I don’t know that there’s a better illustration of the strangeness of our “fall”.
Category Archives: Homestead
Some days
Sometimes, it seems like days just start off badly, as if the world wants to crack an eye at the sunrise, yawn, and roll over for a bit more sleep.
This morning was one of those mornings. The plan was to get up in the wee hours, get the smoker going, and have some pulled pork ready by the 1 PM games. I thought I had slept through my alarm, having had only two hours of sleep the night before. Not the case: I simply set it for PM instead of AM in my fog. When I did get up and go to get the smoker going, I found that the smoker portion of my Bradley was not working at all. I also found that I was going to have to go to the NOC to take care of a server that was simply down for no apparent reason and which would not respond to a reboot request.
Thinking the smoker issue may have just been built up sawdust in the feeder, I left the heating side of the smoker on, so it would be fully to temp by the time I got back, and hurried off to the NOC. Problem found: blown power supply. Easily enough solved by swapping out the power supply, but a pain in the ass for interrupting my day, which was already not starting off well.
Back at the ranch, I finally discovered the motor that powers the feeder arm was simply not working at all. I figured I could just rig something to keep the microswitch in the down position, hoping this would keep the smoker from knowing the arm was not moving. Didn’t work – the timer that feeds the wood expects the switch to trigger and then depress when the motor arm comes around once more. The switch is also not in a position easily reached when the control unit is back together. Alas, no smoking available. But the heat still worked, so I went in to rub down the butt and get it in the thing.
I made the rub, using my usual 20+ ingredients, and then dropped one of the bottles straight down on the tile while putting it away, shattering the thing and spewing glass everywhere. Swell.
By 9:30, the butt was finally on the smoker. We didn’t eat until the late games were well underway. It was good, but not as good as it usually is, of course. I also made rolls, mom made potato salad, and I’d made a huge batch of barbeque sauce the last time around, so at the end of the day, my sisters, newphew, mom, and I had watched a bunch of football and eaten good homemade food. Not a bad end to a day that started off so poorly.
On the plus side, it was another absolutely gorgeous day on the ranch, although unlike yesterday, almost all of which I spent outside, I did nothing outdoors today at all. Tomorrow after getting one of my eyes looked at, I hope to transplant some tomatoes at least to get the last ones out of the flats. From there, I’ll be left with the brassicas and the onions to get into the frames, and will be able to move on to breaking apart the garlic bulbs into cloves and prep for that planting. The great garlic plantout of 2011 is at hand.
Planning
My sister and nephew came over today to help with hauling mulch in the front garden. My nephew spent most of his time zipping around in his tractor, playing with the dogs, and playing in a kiddie sprinkler. He did, however, help me spread hay over a reseeded area, throwing the hay with gusto – and getting it in his hair and all over Einstein, who of course had to see what we were doing. This was taken by my sister as we took a break, discussing his need to play Wii while we were finishing up the day.
When you know it’s fall
It’s difficult to know when the seasons change here, as it can be rather abrupt (witness our move from about 80 as a high to a high of 100 in the span of three days back in “spring”). Just in time for fall, though, we have an actual slide into the season: instead of highs hovering right around 100, it’s hovering right around 90 instead. Still not enough of a “fall” for the garlic to be planted, but cool enough – relatively speaking – to get the second cropping of tomatoes and peppers in. This morning I set out 64 cherokee tomato plants and 32 bell pepper plants. There are more of each to plant, plus the brassicas, which I intend to use floating row cover on to keep the bugs away. Combine that with another round of weeding, running some irrigation, replacing one of the watering timers, and topping off the lime and lemon basils, and it’s been a productive day already. The benefit of starting off at sunrise is that it gives you a long day to get work done. Even with a break for lunch and working the business in between.
Mowing the property
Serious business.
Let the games bee-gin
Low-hanging fruit, that title, I know.
On Saturday, my sister and I attended a short course beekeeping class offered twice a year by UF/IFAS. We had missed the spring class by a week or so, but found the fall (such as it is) date early enough and got ourselves registered. I was a bit concerned about the class going forward, as the registration form indicated if less than 20 people registered, the class would be cancelled. That worry was for naught, as by my count there were almost 30 people in attendance, split evenly between men and women. There were several people from the Northeast Florida Honeybee Association in attendance as well: all older men, all incredibly friendly, and all hilarious.
We’ve discussed having bees on the ranch several times over the years, and now we’re ready to move forward. The class itself covered various aspects of keeping bees, from hive structure to honeybee activity, splitting hives, and diseases and pests. Most of the things under discussion were things I already knew from prior research, but it was great to be able to hear from real, live beekeepers instead of reading about things in a book or from the web.
