Category Archives: Food

Intentions: 2020

People ask “What are your resolutions for the new year?”

I stopped making resolutions a long time ago, and for a long, long time now, greeting the new year has not been anything like turning a corner. It’s just more of the same, with a new date stamped on the calendar. For the past four years, I’ve either been sick, or getting over being sick, at the turn of the new year.

This year, thanks to losing my voice (primarily) and sense of smell via a total laryngectomy, I am healthy (mostly) heading into the new year. Since I’ve been relatively healthy since the end of April, when I had the Big Op, and now, I’ve had time to think about what I’d like to do in 2020. I say relatively, as I’ve had a couple of instances of what my docs call minor pulmonary infections, and what I call lung snot. Fortunately, modern medicine has graced us with antibiotics for these things.

As some of you know, I had wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo in November, as I had a brand new, quite exciting idea to write, back in early May, after I got out of the hospital with a hole in my neck. I knew most of the story, and over the next couple of weeks, I fleshed it out in my head and was confidant that a few other things I needed for it would come by the time November rolled around.

Then, the end of June came, and with that, one of our largest vendors announced a complete and total change to their licensing. That in turn required us to make a huge decision: to stay with it, or make a change of our own. Those of you who are clients will know this already, but we chose the latter.  This resulted in an equally huge, and quite sudden amount of work necessary on our part to implement the changes we needed to make.

There is an upside to this, as there is with almost everything: it knocked us out of a bit of complacency, and also resulted in other changes we decided to make in order to make things more efficient and to adjust a couple of our business models.

“What does this have to do with anything, Captain?”

A lot. Because it knocked NaNoWriMo out of the water, and except for a few days’ break here and there, we’ve been steadily implementing the changes we decided to make. When there are hundreds of servers involved, and all the work is hands on to do the migrations and replacements, it means everything else is on hold, because almost every waking hour is devoted to getting this finished. It also means 16-18 hour workdays, every day, with the exception of those few breaks.

Another group of the changes has been at the datacenter level, and we’ve been physically working on those as well – the work is physically demanding (the servers weigh 35-40 pounds each, depending on the model), hot, and dirty – kind of like the gardening I do. It’s interesting how this one change from one vendor has resulted in other changes, like ripples from the boulder they dropped in the water.

While we are still getting through the changes, I expect we’ll be finished by the end of the first quarter 2020. I had decided to not do any gardening in 2020, to give myself and the beds a rest, but I realized that I’d at least need to do tabascos (peppers) as the hot sauce I made back in 2016(?) is almost gone, and the plants I put in back in spring of 2019 were gnawed on by deer and didn’t produce much of anything worthwhile.  That led to the realization that we also need cayenne and paprika powders for culinary use, so I need to grow some of those as well, since we’re almost out.

I may toss a couple of cukes in, just for the fam/friends and their salads. And if I’m doing that, I might as well do a few tomatoes (not not over a hundred of them, as I usually do), as well as a couple of other low maintenance items: lettuce, carrots, and so on.

At the end of the day, I do still need to get exercise, and gardening is good for that. I’m just paring it back a bit instead of going full bore out there. So that’s one intention for the new year.

Next up: the bees. I lost colonies in 2019, some because I wasn’t paying attention to them (laryngectomy and recovering) and others for unknown reasons (they had plenty of bees, food, and so forth). I have four in the beeyard. I know two at least will make it through our “winter” with some feeding, and I have four packages coming in the screen. I am changing how they’re set up, though, and will move the two on the wooden stands to sitting on cinder blocks, as the bees on the blocks have done so much better – all the losses we from hives on the wooden stand. My intention for the bees is to better manage them in 2020, since my major health issues are presumably behind me.

Next up: reading. I’ve read 64 books in 2019, and expect to finish another one today for a total of 65 of the 70 I had planned. I want to read more in 2020, and I’ll be setting a goal of 75 for the coming year – nothing crazy, like going from 70 to 100. When people set these types of goals, they can often set themselves up for failure by setting a new goal that is too far above whatever the previous level was. If you’re a couch potato and set a goal of running three marathons in the coming year, that’s probably not going to be realistic. My advice: set something reasonable, and make it concrete. Don’t say you’re going to “lose weight”. Say you’re going to lose 10 pounds in the next 60 days. That’s more reasonable. So, 75 books for 2020.

