Moth Buddy

It was an insect-filled morning......

There was a Luna moth by the front door.

And I found a teeny-tiny praying mantis on the grill (which I carefully relocated to the safety of my pea trellis before turning on the burners).  I tried to get a picture of her, but she was just so tiny that the camera wouldn’t focus properly.

And then, my nemesis, the Bald Faced Hornet!

Which was no match against me and my cat-like reflexes.  Actually, it was more like me cussing, jumping up and down, pivoting and dodging while flailing the swatter around in all directions.

I was hoping that this was a queen since it was so much larger than the other ones I’ve been seeing, but knowing my luck, it probably wasn’t.

Last year I was at war with the bald-faced-buggers.  Every time I went into the barn to milk, they would be there, relentlessly dive-bombing my head.  I’m assuming they frequented the barn not only to torment me, but to take advantage of the flies buzzing around the barn.  It was actually kind of interesting to see them hunting flies midair….although not interesting enough for me to stop trying to crush their exoskeleton and splatter their guts any chance I got.  At one point mid-summer, I would have to milk the goats one-handed as I had to keep a swatter in the other hand. 

After killing dozens of them, I decided that I had to tackle the problem at the source.  And that meant trompsing through the tick and chigger infested tangle of wood to find the nest.  But I didn’t find it, and before the winter and the insect-killing frosts came to the woods, I received no fewer than five stings. 

When Paul was dozing down some of the Evil, I mean, Enchanted Forest earlier this spring I noticed something hanging in the trees just where he had stopped.  And guess what it was?

The nest!  It was a bitter sweet find though.  As much as I was happy to have finally found the nest, it was empty as the workers die in the winter and the queen (that bitch) finds a comfy little pile of leaves or dirt to hide in and hibernate until the following spring

I’ve only been visited by two, maybe three bald faced hornets so far this year, but I’m sure as the summer months drag on their numbers will increase.  Hopefully I’ll be able to find the nest before I receive too many stings this year.

Cooking Outside

Yesterday was the first official day of cooking without using my oven or range.  Since it’s been like a million degrees outside and the house is only slightly cooler, I figured it was better to discontinue using the oven and range.

We had steaks, canned corn, sautéed onions & mushrooms and flatbread for Supper.
The flatbread is basically just an herbed white bread dough, rolled out thin.  I generously brushed olive oil on the sides that were on the grill, brushed some more oil on the top and sprinkled some parmesan cheese on it right before I took it out of the grill.  Next time I’ll slice some zucchini, onions and tomatoes really thin and put them on top of the flatbread while they’re grilling. 

The white blobs on the grill are the flatbread.

Having a side-burner is a great help when cooking on the grill.

After the steaks were done (in like forty-five seconds.....I like my steak to “Moo”), I kept the burners on low / medium on one side of the grill to keep the temps around 400 degrees, flipped an old cake pan upside down on the non-burner side, then placed my loaf of bread (half of the flatbread recipe, but left to rise) on top of the cake pan.  

I’m happy to say that I will still be able to bake bread without turning on the stove inside! 

We almost finished off an entire jar of pears for dessert; another no-heat option.  These were the pears that one of Paul’s co-workers gave us last year and I canned them up.  They were DE-licious!

Now I have to think of what to make tonight!

PS – Susan, would you please email me your “secret” fix so I can post comments again?  Thanks!  CarolynRenee@centurytel.net

Does it get this hot in Africa?

Really.  Does it? 

We’ve had some near 100 degree temperatures and that was just the first week of June.  We went right from Soggy Spring to Scorching Summer in like three weeks.

I’ve been meaning to clean out the kidding pen and chicken coop, but I just can’t manage to get up the courage to do it just yet.  I’m hoping that we’ll get some sort of break from the heat this week and I’ll get them cleaned out then.  I just can’t bear the thought of not only sweating like a pig in the 95 degree heat, but having all that chicken litter dust sticking to my sweat covered self and eventually dripping down into parts unmentionable.  Needed that visual, didn’t ya?  Sorry.

I suppose I could have done it early morning Sunday (when it was only 75 degrees), but we really needed to disbud Cloud’s doeling and it seemed better to do it that morning since it was cooler.  Everything went well and I was finally able to put the disbudding box and iron away for the season.  So the chicken coop and kidding pen remain un-cleaned.