The Clay County IFAS office keeps bees on the fairgrounds, and has a honey house on the property as well. It was there that they had set a demonstration hive with open, paned sides back in April during the fair, and the bees were still there, still alive, and we had a chance to see the activity – and spot the (unmarked) queen.
After a full day of class, we’re more ready than even to get some bees around here. I’m hoping it will improve some of the plant-related issues we’ve been having, particularly with things like melons and squashes, and of course there is the potential for honey to be robbed from the hive. We were excited enough to consider adding bees now, but it appears that almost everyone has no bees for sale during the fall. Waiting until spring seems to be the only option, but that will allow us to get all the equipment we need and have it on hand for the big day when that day arrives.
Slow burn
Every year in this area, we have at least one fire. This past summer was no different, but this time around there were multiple fires and one about two miles away.
For the past few days, we’ve had smoke drifting in and hanging around from a fire on the Florida/Georgia border – and naturally, all the tropical storms/hurricane activity has bypassed us and it, and still it burns. Since there has been virtually no wind here at all, the smoke lingers well into the afternoon, making work outside challenging. But work needs to be done regardless of this, and yesterday was yet another highly productive day: various irrigation lines repaired and extended, mulch delivered and started to be spread, and the rear garden now receiving the same treatment as the front, with the fence partially pulled, plastic laid, and the fence reconfigured. Still much more to be done, but that is always the case on the ranch.
Berries of blue
One of the additions we made this spring to the ranch was berries. I’d never really considered small fruits before, beyond the wild blackberries that grow all around the property, but while I was wandering around the garden center one day, there they were. At first, we had picked up two, but went back for four more. All went into the front garden area and then we waited.
Well worth the wait, I must say. This was just one of many harvest rounds – the smaller harvests didn’t actually make it into the house at all, between my mother and my nephew. Although I can no longer eat blueberries that way, they are still spectacular in muffins, pancakes, and my shakes.
Honest labor
Yesterday, we had some additional labor on the ranch. Today, we did not – not much of a surprise, as the sheer physicality of much of what we do is not something that most people enjoy or can do, even if there is money involved. That’s fine: never underestimate girl power in the realm of Getting Things Done. Today we finished laying down the rest of the plastic around the front garden, reset the fence (and I added three more gates while we did this), started trenching for the edging around that, did finish the edging around the herb garden, weeded, hauled trash out, mowed, watered, cleaned up all the detritus and tools from our work, and generally worked from sunrise, took a break during the high temp hours, and continued until sunset. The moon rose as we put up the last of the tools.
It reminded me quite a bit of this.
Why? Because the females of the hive are the worker bees. That’s how it turned out for us today.
Speaking of bees, my sister and I will be taking a beekeeping course this Saturday, as I want to get things in motion to have bees next spring. I don’t each much honey straight off – I don’t drink tea any longer, and honey alone is a bit too acidic for my mouth – but I do a lot of cooking with honey, and other members of the family use honey on a regular basis, so I thought it would be cool to add that to the list of things we produce (or gather, as it may be) on the homestead. We would get the added benefit of having pollinators on the ranch so as not to have to rely so much on the incidental pollinators we get around here.
Butternut squash soup tonight for dinner, with onions and garlic right from the ranch. It will be just as good tomorrow for breakfast before diving back into the work that never ends.
No vampires here
Last October – after recovering quite a bit from having a chunk of lung removed during the summer – my sister and I planted out 35 pounds of garlic. This July, I pulled up two of the type we had put in.
This is the Lorz Italian variety. It’s a milder garlic, one we use more for roasting. We won’t be planting this one again this season, as we really do prefer the stronger garlics.
This is the Inchelium Red garlic, one we like quite a bit. It’s a stronger garlic, and around here, that’s what we like.
The third variety, Chesnok Red, is also a strong garlic with a bite, and that one was pulled in late August. It’s currently curing in the garage, awaiting processing.
The other two, though, are cleaned and in storage.
Why yes, we do go through a lot of garlic around here. Tonight’s use was in a batch of guacamole whipped up for taco night. Unfortunately, yours truly was at the dentist for three and a half hours for two crown preps and was unable to partake in dinner. Ow.
Work funnies: one guy saying he was going to “rethink his relationship” with us, because the application he installed once upon a time and apparently hasn’t updated at any point has a component that doesn’t like one of the usual and routine updates run for security reasons. After over seven years with us. Interesting method of dealing with it, instead of simply taking care of your site maintenance, something with which we could certainly assist. Another guy insisting that the server where his site is located is down constantly, when a review of the firewall shows he’s locked himself out via login failures to a password protected area. Under his own site. Aren’t you glad you don’t work in tech?