Next up: food. My intention is to cook for my mom and brother (and one sister who lives nearby, if she wants to come along) more often in 2020. “But Captain,” you say, “didn’t you just tell us to set concrete goals?” I did, thanks for noticing. This one largely depends on my brother’s schedule, though, so it has to be a little fluid. I’m aiming for at least one meal a week for them. That will get me back into the kitchen, where i love to work, and will also feed them, something I also love to do. Everyone wins.

Next up: mind/body. My intent is to continue doing my heavily modified yoga routine. There are things I cannot physically do and never will be able to do, but I can do a lot, and an increase in flexibility and strength is the goal. I’ve also been half-assededly meditating, and that needs to change into an every day thing as well, and that’s my goal: at least five minutes a day, at some point in the day (probably before I finally throw in the towel and go to bed).

Next up: writing. This is the big one. My intention is to write every day, at least two pages a day (to start). This will be difficult, just as it was in 2019, at least for Q1, minimum, since the work that currently pays the bills will still be taking up a huge amount of time. But I’m hopeful by Q2, with a reduced garden load during the season, and a lessened focus need on “work work”, I’ll be able to actually get time in. At this very low rate of writing, I should be able to finish a book at the standard length for my primary genre (mysteries/thrillers), in about four months – doable, and not terribly stressful since there’s enough stress in my life already.

I’m sure there will be other, transitory, things that pop up – life is like that – but These are the things I’m consciously focusing on for the coming year.

That’s all for now. I hope your holidays were grand and the coming year brings you all you want. Until next time, peeps: be well.

Another (bleeping) day

Don’t get the wrong idea: I do like waking up each day, because it sure beats the alternative.

But mornings, for me, are a little hellish, thanks to the ravages of cancer and treatments and surgeries. Right now when I wake up, my neck and shoulders feel really heavy. I also have to site for a moment and do some coughing, to try to bring up whatever has settled/bubbled up in my lungs for however long I’ve slept. After that, my routine goes as follows:

Give the dogs their greenies, then let the big guy out. The puppy (he is not a puppy any more)  stays by my side as I make my way to the bathroom. After taking care of my own business, it’s time to remove the HME (the heat-moisture exchange filter, which  takes the place of your nose, as far as your trachea is concerned, for those functions), and then remove the larytube for cleaning. The HME filter is replaced every 24 hours unless it needs to be replaced before then because it’s jammed up with mucus. After cleaning the larytube, it goes back in, I pop the new HME on, and we’re off to the kitchen.

After a quick brew of coffee and some med smashing (thyroid, gabapentin this round), its off to my desk to settle in and see what’s going on. I pour in the meds and coffee, work a bit – maybe an hour – then head back to the kitchen to make breakfast.

I’ve been trying to incorporate blenderized real meals into my diet, but the volume is problematic. I have to add so much water to whatever it is to puree it, then strain it, that I can’t “eat” as much, or there’s too much particulate to get a fairly high percentage of the actual calories down. For now, the majority of what I eat is coming from powders. I went into the hospital at 127 (pounds) and this morning weighed in at 122 (pounds). So, in addition to the complete meal replacement powder I use, I add some weight gain powder I used to use exclusively when I was working my way back from 92 (pounds). This gives me a ton of carbs and calories, without a lot of volume over what I’m already using. Breakfast also involves more med crushing, mixing, and pushing down the tube: the other half of the gabapentin, and dicyclomine. I also dump in half of a sucralfate, even though technically that should be taken a) alone (it crushes fine, but mixes/dissolves terribly unless something else is also in there), and b) an hour and a half to two hours before a meal (which is nigh on impossible, given how many times I have to eat a day). I’m trying to stay away from the pain and spasm meds and the anti-nausea/emetic drugs. I have children’s ibuprofen and acetaminophen to dump down the tube. Thankfully, no crushing because it’s a liquid. Eat up! Also let the puppy out, because now he’s ready. He can’t just go out with the big guy and do his business in the early morning.

Plow through that, which takes about an hour, then unplug the tube and get everything washed. Do my laps through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and do my neck and shoulder exercises while I’m doing those. Strangely enough, it’s my leg that hurts more than my neck. Then again, the last big muscle surgery I had, for the lung cancer back in 2010, when they sliced open my back, hurt like a bitch, too, and took a long time to heal. But on we go.