We also said farewell to one of Annette’s kids.  Annette is still saying “goodbye” (imagine constant goat-bleating in the background, even with the doors and windows closed up). 

Her little buckling went to his new home to become a future herd sire.  What a sweet job, hugh?

This heat has also been making cooking anything inside almost unbearable.  We had defrosted one of the chickens several days ago and it really needed to be cooked, but I didn’t want to turn the oven on for an hour & a half. 

Smoker to the rescue!

Paul seasoned the bird, started a fire in the smoker and smoked the chicken for several hours.  We munched on right-outa-the-smoker chicken (before I could even get a picture of the whole bird) and had cold chicken the next day for lunch. 

I’m trying to plan meals that require little or no cooking indoors.  I have the grill and smoker at my disposal.  We just got beef from one of Paul’s co-workers last week so I defrosted a few t-bones (hey, who needs a holiday excuse to eat a fancy-pants cut of steak??) and a pack of burger for Sloppy Joes.  Throw in a few huge mixed salads with grilled chicken on top, some sort of pasta, pizza on the grill one night and I’ve got a week’s worth of suppers! 

I may even try baking a loaf of bread inside the grill.  Anyone ever try that?

PS – Still not ignoring y’all, I can comment on some blog pages, but not mine. :*(

Oh no! WE'RE the bad neighbors!

While I was sitting at the computer typing my blog for today (which will now be posted tomorrow), the phone rang.  It seems that Moonshine, the wonder-beagle-mutt, has been wandering around lately and was hanging out at the neighbor’s house about a mile up the road.  I wasn’t’ sure why she’d go all the way up there (being old, short-legged and quite pudgy) until I realized that they have been hosting some picnics the past few weekends and it seems that she’s been giving the sad-doggie-eyes to any and everyone that had food.
 

So I drove up there to apologize and opened the car door to a less-than-enthusiastic mutt. They said it wasn’t a problem and that the younger daughter was enjoying the visits, but I still feel badly about it.  I’m one of those anal people who think that their animals should stay on their own property.  Although I will admit that our next door neighbor’s dogs visit our place and I really don’t mind.  But generally speaking, I think your animals belong on your property, not wandering around. 

Then on the drive back, I saw Harley by the other neighbor’s driveway (they weren’t home).  Harley has been following the car when we leave.  At first, he would stop at our next door neighbor’s house and visit with their dogs.  Now he’s wandering a bit farther to the second and third homes and I’m afraid that his travels will continue until he eventually follows us all the way up to the mule barn.  Which wouldn’t be too bad except the mule barn is awfully close to a busy road.  Not interstate kind’a busy, but still busy enough that I’d be worried.

Harley will follow us back when he sees the car go back towards the house, which is good, but I’m not sure how we’re going to get him to “Go Home” when we tell him to instead of following the car.

No, we don’t have our place fenced in except for the goats (and don’t plan on it in the near future).  No, we can’t keep Harley chained up.  I suppose I’m now just one of those kind of dog owners. Guess I’ll be checking out some dog training books from the library.  Any ideas?

Something's Better than Nuth'n

Paul scraped another garden area for me a few days ago and planted the remaining squash and tomatoes I started from seed. 

Rhiannon and I also dug in a row of black oil sunflower seeds just for the heak of it and they’ve already started to push through the dirt, in like three days!  Talk about almost-instant gratification! 

Rhiannon's "Dump a Bunch" method of seed sowing.  Think I'll need to thin 'em??

Not exactly sure what I’m going to do with the sunflowers as I’m pretty much certain the birds, deer, squirrels, raccoons (and with my luck, even the darned snakes) will be snacking on them before I can harvest any seeds.

Even though I had high hopes of having a large garden this year with plenty to can for the pantry, my ambitions weren’t quite matched by my actions and the garden doesn’t consist of much.  I also lost all twelve eggplants, twelve cabbage and about ten tomato plants due to the swamp-like conditions we had last month from all the stinking rain.  I suppose that means we’ll have a drought next month.  It’s too late to start tomatoes and peppers from seed and too hot to plant lettuce or spinach.  So I’m going to cheat; I’m going to buy some plants from the local nursery.

I don’t expect to find many varieties; probably the old standbys like California Wonder Peppers, Big / Better Boy Tomatoes and other hybrid vegetables.  Even though I’m probably going to end up paying close to $2 for a small six-pack cell of plants, I figure I’ll still be way ahead as opposed to buying stuff from the super market.

