Farmer Ann Gets Black Hands

“Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.” - W.H. Auden

Well, I spent 2 hours yesterday shelling the peas received on Sunday from our FNOF.  I promptly vacuum sealed them in three bags for return to said FNOF. This morning I went and picked sun gold cherry toms also for said FNOF, bearing the peas. He was most pleased with the peas sans shells and quickly showed me where to start picking.  He has the cherry toms in Greenhouse number 2.  It's like a jungle in there.  Tomato vines over your head.  When you are picking, you can faintly hear the sound of toucans and parrots in the distance and the occasional cry of a jungle cat.  Once I heard a howler monkey, I SWEAR. OK maybe it was a rooster. Or the Tookie Tookie Bird (ah ah ee ee tookie tookie). So I picked for two hours and got about 6 gallons picked and only got down 1/4 of one row.  I'm tellin ya, there are some toms in there.  By the time I was finished my hands were black with tomato smarm.  I can't quite figure out why, if you have gold tomatoes and green vines, your hands turn black after picking a while. Anyhoo, the whole quote and tomato thing was to let everyone know that the barter system is great.  I get free veges and he gets free labor. I got some pics and a film of the chicklets: group picture Mom from Hell (first time I've got a chicken with red eye) And amusement among the cukes bak bak

Farmer Ann Goes to the Strawberry Patch

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
  And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
    Neighbored by fruit of baser quality;  -  William Shakespeare, The Life of King Henry the Fifth




Man, got that right Willie.


Yesterday was a marathon, music gathering, brunch cooking, church going, strawberry picking, fruit preparing, berry squishing, wine making good time.


Started the day, as usual, at 5:45 am letting the chickens out.  The chicklets almost look like miniature chickens now.  They lack a few neck and tail feathers, but have the rest.  If I can tell by the size of the comb, I think I have one hen and one rooster.  So yesterday, in between all the other madness, I stuck 6 new eggs under the broody twins for another go.


I need more cause I lost another hen last Wednesday.  I think its time to fire up the old security camera.  The migrants are back.  I'm just sayin'...


So back to yesterday.  After the chicken loosing I burned the music for the church service to a CD and listened to it to ensure good working order.  Our friendly neighborhood preacher (FNP) was doing a wedding on saturday so didn't have time to pick hymns, so I did it.  Everyone seemed to approve my choice, now our FNP wants me to choose the hymns as well as finding them, downloading them, garagebanding them, burning them and playing them at the service.  So in the past 6 months I have become the treasurer of the church, the music director of the church, the co leader of the church green team, the grounds maintenance person of the church.  And the FNP wants to know if I want to write the sermons as well (kidding).  


Note to self:  gotta learn how to say no again.


So then, cooking.  I got a mess of garden peas from our friendly neighborhood organic farmer (FNOF) last week and spent 3 blissful hours shelling them.  Well, it was more of a whole box than a mess.  But there is nothing I enjoy more than shelling peas (although there are some things I enjoy as much).  Sat on the porch and watched the wildlife go by.  Mom even helped me some.


Interesting family pea fact.  It appears that I picked up some bad habits somewhere along the way.  All of the aunties noted that I shell my peas from the top down.  They all shell from the bottom up.  I don't ever recall any formal training in pea shelling anywhere in my life, and I neglected to watch to see how Mom did it.  So I don't know why I go top down.  There was a general discussion about it during the after service meal, and it appears that all the ladies go bottom up around here.  But I am too old to change.


So, I had some nice peas and wanted an interesting way to serve them.  I am not a fan of straight garden peas.  Went to my friendly neighborhood internet and looked up english peas.  I found a simple recipe for creamed peas.  I embellished a little with my own spices and it turned out very well.  Of course it helps to have fresh peas.  The FNOF said they were yummy and asked if these were his peas.  Arrogant Bastard.  


I also made a penne pasta dish with garlic, onion, tomato, oregano, parmesan, basil, cilantro sauce.


Then church.  We honored our two college grads with bibles during the service.  We now don't have any more kids left in the congregation.  All of our entings have grown up.


The lunch yesterday was pretty exceptional.  There was such variety that I couldn't fit even a little bit of everything on one plate.  We all ate too much.