By now it’s been several hours. Time to clean the larytube. Again.

Next up: water and coffee while working.  Every so often, I get up and do a few laps and shoulder/neck exercises, just to keep the blood flowing and so as not to have any lymphedema develop in my leg,  (or worse, in my neck). When the coffee and water are gone, unplug, wash everything. Again.

If it has not rained, now would be the time I brave the great outdoors to start the first watering zone. Yesterday, we had a massive thunderstorm roll over us, and it dropped just under an inch of rain, so today, we’re good. No watering.

Back to the desk, and work.

Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. I usually eat about six times a day. I’m also cleaning the larytube every three hours (or less, if I feel it’s all gunked up).

As you can imagine, this constant hooking up/unhooking/cleaning stuff just dominates my entire day. I’m sure a day will come that I’m not constantly scrubbing the larytube of gunk. At least I hope so.

My folllowups with the plastic surgeon and the ENT are both on the 14th, back to back. I should get my staples out then, and the next step will be a swallow test. I cannot wait to see if I can actually eat. Because if I went through all this and I still cannot eat, I will be incredibly pissed off.

No gunky, nasty pics this time, boys and girls. But for anyone stumbling across this because they are a laryngectomee or will be facing a total laryngectomy and permanent stoma: I’ll post some up later. Just so you know you are not alone, it can look really crappy and dried up and gross, and (I am not a doctor, remember) it will get better. At least to the point where you can go back to your life unless you’re a competitive swimmer or diver or something. That’s probably history. But for normal people, something akin to a normal life will probably work out.

Until next time, peeps: be well.

 

Back to (real) life

I’ve been home for a few days now, and I have to say: I never realized just how tiring my life is.

This is not to say that I’ve done everything around the ranch. I am still on light duty, but I have toured the chicken yard (and Mr Big, AKA Sir, is destined for removal, alas), taken out compost, walked a few laps around the giant front gardens (and today I’m doing the watering of the ones, because the promised rains did not come), and I have even cooked a bit.

As tired as all that makes me, though, there is nothing in the world more tiring than coughing. It is exhausting and it pisses me off. i think it’s also causing the ear and throat pain I’m having on the right side of my head.

(It is now the next day, May 5.)

This morning I made hashbrowns to go with the real people food breakfast. They received excellent reviews from the eaters: no additional seasoning needed, which, for one person in the eater category, is a minor miracle.  I think they could have been a little crispier, but I was running out of gas.

The real eater version (just a quick Southern breakfast – I am pretty sure they had bacon, too):

My version: eggs, hashbrowns, some weight gain powder, and a teaspoon of seedless raspberry preserves. Added some water and pureed it.

Everything was cleaned up shortly afterward, and I went to work. Then, I had a shower. Let me tell you how hard it is to shower when you cannot get your neck wet: very. But I did manage to wash my face and hair without drowning myself, so that’s a bonus.

As I was getting dressed, a gigantic thunderstorm cell rolled over the ranch, giving up about 3/4 inch of rain. Nice!

The rest of the day? Working. Work work work. Right now I’m having some butternut squash soup I made some months ago, and a faux margarita. No margarita mix on hand, so I used lemon and lime juice and a pinch of salt to go with the tequila and triple sec then added water until the total volume was two cups – gotta stay hydrated so my stoma crap doesn’t dry out.

Next up: I’ll show you some pics from my bathroom, which has been taken over by medical equipment. FFS.

Until next time, peeps: be well.

Who needs sedation?

Me, definitely, for the Big Op next Thursday, which I am classifying in the same category as the original surgery on my mouth and neck. I was waffling a bit between slightly ahead of that one versus slightly below it, but I do have to take into consideration the fact that I will have a functional esophagus at the end of this, versus going from surgery to chemo and radiation as I did back in 2005, and not being able to eat normally. I think that evens them out, really.

Tuesday I did the pre-admission stuff and collected my bag of papers, chlorhexadine wipe cloths, and this:

 

Apparently, we have evolved to trying to get people nutritionally ready for surgeries these days. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, because it makes sense, doesn’t it? We all know the routine: no eating or drinking regular meals after midnight, only enough liquid in the morning to take your meds, etc. Then, after surgery, you are in pain AND hungry.  But now, there’s a pre-op drink to take. Who knew carb loading before surgery was a thing? If it helps me escape the hospital earlier, though,  I’m down for it.

