In which I Detail The Emotional Rollercoaster of Tending to my Garden...

Presented to you below is a cycle of emotions I've noticed in my gardening experience over the course of my gardening career; I'm curious if anyone can relate.  Here is the sequence:

1) End of winter: "OH, boy, oh, boy; I'm a farmer, I'm a gardener! Can't wait to get my garden in!"

2) Spring: "Planting is really fun, I'm a gardener!"

3) Mid Spring: "Weeding sucks! I don't know about this gardening stuff"

4) Late Spring: "Watering and forever weeding really sucks!  I kinda don't think this gardening stuff is worth it!"

5) Early Summer: "Perpetually watering and forever weeding REALLY sucks; those 3 okra I've brought in so far are sooo not worth it.  I am NOT doing this again next year.  I've got so many better things to do with my time."

6) Mid Summer (the first time I have to use both hands to bring in the produce): "OH, boy, oh, boy; I'm a farmer, I'm a gardener! Can't wait to get my garden in next year!"  For me, that was yesterday.  I love to have a bountiful harvest; too much ain't enough.

The Old Guy (as we call him; my dad, a real farmer, and old and wise to boot) told me during this year's wheat harvest that often, the most important thing to most farmers is "production" and they can easily lose track of "profits".  I didn't ask; I only thought about it in retrospect, but took that to mean that the answer to "did you have a good year" usually lies in how much was produced, regardless of how much money was made or how much was spent on fuel and fertilizer.  In other words, sometimes you can lose track of why you are doing what you are doing. 

I see this in myself, but it is so much less painful to use my kids as an example. I tasked my younger daughter to clean off the concrete slab with the water hose.  After watching her aimlessly spray for a while, I asked her what it was she was doing.  Her response was "you told me to spray this concrete."  I then clarified to her that she was supposed to be cleaning the concrete; spraying it was only a tool in order to achieve the end result.  

"Oh...

Yeah... 

That is different."

Of course the implications are enormous in my own life; it got me to thinking about how much I do just because its "what I do" or its "how I do it," or even more unfortunate, the reason for doing things pivots on how I was feeling at the moment.

As we sow, so shall we reap.  True enough, but in most gardens, it involves so much more than sowing in order to reap; sowing is the fun part, the flashy part, but its by far the least of it.  Its the tending that really matters in the gardens I am hoping to enjoy the fruits of; the ones growing inside my house.  Right now it seems we have a lot of watering and weeding going on in our little gardens.

My desire then, is to be more focused on the end goal, the reward, less on my immediate circumstances. In doing so, I'm hoping that the perpetual watering and the forever weeding can become less of a burden, and more of a tool we have available to us in order to achieve our harvest. As a gardener, yes.  But more as a believer and follower of God, as a Parent, yes, and last but not least, as the Privileged, Exclusive and Rightful Lover of "Herself".

O, Wasp! Where is Thy Sting?

Yesterday was an auspicious day, a very momentous day; one that required a trip to town by Herself and I in order to commemorate it in indelible ink upon the very souls of our young offspring by way of etching memories using the medium of Ice Cream and Cones, and Peanut Butter Chocolate Syrup.

But I can see that this will require some background; so I warm to my task.  I will start with a confession; I am an envious person. Worse, even,  I envy my own offspring!  "How so?" you may ask; I will tell you.  You may not believe this, but until yesterday I have never been stung by a wasp! EVER!

For some reason, wasps have never particularly enjoyed my company.  I don't know if it is due to pheromones, bad attitude, my alpha nature, or just my bad Body Oder, but it just doesn't happen.  All my children get stung around our little farmlet,; every summer it seems that nearly all of them get stung.  Not me; I'm the odd man out.  I've lived in the country nearly my whole life, and nobody spends more time outside than I do; but No Dice.  So I started expressing my disappointment to my kids for the last several years, and being the adoring children that they are, and knowing my deep longing to be stung, they always come and tell me the likely spots with the largest nests.  It seems we have an inordinate amount of wasp nests around our little farm for some reason; like I say, the kids are always coming up stung, but anyway, I'll follow the kids over to the garden shed, picnic table, garden fence, etc and grab a short stick on the way and just knock down any old wasp nest I see.