In the course of conversation, the FNOF told me that he told Jim to tell me that the strawberry field was open to gleaning on last Tuesday.  I heard never a word.  I don't know why he just doesn't call me to tell me, but there seems to be an order of communication that is really an order of mis-communication between the three of us.  I think we need to kill the messenger.


So, I told Jim that he had to help me glean the field cause we had other things to do, like cutting the back forty, getting dog food, etc.  We collected buckets and proceeded. We managed to get enough berries to make up a bucket and 1/2.  It was really a shame I was not there on tuesday, cause the berries were not really great.  It was also amazing that the season was finished so early.  Last year it went well into June.  I only managed to pick for the FNOF one time.  So, to pay him for the berries, (and the lovely NEW box of peas and sugar snaps garnered from the trip) I will pick cherry toms for him on tuesday.


After we got home, we hopped into the car to go get dog food, and now sugar and distilled water for wine making, 


and beer, 


and gas for the car, 


and money to pay for it all.


That took about an hour and a half round trip.


Then I washed, culled and de-stemmed the berries while Jim put the crusher and the press together for their maiden voyage.  It took me about an hour to do the berries.  Jim crushed and pressed them and the equipment worked really well, but we decided that it was more suited to larger batches.  We really need something between the tomato crusher and the large crusher and press that we have.  Or we need more fruit.  We may have more success doing blueberries as Jim gets a lot of cull berries from our Friendly Neighborhood Blueberry Farmer (FNBF).  By this time it was about 7 pm.  I still had to prep the sugar water and the various additives.  I finished at 8:30 and missed half of Hee Haw.  But I am hoping this will be a rockin' batch of strawberry wine.


bak bak

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day to all of you mothers out there.

Here are pics:

tomatoes in pots

peach tree 1

peach tree 2

peach tree 3

my new bad boy tiller

herbs gone wild

leafy and rooty

carrots

yonions and leeks

corn and beans and soy and cow peas and etc.

my two pears

And now a series of chicklet pics:

Lastly, chicklet video:

bak bak

Farmer Ann's Wizard Goes Swimming

"When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time" - CS Lewis


Well, I spent a couple of hours weeding the carrots and cabbages in the garden yesterday morning.  There is some kind of nocternal pest eating my kale and collards and cabbages.  I tried diatomacious earth but that didn't work.  I guess I will have to go with pyretherin.  The good news is that the corn is peeping through and the soy is peeping through.

Then I spent several hours processing the frozen blueberries from last year into jelly, or so I thought.  After 3 hours of work, I succeeded in making juice.  It didn't jell.  I added apples for the pectin but I guess not enough.  So today I am off to vote in the primaries and get pectin.  I still have half the berries to process so I will try to rework yesterday's batch.  The good news is that I made blueberry butter from the leavings, and that DID work.  It's the first time I tried this.

Then Jim helped me pump up the tire on the riding mower and it seemed to hold the air.  I don't know why it went flat in the first place.  So late afternoon I hopped on the mower and did the spots I missed last time.  I was working the area around the pond and got the deck stuck on a hillock so had to back up.  Well, I backed up a little then wanted to go forward, but nothing doing and the mower doesn't have any brakes so I ended up in the pond.

Oh Maaaaaan!!!!!

We pulled it out and it started right up.  Wizard indeed.  Jim swears that he saw frogs jumping out from the bottom when I started it up, but I don't know if I believe that.  And his parting words on the incident were, "This one doesn't float".

bak bak

Homecoming 2012

Where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.~ Oliver Wendell Holmes




Well, another Homecoming come and gone, and boy am I tired.  I spent the time before planting my butterfly garden, weedeating and mowing the graveyard (NOT a "cemetery"), fixing the sprinkler system and setting up the fellowship hall and cooking 7 dishes to take.  Peach/blueberry cobbler, sweet potato pie, best beets, spinach lasagna, goat cheese, ranch style beans, and my patented colored deviled eggs.


I spent the day of, setting up tables and chairs on the grounds, filling the baptismal bowl (my third cousin, Carmie was baptized), taking pictures, ordering the pot luck dishes, directing the "help", counting the offering,  making sure that the dinner on the grounds went smoothly, making iced tea,  washing dishes, taking more pictures, removing tables and chairs from the grounds, emptying trash cans, and etc.  I estimate about 125-150 people and about 75 different dishes and desserts.  I did not eat a single bite.  AND I missed Harry Hamilton, again.