On Thursday I met with my gut guy and told him I think the balloon for my PEG has deflated, as it’s acting the same way it did before this one, with fluids escaping when I remove the feed tube that connects to the button, and it’s quite loose. The issue, of course, is that I don’t think the doctors who have blocked out seven hours of OR time for next week would be terribly thrilled with a procedure to replace it, even if we managed to squeeze it in next week before the Big Op.

Solution: replace it, sans sedation. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do next Tuesday.  He’ll pull this one out, insert a new, inflate the balloon, and send me on my way. Excellent! I hope not to continue to need the tube as we move forward, and if I can keep my nutrition up, there’s no need to keep the tube.

I also met with the speech therapist and the dietitian after that, hustling from the Southside to San Marco – only to get stuck by two trains two blocks from the cancer center. Thursday was not a good day to be on the road, since Friday was a holiday heading into easter weekend.

But I did make it, and the SLP (that’s speech therapy) showed me the trach tube and the button that snaps into it. She told me that life as a laryngectomee means a lot of supplies. I told her I’m used to that, with the feeding tube situation. I’ll be awash in trach/stoma supplies. Between this and the feeding tube supplies, I guess I’ll be amply prepared for the zombie apocalypse in that arena.

The dietitian recommended another thing to drink in the five days leading to the surgery. It is again by Ensure, and is called an “immunonutrition shake”.
It says 18g protein there on the front, but on the nutrition label, it says it has a whopping 45g carbs. Three of these for five days before surgery, which mean I’ll start working through these today. A carton has 330 calories, too, so I’ll probably be cutting back on my meal replacement shakes with these in the mix of things.

I still have things to do to prepare my world outside the hospital so I can deal with life inside the hospital for however long I’m kept captive. I know it’s unrealistic to think all the things I’d like to get done will be done. I’m trying not to stress over it, as I think building up stress is not ideal, and probably will detract from being as strong/fit as possible going into surgery.

That’s it for now. Last night (technically, the wee hours of this morning) I fell asleep at my desk. This morning (currently: 2:20 AM), I’d rather get that nap in my bed, so I am out. Until next time, peeps: be well.

 

Transitioning back to food

AKA: weaning from tube feeding

While my upcoming, next rather life-changing surgery of a total laryngectomy does have its downside, one of the upsides (beyond not drowning in my own bodily fluids or getting another round of pneumonia) will, hopefully, be the ability to eat by mouth again. This depends on learning to swallow again, courtesy of my reconstructed neck.

Honestly assessing myself here, I feel it is much more likely that I will be able to eat than it is I will be able to speak in any intelligible manner – that is, it will be even worse than my speech is now, because I simply do not have the infrastructure in my mouth for it. I’ve made peace with this even though it’s a bummer. There are all kinds of ways to communicate now, and written has always been my favorite way anyhow.

But now I am neck deep (so to speak) in researching moving off tube feeding and back to normal eating. As I suspected, it’s going to be transitional – after all, my body is not used to real food after years on a tube. The biggest problem that I foresee is water: as I don’t have a lot of spit, eating anything is going to require what will probably be a fairly high volume of water intake with it. There’s a reason doctors tell people on diets to drink a glass of water in the arena of half an hour before they eat. Water fills you. For a normal person, this is fine. For me, it may lead to fewer calorie intake, which in turn can cause me to lose weight I really need to stay on me. We’ll see how that works out.

I don’t know if I can express enough how excited I am by the prospect of eating for real after my throat heals enough for me to relearn swallowing. I used to be a foodie, and I wouldn’t really mind being one again – pretty much anything can be diced up or minced into a piece I could swallow whole with some water, as I won’t have any teeth to chew with. Hell, babies do it all the time, and I’m sure I could as well, at least when or until I’m able to prey my jaws open and get some dentures back in there (preferably with some kind of adhesive that will keep the bottom plate in, even though there’s no good ridgeline on that side thanks to the original, life-changing surgery 14 years ago).

I’m  a little nervous about the whole stoma thing. Will I really be able to go back to all the physically-demanding stuff I do now? This is the biggest question in my head at the moment, and I’ve been hunting around the web for people relating their experiences from the physical side of the equation, post-surgery. The hard part is this: beyond all this cancer and cancer-related bullshit (fuck you, cancer), I’m perfectly healthy, and quite active. It’s a worry for me that I think I can quash just by getting it understood in my head that this is just One More Thing. I overcame the rest, and I can get through this, too.

