Farm Realities, Trusting the Lord.

We have a tomato harvest due today.  I love harvest day!!  Our little tomatoes are so pretty!  I love to look through the greenhouse right before harvest and see all the pretty red jewels just waiting for me to put them in my basket.  TWS had bought me some incredible baskets:  they are a strong bent metal lined with burlap and have sturdy handles.   They are a little bit of extra delight in my chores :)

Oh, but our poor tomato plants!  They are rife with septoria and such and look pitifully sick and weak.  I am honestly not sure how long they will last.  It is an eye opener--this was supposed to be part of our income, and they are just so sick.  The Lord is taking care of us, and I am not worried.  I just am a little sorrowed.  We have been so excited to be tomato farmers, but we are also learning the realities of such:  farming can be heartbreaking at times.

The problem has been the weather.  It is either too wet, giving rise to disease, or too hot in the greenhouse, which makes the plants spindly and stop producing fruit.  The heat we might be able to manage if we can get another shade cloth, but the disease has taken over the greenhouse.

I do have to say, though, that I am glad it is septoria and not another disease.  Septoria leaves the tomatoes alone for the most part, just attacking the leaves.  So our tomatoes are still pretty enough to sell as long as the plant can hold out.  Other diseases are so incredibly devastating that the soil has to be extensively treated.  So while we are sorrowed over our poor plants, we know that it could be much worse.  We might lose this crop, but we at least will not lose the ability to grow tomatoes, God willing.

Organic growing is easy on one hand:  there is not a lot you can do.  On the other hand, when a disease takes over, there is NOT a lot you can do.  The harvest is so precarious that we have decided that for our own food, for our own garden, we are not going organic.  We will as much as we can, but we also will not hesitate to hit our garden hard and strong if there is something about to destroy it.  With the greenhouse, this is not an option, as those tomatoes are for sale as organic.  I am thankful for the consultant that the main farm has hired.  He has already given us many ideas.  Though it might be too late for this bunch of plants, if we have to start over, I will be glad for his guidance for changing the soil and such.

Just dropping by for a chat....

Good morning my sweet friend!

It is a GORGEOUS morning here, weather wise.  We have been having the most unbelievably unseasonable weather of late!  Normally the highs for the south in August are in the 90's.  There have been some days where I do not think it got past 75! 

Ever since we moved here the weather has been odd.  I am not at all complaining about it though :).  While I do love heat and humidity, even when it is cool here, there is no chill in the air.  We have had plenty of rain (much more than normal--July was the third wettest on record!), many thunderstorms for me to enjoy, and everything is growing lushly.  The cool weather has been a blessing for TWS as he has been working outside in the garden.  It is much more comfortable, and safer, for him.

I am ready for some sunshine though :).

The poor babies have the bug I had last week.  Lots of sore throats and coughs and pitiful peaked faces.  I am thankful I got it first and am relatively over it enough that I can tend to them.  For us, we drink lots of cokes for the throat and tummy, watch movies, and generally take it super easy.  This is one of the blessings of homeschooling--the ability to take time off when it is necessary without worrying about being behind!

I hope you have a blessed day, my sweet friend!

Peppers

Hello sweetie!!

I am slowly getting back into my routine after being weighed low by a bug.  I went out to harvest some peppers off of a plant that we had bought.  All in all, I think we actually bought 47 pepper plants.  Yes, 47.  :)  We joke "if it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing".  TWS loves to make his own seasoning pepper blends and I cook with bell peppers often.  Basically we just kept putting pepper plants in our cart until a slight but pervasive sense of plant-gluttony got to the "can't be ignored" level. :)

 

It is a pretty plant :)

The day's harvest.  We ended up with 1 jalapeño, a few bells, some hot banana peppers, and the misc peppers.

Peppers.  We do not know what kind they are. Too stubby for cayenne, not hot enough for boonie peppers.  No discernible flavor for a gourmet pepper.  However, when I need a bit of heat, these will do nicely.

Chopped the stems off.  The chopped stems looked very pretty to me--like Christmas ornaments or earrings :)

A tentative taste.  I was not sure how hot these peppers would be.  Turns out they were relatively hot, but not unbearably so.  However, they were ONLY hot--no pepper flavor, just heat.  Well, that is ok, but I wanted a more complex flavor, not just a hot sensation.  So I added in some hot banana peppers that were milder but had more actual flavor.

Hot banana peppers.  Probably the same heat as a mid-range jalapeño.  I sliced some for freezing, but chopped some for drying.

Here are my peppers ready for dehydrating.  My toaster oven has a dehydrate setting that works wonderfully for anything in small batches.  It took....hmm... maybe 2-3 hours?  

 After drying and cooling.  Ready to grind with my marble mortar and pestle.  I love this little thing!  It was inexpensive, made of marble, and pretty as it can be :)

 

It was easy to get the peppers to the "fish flake" level of ground.  Getting it all to powder did not quite work as the seeds did not break down easily.  I am not concerned...I can put it in a coffee grinder we have for this purpose if need be.

 

A little more ground....

 

These were the jalapenos and the hot banana peppers.  They went in a baggie of "seasoning peppers" in the freezer.

 

These are the bell peppers.  They went into the freezer as well.

I find pepper plants extremely economical if one can get even a few peppers off of them.  We got such a late start this year that I am not sure how many we will harvest, but this was a nice, small harvest for getting bacon on one's feet.  And I am certain that inhaling all the hot pepper powder was probably good for knocking this cold :)

I am eager to find and plant my boonie pepper seeds from Guam.  Those are an extremely hot pepper--a single pod can nicely warm a pan of lasagna.  There is a wonderful sauce called finadene sauce from Guam that I cannot wait to make.  I am sure I can make it with regular hot peppers, but I am convinced that only a real boonie pepper will do :).

What are you pulling from your garden, my friend? 

Catching Up...

My sweet friend!

I am sorry that it has been so long since we last chatted.  Time just ran away from me.  The Boy and I traveled over to Louisiana to visit and pick up a few things.  It was a quick trip:  down one day, stay one day, return one day.

Then, soon after, I managed to catch a bug.  It is not surprising--the trip was fun but exhausting and I was a bit run down.  However, today was the first day that I have managed to feel a bit more myself :).  Regrettably, Precious is coming down with the bug, so I see a lot of "How To Train Your Dragon" (our go-to "feeling too ill to sleep" movie) in our future.

Plus, honestly, I have been in a quiet mood.  Oh it was not that I did not want to chat with you,  your visits delight me!  It is just that sometimes little comments there, little thoughts here, little bits and pieces of humanity and struggle and contemplation make one quiet and still.  I am sure you understand.  

However, I think I am at the end of that moment of reclusion and ready to get back into our chats.   Thank you, my dear sweet friend, for your patience.

And I have so much to acquaint you with!!  I made grape jelly with our own grapes (what a trial that was, but it ended so wonderfully!).  I am dehydrating peppers from our garden.  I found out how to distinguish water snakes from moccasins (probably not the most fun task, but good to know when you live in the south).  We have planted and tended and bought and sold :)

I will post much soon!