FLASHBACK


When I was growing up and visited my Granny of a summer, on hot days we used to ride down past Yonder Store to Harry Hamilton's store.  There you could get a cold 6 ounce coke in a bottle, ice cream, candy, and a look at Harry Hamilton's arm.  Harry Hamilton (he will never be just Harry to me but always Harry Hamilton) was a big man, or at least he seemed so to me at the time.  He had a florid complexion, which got redder when he laughed.  And he was always laughing at something.  He had been in WWII and had lost his left arm.  He wore a prosthetic arm with the fingers halfway curled, and it fascinated us kids.  You wanted to stare at it, but knew that was horribly impolite, so you kinda peeked at it out of the corner of your eye.  I don't remember a lot about those visits, but I have always remembered Harry Hamilton.  The store is still there, but Harry Hamilton sold out a while back and left.  It has been Applewhite's and is now Rowan store, but to me it will always be Harry Hamilton's store.


Two years ago, at homecoming, Jim mentioned the day after that he had met and talked to a man named Harry Hamilton.  I was devastated.  I never saw him.  I was determined to see him the next year, if he came.  One year ago, I again missed him, probably because I didn't recognize him.  This year, I saw him! He was sitting across from us in the church.  He looked so old.  And there was the arm.  It had not aged a whit.  I was determined to talk to him yesterday, but by the time I got out on the grounds, he had left!  So now I'm thinking that this is some kind of cosmic ritual that we are destined never to talk.  But maybe not.  At least I actually saw him this year.  Next year may be the charm.


Anyhoo, everything went almost smoothly and I can get back to my normal list, which is even longer now.


Here are some pics from Homecoming.

flower garden ( you can see my bench way in the background)

butterfly garden (This is my garden)

The grand old lady

The church banner and Jim's feet and arm

The piper (and yes, he WAS paid)

Close up of the banner

Rev John Goodman plays the dulcimer

The baptism.  The water was from Black River

Rev. Paul Layton

Rev. Dr. Troy Lewis (he married Jim and I in this church 29 years ago)

Lunch on the grounds

Paul and his family

Diners

Diners

diners, and John playing the dulcimer

diners

diners

bak bak

Happy Cinco De Mayo

Happy Cinco de Mayo from all us chickens in North Cacklelacky.

Andele!  Mariachi! Gracias!

El bak bak.

Summer, Summer, what a bummer

The sprinkler was wet as wet could be, the garden dry as dry, you could not see a cloud because no cloud was in the sky.  No birds were flying overhead, it was too hot to fly - Farmer Ann (with a little help from Dodgson)


The garden is late this year.  Everything is late this year.  I should have planted a week ago, but I wasn't ready.  So I am in ketchup mode.  I made 6 rows up yesterday, 4 up this morning when it was still below 70 degrees and will do the last six tomorrow morning.  I transplanted the peppers, which promptly keeled over and died.  They can dish out the heat but can't take it.  I planted 4 rows of corn, my black soy, my white soy, my pole beans, my cucumbers and transplanted my basil, half of which looked like they had heat stroke this afternoon.  It was 88 degrees in the shade with 90 percent humidity since 9 am.  We had rain 4 days ago, but you couldn't tell it.  I watered the tomatoes this morning and this evening.  I'll be damned if I lose even one of the tomatoes.


My great grand chicklets are now one week old.  I have two by the daughter of one of my original chickens (the baybay).  They are growing so fast and are already testing their wings.    I'm hoping for two hens this time.  I've got three broody and at least one rogue nest that I am too busy to find so am down to 4 eggs a day.

Look, I can walk.

Thank God for Mom's Shadow

caught in the setting sun

And just as a parting joke, here is what we get on the side of the road on any given day.

bak bak

A Commercial

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but desperation is just a mother  - Farmer Ann

There are many debates on what man's greatest invention is, the wheel, the steam engine, the computer; but I am here to tell ya that these are NOT the greatest invention.  The greatest invention is

ZIP TIES!!!

Without these little beauties, I would not have a chicken yard, a tomato patch, a garden fence, a grape arbor & etc.

They come in all sizes and colors.

They are cheap.

They ARE reusable, if you take the time to unzip them.

They require no tools for assembly.

They are rust proof.

They are durable.

They will fit into small spaces.

They are, indeed, the perfect fastener.

I'm back

bak bak