We are at T-9 days  now. I’m still cramming in all the stuff I need to get done before I take my little vacation (of a day, maybe two, since I’ll have my laptop there, and will probably be able to work once they kick me to a regular room from the ICU, or maybe even in he ICU, who knows). Today when I got up, I was just tired to the bone, and today wound up mostly being a rest type day. I pulled some weeds out of one of the frames in front garden north, and prepped it for being run over with the cultivator. I have two flats remaining in the barn that absolutely need to be kicked out to the rows. It was my plan this morning to get those done, but I did not, because I simply did not have the energy to do it. Today, though (as it’s 0120 on the 16th as I type this), after the preop stuff at the hospital, I’ll be looking to get those done in the afternoon and wipe it off the list.

I also need to do another split from hive #10 in the beeyard, as I found multiple queen cells when I inspected it on Saturday. One of the new packages (#8 hive) swarmed away on Saturday when they released their queen. I saw them up in a tree, about 15 feet off the ground, and while I probably could have gathered them back in without putting myself in danger, I had neither the energy or patience that day to capture them, and even if I had, I had the feeling they would go again anyway, so I let them go. The bees I’ve received from a couple of places have really pissed me off. First the Buckfast hives, and now one of the new packages, which I think was a Carniolan. I’m hoping the others stay put. It isn’t like there’s anything bad in the yard. I have Italians that are chugging right along, after all. They had boxes and wax-coated frames, and feed, but they really did not want to be in their boxes. I have (finally) a good queen whose genetics I like from a survivor bee from 2018, and I’ve already taken two splits so far off that hive (#10), and those daughter hives are banging. We may just be a place where the Italians are best suited.

Time to get some sleep. One of the things the hospital says in the packet they give you is to make sure you get some good rest. That isn’t always a given for me, so we’ll see how tonight goes. Until next time,peeps: be well.

Strawberry fields forever

Fifty strawberries out in the beds a few days ago. You’ll see nothing down the very center of the row: I’ll be putting sunflowers along that line. I have some mammoth gray seed that hopefully the bugs did not get to as it languished int he barn last year to use. Longtime readers of this here blog will have seen those before, towering nine or ten feet above the beds. They are truly impressive (both the longtime readers and the sunflowers, of course).

I cut down some of the cover crop in other rows and threw it into this row to act as a mulching agent. The sides will also be coming off this bed, as with all the others, to make it safe for the kidlets (and sometimes clumsy adults, aka, me, when I slice a finger or hand open on one because I’m not really paying attention).

I have another 25 strawberry crowns that arrived on Friday to put out, but they will go into the next bed (the one with the hoops at the top of the image). We are having a few days of “winter”, which to people in non-southern states might term “fall” or even “spring” because they live in weirdo land where stuff is frozen eight months of the year. I’m waiting for the temps to even out a bit so as to minimize transplant shock, even though strawberries seem not to care all that much. I care, and since it would be me out there in 50 degree temps doing it, what I say goes.

We went with June bearing varieties only in this order, as we like to be able to do the picking and processing all at once for efficiency reasons – because there is enough to pick on a daily basis when the season kicks in without having strawberries be part of that.  I do have some everbearing types still in the rows, so the kidlets – or adults who can eat – will have the chance to find a jewel  here or there and be able to taste a war strawberry, right from the plant.

I’m trying to determine a way to keep the strawberries off the ground that won’t involve spending a fortune on cutesy little plastic bowl type things and that will allow me to remove weeds that pop up. And they do pop up: the weeds had overrun this bed because I’d not gotten down any cover crop in it. Whatever I come up with, I’ll also be putting bird netting over the beds, to stop the birds – who literally have acres of other stuff to eat – from feasting on the berries.

I had the camera rolling while I put these in, but there were no incidents like me lopping off an appendage, so not posting it! All told, according to camera time, it took about half an hour to plant all fifty crowns, pick out the random weeds in the bed, and straighten the irrigation lines from the squirrels and birds walking/hopping through and disturbing the layout.

The above doesn’t look like much, but they now look like they’ve been there forever. Never fear: pics will follow. I didn’t have my phone on me (horrors!) when I was walking through the gardens with all the kidlets that were here the past couple days.