It quite infuriates the Wasps; they dive bomb my head and buzz me angrily as the kids watch from a safe distance, rooting for the Wasps.  But there is never any consummation of that gleeful intercourse between man and insect that seemingly everyone has enjoyed but me, until yesterday that is.

I was in the pasture picking up square bale twine from bales the newly pastured pigs had torn up when I noticed (being a naturally observant sort of chap) several bumble bees flying in and out of an old bale laying on the ground.  I'm no rocket scientist (like my father-in-law) but I could put two and two together! I knew there was only one thing to do.  I kicked that old straw square bale apart!  It turns out that Bumble Bees are kind of aggressive!  An entire phalanx of angry Bees swarmed out. One big dude buzzed me several times and when I didn't leave, he finally zapped me right on the shoulder.  That was great and all, but he acted like he might kind of like to continue to do it some more.  I was completely unarmed at the time, so I ended up whipping my shirt off and knocking him to the ground and stomping on him.  

Ahhh!  How sweet it is!  I finally get to join that exclusive, elusive "People Who Have Been Stung by Things With Stingers Club."  So, as I said, after we ate supper, I called the neighbors, invited them over for my celebration and me and Herself jumped in the truck and tore off to town to get the celebratory Ice Cream and Cones.  It was something of a hurried and raucous celebration, but you know, any excuse to eat ice cream is a good one...

I will say, that the kids pointed out a couple of things, though.  Firstly, they said that technically, the Bumble Bee isn't really a wasp, but since it has a reputation of being worse than a wasp, they were generous enough to call it good enough.  And secondly, even though nobody audibly doubted my story, everyone was wholly unimpressed with my welt that I had.  One comment I heard was "I've got chigger bites worse than that!!!" And I lost my chance now, I already killed all the rest of the Bumblebees; Oh, well, its hard to impress kids these days... 

But at least I no longer need envy them!

2013 Missouri Vacation

Earlier this summer, Herself came out of the house while I'm building the fence around the "back 40" and tells me she wants a pop up camper so that we can go camping.  She makes a convincing argument; togetherness time for our "tween" girls and younger boys, and both of us really feeling like we have this really brief window in time with these kids- and that window was wide open, but wouldn't be for long.  (Since this conversation we have really had some paradigm shifts in parenting- maybe more on that later)  Herself thought that camping trips would be a good way of doing that.  Neither of us are wild about sleeping on the ground or a tent, so that is what I wound up getting. An older, used Pop-up camper.

 So, we left Sunday morning and headed to The Lake of the Ozarks for a little summer vacation.   We had never been before; Herself, of course, did her usual vast amount of research and preparation, ready to eat meals, agenda, itinerary, scheduling, etc, etc.  So maybe I feel a little guilty about it, but my preparations involving this vacation can be boiled down to this: I bought the camper, then I hooked up to the camper when it was time to leave.  Oh, and yeah, I carried some stuff to the truck...  It is such a blessing to be married to a VERY well organized person!  We lacked nothing, save her camera, which seems to be her only Achilles Heel.  So all camera shots are with phone camera. (It always makes mad to not have her camera)

Anyway, we made it safely with camper trailer to Lake of the Ozarks State Park, on the East and southish side of the lake.  If you haven't ever seen it, Google it, its kind of amazing.  Of course it isn't natural, it was a river dammed up in the late 20's, covering up and destroying dozens of tiny towns, and according to one local, 720 different cemeteries. It powers a hydro electric plant, so of course we had to go check that out!

It wasn't all just field trip for daddy, though.  We did fun stuff for everybody.  We visited some amazing Ozark caverns, (couldn't take our camera in; dumb bats!) We did some shopping at some tourist traps,

and we went to a movie (at the theater!!!) Monster's University, the prequel to Monsters inc.

And of course, we did a lot of swimming, the water was great! refreshing but not too cold.

And we spend a lot of time at the camp, cooking, eating, etc.

