Late Summer & Garden Update

Pic: Molly the Jersey Giant and me.
Pic taken with computer camera. I ♥ PhotoBooth.

It's August in South Central Texas. You can tell by watching all the two-leggeds running from air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned buildings. Rarely will you see open car windows on the roads these days, and the only time you'll find people walking recreationally outdoors is in the early morning or early evening hours.

Here on the farm, we have extra wading pools set up for the dogs & the waterfowl, and extra shade structures in place. We've also misting hoses set in strategic areas, where the breeze blows the cooling mist further into the shady areas. All the farm critters congregate and grudgingly tolerate each other in these cooling stations. No one wants to get shoved out into the heat.

August is also a tough time for vegetable gardens - the intensity of the sun & heat will put vegetables into a panic, where they do all they can to conserve resources and stay alive.  One clear winner in the Summer Tomato Sweepstakes this year has been the "wild" compost tomato we found and transplanted to a raised bed, just to see how it would do. It has consistently (and profusely!) fruited all Summer long. Seed will be saved and replanted next year. The plant itself is so humongous it completely took over a 4'x4' raised bed. The other tomatoes that were planted have been subsumed by this beast. Poor babies.

Other tomatoes: The yellow pear has done well. The paste San Marzano was slow to start, and is slowly but steadily fruiting. May try Romas instead next year, see if they're a bit more prolific, or if slow/steady is just the way of pastes. The Dona F1 and the Costoluto Genovese paste fruited little to not at all. Matt's Cherry has almost current-sized fruits, and are too much of a pain to harvest. The chickens get those. The "Dirty Girl" (Campari-like) tomatoes we grew from saved seed didn't turn out so well - that's a risk you take when trying to grow from saved hybrid seed. It was worth a shot. None of the slicing tomatoes have fruited, so I'll have to try another type next year.

The figs are doing well, and one of the new pear trees fruited this year. Ate one of the pears a few days ago... need a few more days yet before they're ready to harvest, probably by next week.

As for me, I've obtained outside employment doing contract work for a major telco. Strange as this may sound, it will afford me more time to blog, as there's always stretches of time (say, lunch hour) where I can do some writing. On the farm, my time isn't as structured, so it gets filled with other things that grab my attention. Like shooing geese away from chewing on the new pressure washer... ahh, too late: they've already chewed through the wiring, and now we gotta take it in for repairs. Good thing processing goose for consumption is such a pain, else Spouse may have started wringing necks and plucking feathers...

Homemade Goose Chew Toy & Video

People don't believe us when we talk about how the geese are avatars of destruction. Window screens, rubber car trim, canvas chairs, curtains: if you don't provide them something better, all will be left in tatters in their wake.

This chew toy is made from fabric strips, scraps of parrot toys that were previously destroyed by the geese, and discarded twine from hay bales. Watch as the goose attacks the twine like it owes her money:



Do you believe us now? ;-)

I Have a Dysfunctional Relationship with my Sewing Machine

Pic: brand name smudged to protect the guilty. 

Like a woman in a bad relationship, I have tried for far too long to make things work with my sewing machine. I bought it, what? Twenty years ago? I tried, goodness I tried. I thought it was me. The ongoing problems with thread tension - perhaps I was pulling too much? Not enough? Maybe the thread was cheap? Too thick? Was the thread spool paper grabbing the spindle? Oh, I cleaned that machine. Oiled all its parts. Every time I needed to use it, I'd check it out. Make sure it had the right needle for the fabric on hand. I'd carefully test-sew on fabric scraps to make sure the bugs were worked out before starting any project. Sometimes I could get an hour of sewing done before the thread tension would vomit all over. Other times, it'd take only five minutes for tension failure. 

I finally took it in for a professional tuneup last year. Perhaps there was some glitch that I, in my ignorance, had overlooked. Brought it home, started sewing, then kerplooey - tangled, broken thread, from either the bobbin, or from the top side. 

You'd think I'd learned my lesson. Nope. It took a few more months...

The bags I use to haul sorted recyclable goods to the Transfer Station have been falling apart. Took a look at one person's method of re-using feed bags, got inspired to do my own variation, and picked up some emptied bags that were returned to the local feed store. Scissored some leftover pant-legs from cutoff jeans for handles. Then started sewing.

This project brought me to tears. Four measly bags, nothing fancy, no lining, and yet: missed stitches. Broken and snarled thread. Even the heavy-duty needle, made for denim & woven fabric, broke. Then came that watershed moment where I snapped, when I finally realized...

"It's not me, it's YOU! Yes, YOU, you good for nothing piece of @#$!! sewing machine! I've had it! I've made excuses for you, stood by your side when others made fun, and yet you still let me down. You've taken advantage of my good nature for the last time."

"Don't try to sweet-talk me. Don't start batting your eyelashes. I've fallen for every trick you've played, and I AM FINISHED. I'm not even going to bother trying to sell you or give you away to a thrift store - I wouldn't want anyone else to suffer the misery you've put me through. At this moment, I  am mentally searching for the last place I left the sledge hammer. Tell you what, I'm a good sport - obvious from all that I've put up with over the years - I'll give you a five-minute head start to hit the road. Just know that if I ever catch up to you, they will never find your body."