Until next time, peeps: be well.

Asparagus

On one fine day, I went to plant, and carried with me six mesh bags,

Full of crowns, just slightly damp, of asparagus, and per their tags,

They were both green and purple, yes, these things exist.

The old ones failed, due to my illnesses, and yet I persist

In tilting at windmills season after season

And must, at times, seem bereft of reason.

 

OK, crappy The Raven homage pounded out in under five minutes aside, I did indeed finish putting out the new asparagus crowns today. I think there was a total of 80, in both green (Jersey) and purple (Pacific). A few of them had already started putting up tiny new stalks while I had them in a bowl, waiting for the weather to get better – we actually reached freezing the other overnight, just briefly. Yesterday,  I did a quarter of them, and today the remainder. The stuff in the row here is cover crop I cut and dropped, to act as mulch.

I worked around the asparagus still in this bed, including this wee asparagus stalk I found forming right at the next 18″ distance from the previous crown I had put in.

This is a purple variety, one of the survivors of two years of neglect while I was having my pneumonia festivities. In a couple of days, it should be big enough to snap off and let someone (mom!) eat it. Yes, we eat (well, they eat) raw asparagus here. Cooked, too, but there’s just something about stuff right out of the garden. Brush off a bit of dirt, and down it goes.

After this, I headed to the back garden to put in snap beans. Pics od that to come.

Tomorrow: 50 strawberry plants to put in beside those survivors, some of which are already putting out fruit. The blueberries started flowering about 10 days ago, so it won’t be wrong before we’re pulling off handfuls of berries from those.

Unless something changes drastically here, we’ve blown past “winter” with, I’d say, probably five overnights where the temps dipped to freeing or below for a significant period of time, and gone right into spring (and even summer, since tomorrow is forecasting a high of 87F).

Until next time, peeps: be well.

“Violet, You’re turning violet, Violet”

Ah, yes. Violet the gum chewer who did something stupid at Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

While I might not have a three course meal with blueberry pie in gum form, I do have blueberries here at the ranch. Well, potential blueberries.


One of the blueberry bushes is taller than me.

That’s fine, though. I’ll haul a ladder out to pick them if I have to.

We’ll be awash in berries in the very near future. They freeze extremely well, so we won’t lose any of the harvest. I need to prune these back in the fall. They’ve had a wee bit of lack of management over the past few years, for obvious reasons. The same goes for the blackberries and raspberries: their canes need to be cut back after this season. I also need to run another trellis wire on my posts to train those. one more thing on the todo list!

Speaking of todo lists, I have been putting a dent in mine. I transferred all the “work” work stuff into a journal, and I’m working on getting the other items transferred over.

The only thing on my lists I have not gotten to is the reading. By the time I finish doing the normal daily things and some of the items on the lists, I am dog tired. i’m falling asleep at my desk as I try to get this done, so time to wrap it up. Tomorrow is another day filled with possibility. Until next time, peeps: be well.

 

The lost day

There’s an old movie called The Lost Weekend. Ray Milland stars as Don, an alcoholic writer willing to pawn anything or steal from anyone  to get a few bucks to buy whisky. (It’s an excellent movie and you should watch it – Milland rightfully won an Oscar for his part in the film, and Billy Wilder took home a Best Director statuette.)

I had a dream the other night where Robert Redford (of all people) for some reason asked me what I really, really wanted to do. I had no answer, which was odd, because I do know I want to write and run my business and have my dogs and my bees and my chickens, and that’s what I’m doing. I don’t recall the actual context around the question in the dream – was I someone else, or myself, doing something other than I am now? Maybe.

Anyhow, I missed yesterday’s blog appointment because I was dealing with a massive issue with work that I’m not going to go into except to say it sucked. Royally.  Today, we’ve dealt with two majo spamming issues related to peoples’ contact forms on their web sites. For the love of whatever you hold holy,  put a fucking captcha on your forms. And DO NOT enable any “send a copy of this to yourself, submitter” crap. It’s an invitation to arbitrarily insert anyone’s email address and spammers will find it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but they will, eventually, unless you secure it.

There ends your tech lesson for the day.