One other high-light was we went over these 2 "swinging bridges".  They were really old; the first one was made with 2x6's with 1x12's laid down where the tires were supposed to go.  It was really scary and intense, I told the kids that I wouldn't have done that in any other country but the USA, as it looked totally unreliable.    It was also quite noisy; the growling and groaning of the boards was quite disconcerting.  The second one was way worse; it was shorter and gave the appearance of looking stouter.  As I began to drive across it, I said "oh, this one is steel structured", but nope!  It just had roofing panels laid perpendicularly across it!  That one really popped and squawked!! It was soo loud outside the truck, but inside?  Deathly quiet!!

That was our trip in a nutshell. It was a quick one, and it does seem like it was quite abbreviated, but I need to ease into these changes slowly.  I don't get off the farmlet very often, and its kind of hard to get away from my livestock.

Here are some more random pictures:

LOTS of pictures of Mr. Take My Picture Daddy, Please.

Take my Picture, Daddy Please, again.

Summertime is upon us.

So Herself was busting my chops yesterday about not blogging; like so much of my life, I do it in bursts, rather than slow and steadily. We have had  quite a few changes around here since I blogged last, and I do need to catch up with chronicling some things.  Right before Jonathon and Michaela returned to China, Jonathon and I decided that I just needed to take the plunge and get some sheep.  That's fine and all, but what are sheep without fence? Somebody else's sheep, that's what.  So Jonathon and I proceed to create fence around the "back 40" of our place.  It was really fun to show Jonathon all the details of building fence that I learned as a boy: making (the visible part at least) really straight, posts uniform distance apart, and the same height, and actual fencing nice and tight. Oh, and corner posts really strong.  All of this was pretty foreign to him culturally, but made perfect sense to his personality.  He really got into it.  Unfortunately, we only got about 1/10th of it done while he was here; unfortunately for him, and unfortunately for me, as well.

Anyway, I got it done by myself; well, I had a lot of help from my kids.  Wifey encouraged me to take the kids with me, and I sort of thought that they wouldn't be that much help to build fence, but I was really amazed at how much help they really were to just have around.  That, and I have always found my own company exceedingly boring, so its always nice to have company.  But I got it completed after several weeks of obsessing about it every evening and all weekend long, and brought home 2 meat sheep that I bought from a friend.  I just bought what she had; one Katahdin, and one Dorper, both ewes. Then last week I threw the family in the truck and ran down to Ark City and bought a pair of lambs, one ewe lamb, and one Ram lamb; they are called Painted Desert Sheep. Here is a picture of my lamb's sire:

The coloration is different; mine is nearly all black, but the horn structure is what is impressive, so I thought I should show a picture of what he will look like rather than what he does look like.  The DPS's are also a hair sheep, so they don't need sheared, same as my other sheep. They are a meat sheep as well.

This weekend, I put a small gate into the back pasture area from the chicken pen so that the chickens could get out and forage in the pasture.  I always liked the idea of free range chickens, because it truly changes the taste and color of the eggs, but Herself has always been opposed to chicken poop all over the sidewalks and porches, (me too, actually) but couldn't bring myself to build pasture fence just for chickens, now they have it! They are really tearing up the bugs and greenery and loving it!

I was thinking about how hands off the sheep are; I don't need to feed them at all, when I got to thinking that I will have to feed them over the winter when all the weeds and grasses are dormant.  So I was considering planting a little area of wheat so that they can pasture it off in the winter and reduce my out-of-pocket expenses.  I had about given up on the idea, because I don't have the equipment to till the soil of that large of an area, nor do I have the motivation to till it with my rototiller or shovel, when I remembered that I have 5 little tilling machines!

They don't look like super motivated farm workers; I realize that.  But when I had them in my garden prior to planting it, they were sure little tilling machines! I've sectioned an area off and fenced it; but I really feel like I need a super duper good fencer to make sure they don't wander off into the neighbor's pasture, so I'm waiting to heal up a little from buying all the sheep before I make another farm oriented purchase before I turn them loose in my new little area. I think it will work out well; one doesn't plant wheat or rye until the fall, and I usually butcher the hogs around October, so it seems like it will work out swimmingly.  I am really interested in this concept of pasturing hogs, I could see this going somewhere.

