us, Miss Izzy or the Hooligans had a potential to really hurt themselves.  Do you remember the scene in Pretty Women? (O.K. I know there are guys out there that may have not watched this chick flick, but ask your wife or daughter, they'll confirm) Where they go to the Polo match, and have to fill in the divots.  That was my life for a couple of hours, minus the nice dress and shoes, and plus a shovel and trailer load of dirt!

The Moose spent the better part of the late morning mowing the picker forest. 

I spent my time planting pepper plants, some additional pear tomatoes, lettuce, and beans.  I'm trying to add a little at a time, so I have a continuous supply of fresh veggies for weeks on end.

Last week the Moose and Miss Izzy cleared out a couple of rat nests that were located under the storage container in the chicken run.  Let me just say GROSS!  In the process, he had to fill in what they removed for their nests, and it left the storage container unlevel, so the doors did not shut properly.  The Moose noticed it earlier in the week, when he came out to feed and care for the Hooligans.  He left the doors open, so I could see what they created in our absence, as he knew I'd get a kick out of what they did.

And Lucy has some splaining to do!  I guess we had some bugs on the windshield.

We also had to clean up the yard, from the quick storm that came through earlier in the week.  Plenty of kindling.

We left feeling like things have been put back in order.  Although the destruction from the hogs took a toll on our plans for the day, we did pretty good crossing things off of our "to do" list.   There's always another Saturday!