The chicks continue to live by the tenets of their lives, which is to eat, drinks, poop, and sleep, in any order they feel like it. At least they know what they really, really want to do. The meat birds, bred to get big, very quickly, are certainly living up to it. After a mere week, they are twice the size of their layer bird companions. Some of them just sit in front of the feeder and eat, sleeping in the same spot. When they go out on pasture, I’ll only be feeding them once during the day. What they eat in the daylight hours will be it until the next day. Letting them eat freely 24/7 for all their time will be too hard on their bodies, and they’re not terribly good about reining in their eating habits.

Got a start today on dry fitting the pieces together for the chicken tractor the meat birds will call home. It’s probably too large for the ten of them, but it’s easier to get more chickens down the line and have the space available than it is to decide to get more in a batch and have to scramble to make a new, larger tractor for them.

We’ll also have the mobile layers to move around the place. At first, there will only be five in there, but we would be able to put more if needed, and if the whole meat bird thing works out, I’d really like to get some turkeys next year in addition to more meat birds, to have for the holidays. And they would be hanging out with the layer birds, so it would be nice to be able to move them with the layers and let them range alongside.

Tomorrow, I get to pour barium down my tube and go get my guts scanned. I can’t eat anything, either, which is why I’m about to have my last meal, as it were, just after I post this. It’s gonna be a thrill, I’m sure.

Until next time, peeps: be well.

Weeds everywhere

And cover crop arrival! 60 pounds of cover crop:

This cover crop consists of: bell beans, vetch, oats, and peas, and I ordered a separate back of buckwheat. This is going into the rows as we pull things out to add biomass/organic matter back to the rows.  If you need cover crop seed, or anything else ag-related, and want a good deal (and fast shipping!) hit up Hearne Seed. They’re terrific, and we’ve never had an issue in all the years we’ve been using them.

I went out and started down one side of a row I weeded last week. While doing that, and looking at the walking aisles, I realized something.

We’re going to have to pull out all that mulch and just go with the commercial grade weedblock. In the picture there is chamberbitter, AKA mimosa weed. It is everywhere – in the aisles, in the beds – and it’s damn hard to get it pulled good to the root in the mulch, Under the mulch is actually some not-commercial landscape weedblock, and these things do not care at all. As I was pulling them, listening to the satisfying rrrrrip  (after I pulled a second time because the first time  the top portion of the stem snapped, grrrr), I realized they had grown their roots right through that not-commercial weedblock, which was part of the issue with the tops snapping off when I pulled.

I saw a homesteader video where some folks put down exactly the commercial stuff I have, and it seems to work really well for them. I was concerned that it might get very hot – it is black, after all – but the woman in the video said she goes out in bare feet on it all the time. They are not in Florida, but this mulch gets really hot anyway, so if it does get really warm, we’ll already be used to it.

I also decided on another major change: taking out the frame on each row and just having a regular raised bed. I decided this for a few reasons, but the main one is: the edges of the metal sides are sharp. I’ve cut myself numerous times, and we can’t let the kidlets in the garden unsupervised while the frames are in there. I think the dirt will all stay where it is – there’s a smaller version of these larger ones behind the asparagus bed, and it’s still there after ten years – mainly because I haven’t shoveled it out of there, since there were still asparagus plants in it. I get the plants out (except one) and into the main asparagus bed, so moving that dirt out is on the fall list of chores.

Speaking of asparagus: it’s in desperate need of weeding (the strawberries, too – they’re just buried in mimosa weed, poor things). I’m the only one who weeds the asparagus, as it’s far too easy to pull an asparagus plant while pulling the weeds.

You can see at the upper center and the left there are asparagus plants completely enveloped by weeds. It takes patience and a sure hand to remove the weeds without uprooting the asparagus. The one at center right is a baby I rescued from the invaders.

This is the asparagus on the left in the previous picture – one of them, I should say. There are several coming up from this little circle.

My sister and I have a deal, and we’ve had it for years: I will pull weeds, because she hates weeding (as any normal person would), and she will bag them up for the yard waste pickup when she’s over at the ranch. I try to make sure she has plenty to do.

There are more piles like this in the north garden. The only problem is that it keeps raining, putting a damper on bagging. We’ll get there, though. Sometimes it all looks so impossible, so disheartening, and I curse getting sick at the most important time of the season. But then I tell myself I couldn’t control that, not really, and now it’s just one step after another after another after another: get it done. And so we will.

Until next time, peeps: be well.