So if you had a bad start (or no start at all) on your seedlings this winter or didn’t have time to sow seeds directly in the ground (or the dog ran over your squash plants, the green worms ate your turnips down to nubs, the toddler pulled up half your peas while helping you weed), don’t give up!  Go to your local nursery or Big Box home improvement center and buy yourself a flat of vegetables.  If you didn’t manage to get that garden tilled under or fenced in, try planting them in containers.  Put them around the front porch where they will be easy to water.  Just plant SOMETHING!

Unless you really do like those high-priced, tasteless, pesticide-laden tomatoes at the Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Oh, by the way, I’m not ignoring your comments…..stupid blogger isn’t letting me comment again.  Anyone know if it's something fixable or do I have to wait for the blogger-gods to fix it? 

Leaves of Grass

I wonder if Whitman ever contemplated the cutting, raking and baling of all those millions of blades of vegetation. 

After waiting what seems like forever, the hay fields in our area have finally been able to be cut, dried and baled! 

Our local feed store ran out of the large square and round bales in early April.  We could still buy small squares of sub-par mixed grass for $7.50 a bale though.  No thanks.  Luckily we have a secret squirrel source and Paul was able to get another 50 small squares to hold us out to the first cutting of the season. 

On top of the empty hay barns, last month our area received record amounts of rainfall and caused flooding in the lakes and rivers.  There seemed to be no end to the rain and I was getting a bit uneasy about our hay supply since it seemed that the first haying would be happening much later than normal.

We still have about twenty bales left in the barn, but have plans to go out and buy some hay in the fields in the next day or so.  I’m sure there are others just as anxious as we are to get some fresh munchies for their livestock.

I really hate having to rely on buying hay for the critters, especially during the spring and summer when there seems to be grass growing everywhere – everywhere except on our place that is.  Well, that isn’t entirely true.  The grass we do have is lush, but it isn’t where we could let the goats, mule or horse out to graze as those areas are either in the front yard with the fruit trees or around the garden where we don’t have fencing.  Right now there is only one area besides the goat pen that is fenced for grazing and it isn’t that large.  I’ll keep three goats in that area at a time and rotate them every other day so everyone has a chance to munch on greens.  The goats that are in the pen have hay, but I’ve also been trying to cut three or four bags of fresh grass for the pen-bound goats using the push mower every day.

Any time I go past a large lawn or a field being cut just for the sake of keeping the vegetation down, I think to myself, “My goats could be eating that!” or “Do you know how many bales of hay that could have been?”. 

I know it’s not just having the grass, but the fencing required to keep the livestock contained to the grassy areas.  And it’s not just having the grass to hay, but having the equipment to actually process the grass into hay suitable for storage.  It’s all about logistics.

Paul has been working on making pasture out of the woods with the dozer and tractor, but it’s slow going.   And once the areas are removed of trees, we still have to plant grass and fence in the areas.  If you ever move to the country and want livestock, learn from my mistake and buy something with some pasture and fencing!  I will never again complain about the price of pastureland. 

Free Seeds!

Mama Tea over at A Farmish Kind of Life is having a seed giveaway.  And not just plain ‘ole seeds, but Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds!

Go take a look see and enter for your chance to win some neat herb and vegetable seeds.  You get three chances to win, just post a comment on her blog and:

1.    Give a gardening tip

2.    Post her Giveaway on your blog

3.    Become a Follower

Easy as pie!  Anyways……

In giving my gardening tip for one of my entries, I thought I would share it here along with a picture:

I kept the hoops up & used them for supports.

Paul made me two raised beds right in front of the house last year (think easy weeding & picking) and this year he put some PVC hoops over them so we could extend the growing season by making them into hoop greenhouses for the early spring and winter.

Since I didn’t get my butt in gear earlier in the year, we never put plastic over the hoops so I didn’t start anything outside earlier than our last frost date.  But before we put away the hoops (that we just put up), I thought that I could use them to hold up the peas on the ends, and even the tomatoes and peppers in the middle of the beds. 

Paul tied some pieces of bailing twine horizontally across the hoops and the peas now have a support system.  I’m thinking of doing this (or having him do it…hehe) in the middle hoops when the other vegetables get taller.

We’ll be having fresh peas in no time!