The oldest boy is interested in turkeys; tonight we're going to do a little research to see which breed would be best fitted for our farmlet.

Oh, and by the way, the last batch of Root Beer turned out great!

burn out

The strangest thing happened to me this morning; I woke up about 3:00 am (this is not the strange part) and was thinking about what I was going to do around the farm today. Then I realized that I was mistaken and that I thought today was Saturday, but was actually Friday.  When I realized that, I really was discouraged about going in to work.  That is the strange part.  I never don't want to go in to work.  Its not that I always want to do everything that I do at work, and its not like I don't love my time off, but over all, I love what I do.  I think that this was the first time that I actually did not want to go to work just as an over all feeling in the nearly 5 years that I have owned my own business (or businesses).
In my Sunday School class, we have been talking about Christian disciplines.  Oddly enough, writing a journal was the first on the list.  That seems strange to me; I guess I can see the merit in it, but when I think of Christian disciplines, I think of things listed in the Bible like fasting, regular prayer, meeting regularly with the saints, etc.  But whatever, my blog needs some attention anyway, and I can't stand to pick up a pen and move it around at a snails pace, so I guess this morning I will use this as my format, and journal about my work discouragement.  So here is my analysis:

Work:
I push myself pretty hard. That's how things get done, is by me pushing. I don't push hard all the time, all day long, and I don't feel like a work-a-holic or anything; in 5 years, I've only worked one or two Saturday mornings, never on Sunday, and I'm home by 5:30 or my wife knows about it by 5:00. Its true that I go in pretty early some days, and catch up on office stuff, but I figure on days like today that I am up anyway, it doesn't even count as time away from my family.  If they are all asleep, what difference does it make?  But anyway, it feels like I seldom turn down a job or a responsibility.  I am not at all opposed to delegating, and have excellent people to delegate to; but feel like if I have a few days that all my responsibilities come home at once to roost, it is really over whelming!  I guess that was what yesterday was about.  Thursday, I personally dealt with: gutters, gutter covers, fascia repair soffit covers, window well covers, siding, screen replacement, patio covers, bidding large commercial awnings, pouring small concrete footings, window replacements, and then on the roofing end of it we had to deal with a standing seam metal roof, asphalt shingles, structural metal panels skylight panels, and perhaps worst of all: helpless, hapless insurance adjusters that want to argue about details of an upper-end "designer" metal shingle that they admittedly don't know anything about, but still argue when you answer their questions of "how did you come up with this number" with the statement "I know this because I was on the roof the LAST TIME THIS STINKING ROOF WAS DONE!!!" THAT'S HOW I KNOW IT, how many of these $900.00 per square roofs have you installed?  Its a little different when you're standing on the roof doing it than reading about it." (I didn't really say all that last part). Anyway, the list goes on: then body shop stuff, whether to advertise or not, and a firearm transfer... is that all? Man, I'm already tired.  I guess on top of all this is maybe since Gary has been gone so much lately.  I kind of feel like he doesn't have that much involvement in anything but his newest business, but maybe in his absence I've come to the realization that he does more than I think?

Home:
Home is generally much simpler, much easier.  However in the last couple of weeks, I've been pushing pretty hard here too.  I've been building fence like a fiend, cause the sheep were coming, whether the fence was done or not.  Evenings and all weekends, after doing all the chores of the existing livestock (I don't do the rabbits); the good part of this is that thanks to Wifey, I've realized how much help my kids can be; if they are just outside with me and willing to help.  So building fence a planning the next project,  the back porch or deck area.  We have live here for around 7 years using a rickety trailer house style portable stairs to access the back door.  Well, mama's gonna get a new deck!  Maybe.  We will see how much it costs.  I bought a pop up camper to go on vacation, I need to take the time to mess with it and see what needs done to it before we leave with it.

The main thing is this; none of this normally feels like work to me.  I don't feel really ambitious or like I want to take over the world or anything (necessarily, I mean, I would be fine with that...) its just that, firstly, I thrill at getting things done, finishing things, and taking on new challenges, and secondly, have really been forced to diversify my company/companies in order to keep things going as our economy drooped and insurance work dried up.