UPDATE: My mother-in-law, who has decades of professional tailoring/sewing machine experience, says that inexpensive plastic sewing machines like mine have issues with parts overheating and shifting, which is most likely causing the tension problems. Wow, whodathunkit? 

Tomatoes and Plums and Limoncello, Oh My!

Pic: "Dirty Girl" saved-seed tomatoes

Two of the seven tomato varieties planted this Spring are already ripe enough to eat. One is the Monster Mystery 'Mater (the volunteer from the compost pile), and the other is the Dona F1 hybrid. The MMM has sweet flesh, but the skin is slightly bitter, which is actually the norm for most tomatoes - still quite tasty. The Dona F1, however, has both sweet flesh AND sweet skin. Very interesting! Will save seed from the Dona, and see if it re-seeds true to its original form next year.

The "Dirty Girl" tomatoes are just beginning to redden. Looking at the plants, I'm thinking this variety is a "determinate": one big harvest, then the plants will give up the ghost for the remainder of the season.

pic: plums with bird alterations

The one plum tree that has kept fruit 'til, well, full "fruition" this season has been noticed by the local birds too. In the mornings, I now pick breakfast off the tree - any ripe plums that are also bird-bitten. The birds eat a few chunks from the ripest plums, then leave the rest. Rather than waste an otherwise perfectly good plum (of which these are absolutely delicious, by the way), I eat around the bird bites, then throw the remainder of the plum to the chickens. We all get a nice morning treat, and no waste. I could go to the trouble of throwing bird-netting over the tree, but the harvest isn't so large as to be worth the time or effort. I am happy to share... THIS year. May have to install a few more white mulberries as birdy food-distraction trees for the future.

The limoncello experiment made earlier this year - with Everclear as the base, mind you - has been taste-tested by five different folks now. The initial comment on the flavor after initial sip (then a head-rock backwards, followed by wide-eyed rapid blinking) is a diplomatic "medicinal!" After a few more sips the comments change to "not bad", then a few more sips ends with "hey, this is all right!". I think the later opinions may be influenced in a blood-altered sort of way, and not truly impartial *ahem*, but that's okay. We're all happy by the bottom of the glass, and that's what counts. This particular vintage is being named "10K Limoncello" in honor of @Virgotex's Twitter remark that she'd tried a shot of 10000-proof limoncello at my place. I think a label needs to be created...

Pic: 10K Limoncello. You know you want some of this
head-rockin' goodness, yes you do! 

May: Post Surgery, and Garden Progress

The beginning of May brought surgery to relieve a trifecta of issues: frozen shoulder, bursitis, and a bone spur causing impingement, all in one shoulder. Recovery is still ongoing, and many thanks to Spouse and one of The Aunties for flying out and taking care of the farm and myself while I careened between the recliner, the flexibility (i.e. torture) chair, and the bed while in a drug-induced haze. Sorry, no pictures of THAT.

Sicilian Buttercup hen. Say, is that
a katydid leg sticking out of her mouth?

The earlier work on lawn/pasture seeding is still in question. The millet (which was included in the pasture bermuda mix to shade the bermuda while it grows) is doing well, but the bermuda growth has been slow. Hoping it didn't get too hot, too fast for good growth. A large portion of the lawn/pasture is also still covered in wildflowers: salvias of all types, bee balm, a variety of daisies, "Mexican hats", and more. I love watching the ducks and chickens rooting around between the clumps of flowers in the morning, hunting for grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids. Later in the day, the ducks rest in the shade of these wildflower clumps, quietly waiting out the afternoon heat.

Plums

In the orchard, the apricots ripened early and the trees are now resting for the season. Not much harvest on the apricots, peach & nectarine trees this year, as I forgot to spray the dormant oil until it was too late. On the other hand, one plum is going gangbusters, and one pear and one apple are doing well. The other plums, pears & apples seem to have decided that they did their duty with cross-pollination, and so have taken the season "off". Too early in the season yet to tell for the figs, but almost all the figs have fruit forming, even the small ones we rooted & potted from another tree last year. And of course, the Meyer lemon and Mandarin orange are doing well. Still want to add some regular lemons & limes to the potted tree populace.

Dona F1 tomato, ripening.

The volunteer tomato that was transplanted from the compost pile is an absolute MONSTER. The "Dirty Girl" tomatoes are doing terrific as well. The San Marzano tomatoes are growing surprisingly slow; I may need to do more research on their growing preferences. Maybe it got too hot, too fast? The Dona F1's are fruiting nicely, and I expect to taste ripe fruit in the next few days. All the other tomatoes are chugging along just fine.

The sweet potatoes are looking good, and the beans and corn are growing, but the squash, okra and eggplant aren't quite sure if they'd rather live or die.

Young bunny. I'm ignoring its destructive powers for now.

The brood of newborn bunnies didn't stay in the one tomato bed for long - they grow up fast - but I think one of them is still hanging around. For a wild bunny, it lets me get fairly close, so was able to take a few photos the other day. CUTE!