In which I describe one failure and one success...

First, I'll start with the good news: Canning the meat was (this time) a success!  No nasty accidents like last time.   Notice shiny new canner below, particularly note that the lid is sporting a pressure gauge. Also I read the instructions, instead of watching some loser on YouTube do it, which I found to be very helpful, because I learned that I did nearly EVERYTHING wrong!!!

 Below is the finished product:  One quart jar of canned pork.  Bring it on, Zombies! I was almost giggling watching the bubbles still coming to the surface, and listening for the "pop" of the lid.

And, now, an update on the Root Beer Blog:  BIG failure: After continuing to mess with it, we finally got it to ferment, but then it tasted less like a Root Beer and more like something that we scooped up out of a Root Puddle.  FAIL!  I think that maybe in this case I tried too hard, I should find a simpler recipe...  I'll try again.  Maybe I should try the finished product before I post the recipe; I could see myself reading my own blog and thinking, "I'll try that!" and failing all over again.

meat canning disaster

Lest people think that I imagine my life as one endless string of wonderful  successes after another, I have a story to share about my Saturday morning.
You see, in my journey to becoming ready for the Zombie Apocalypse, or whatever catastrophe may befall us, I've decided that I need to resurrect the fine art and science of canning, specifically, canning meat.
I mentioned in my last post going to the Kingsley's place last week to get my little piggies.  Anna gave Herself a couple quarts of venison meat that she had canned.  That really got my juices going, and I decided that this is something that I should be interested in, because with raising 5-6 pigs, I could save a bunch of money if I butchered them myself, and that could be the answer to the problem of not having enough freezer space.  I could butcher a hog, smoke half or a quarter of it, make some premium roasts or steaks, and if I messed any cuts up, being the raw rookie that I am, I could make sausage out it or just can it!
So, buttressed with this flash of brilliance, I proceeded to research obsessively  about pressure cooker, canning meat, etc.  In doing this, I also realized that there is a WHOLE culture of people who also obsess about being prepared in the event of disaster, and they even have labels and names for it all.  Amazing what you can find on YouTube... Maybe some of you have heard of "Preppers"?  I guess it's a TV show; I had no idea, I've still not seen it.  And something else about shtf.  Whatever that is, some sub-culture thing I guess; anyway, it's not like I want to join a club earning merit badges or anything, I'm just interested in taking care of my own.
So, in a rare moment of forethought, I did decide to give it a trial run before I killed a pig and went "whole hog".

And this is what it looks like:













Cube the meat and stuff it in the jar; it's not Rocket Science or so I thought, anyway.  I won't go into a detailed explanation of how to do all this stuff since if you read it to the end, you will realize I'm no one to take canning advise from.
I borrowed my mom's pressure cooker and put the thawed roast that I had crammed into the jar into it, turned the heat on, let it get to boiling, plopped the weight on top and walked away.  I came back into the shed where I had it all set up and cooking to check on it several times.


















I could hear the steam releasing, just barely "chuckling" along; it sounded like this: "shhhhhhhhhh, chick, shhhhhhhhhh, chick, shhhhhhhhhh, chick, shhhhhhhhhh, chick..."  I told my self that I remembered my mom using it as a kid and it sounded faster, like there was more steam coming out, like this: "chick, chick, chick, chick..." So, I turned it up.  About 5 minutes later I'm standing there with my neighbor admiring my handiwork, when that old pressure cooker started talking: "BAMMMMMM!" because that pop off valve blew and steam blasted out of the little hole! It just kept coming and coming.  From the floor to the top of my shed is 22 feet, I'm sure that geyser would have blasted twice that height if it was outside. That's a good way to humidify a place in a hurry!  I hurried over and shut off the heat, but Wow! what an experience, I bet you never catch me bending over that crazy thing while its cooking...
Oh, well, back to the drawing board, I guess.
Oh, and as of right now, it seems that my Root Beer was a dismal failure as well, it seems (not done yet) that slight fermentation process (kind of a yogurty sort of fermentation) isn't going to happen, so it will be completely flat instead of naturally carbonated.  :(

Strike 2...