BABY FRUITS!

Remember that TWS brought me five citrus trees?  Well two of them are fruiting, praise the Good Lord!

The orange had blooms on it when we got it, so that was not surprising.

The grapefuit didn't though, and now it has started to produce blooms and even some baby grapefruit!  Surprisingly, the blossoms of the grapefruit smell even better than orange blossom.  Grapefruit smells more purely jasmine or gardenia.  The scent was strong enough in the bathroom where I keep it that the perfumed cloud actually wafted out of the door and delighted your nose when you strode past.

Now to keep them happy so the fruit develops.

Farm Life Realities

Morning friend!

Well this has been a hard summer for our farm.  Our wheat experiment totally failed (suddenly at the last minute, the wheat all molded).

One of our large grape vines has black spot and we have lost at least 4 gallons already.

Our blueberries took a huge hit from the heat and dryness last month and we have lost most of them.

It was too wet to get our flint corn in the ground in time.

All but three of our SIX HUNDRED onions failed.

The sweet corn is marginal at best.

We lost NINE orchard trees this year.












But like someone said, it is always a good year for something....

Our potatoes came in early and well.

Our new strawberry bed did fabulously.

Our muscadines are leafing out to beat the band.

Our green beans are producing like mad.

I have learned, though, that if one wants to actually live off of what one grows, to follow the Redundancy of Three that is used in preparedness planning:  three times what you need and three different sources.

What this means is that if one is growing, say, something to provide starch, plant three different types (say wheat, corn, potatoes) and three times as much as you will need to get to the next growing season (so if both wheat and corn fail, you still have enough potatoes to get to the next growing season). 

Of course that is if one is actually trying to grow ALL their own food.  Thank the Good Lord that we have grocery stores.

                             One of the grape vines that did not get blackspot (at least not yet).

Orchard Work

Good morning sweetie!

The other day I noticed that I needed to do some serious pruning.  The downside of having trees and berries is that there are a lot of bacteria, bugs, and fungi that try to ruin your dreams of award winning fruit preserves at the county fair :).

We returned a dead tree to a local greenhouse and while I was there, I discovered that one of my pears had fireblight.  This is a disease that comes through the blossoms.  Next year, we will start a proactive spraying campaign, but there are no more blooms this year, so this should not be a problem.  What fireblight does is make the leaves, then the stem, look like it was burnt up.  Sure enough, that is what one large stem and a few shoots on my pear tree looked like.

With my berries, I just noticed that some of the branches were dead or dying back.  I am not sure what caused that, but trimming the dead off could not hurt, no matter what.  However, I also had to make sure I did not transfer disease from one plant to another.  I attacked this like it was a veritable Berry Ebola ;)

I started out with a trash bag, clippers, latex gloves, and disinfectant.  I disinfected the clippers and my gloves between EACH bush and tree that I trimmed--even if the bushes were right next to each other.  All the trimmings were carefully gathered and placed in a bag (these should NEVER be composted or left around--only burned or thrown away).  This was perfectly easy with the pear...but the thorny blackberries were another problem altogether.  They bit right through the gloves (ouch) and hung up in the trash bag.  Next time:  bigger trash bag, better gloves, smaller and more numerous cut branches ;). 

You see how some of the branches are spindly, off colored, and/or dead?  I trimmed back a few inches PAST the healthy point.

 

This sometimes meant that a branch that was healthy and had berries on it, but was an off shoot of an affected branch, got cut.  I only wept a little ;)

 

Now, some of these branches of the berries might have just been damaged in transit, planting, or were last years floricane.  Many brambles (black and rasp berries) have a primocane, then have a floricane.  The primocane is the first year's growth and does not fruit, BUT will be next year's floricane.  So when you prune, make sure you do not prune next year's fruiting canes!
However, other brambles are not biennial and they produce the fruit on the first year of a cane's growth.

 

The benefits of one over the other depends on when you want your crop.  A fall crop can be had on plants that are entirely primocane.  A summer crop occurs on floricane varieties.

 

Anyway, since these were not horribly diseased looking masses of wretchedness, it could be they just were done and needed to be pruned.  So I did.

 

 

I went in progression from not as bad plants, to "I KNOW this is bad" plants.  The berries might have been just damaged or that was natural for them.  However THIS:

...is most definitely not natural.  One deeply dark, shriveled, wretched looking branch.

 

This was dreadful and I cut the branch way back.  At the time I did not know what it was--I just found out yesterday that it was fireblight.  There were some shoots that also had been affected.  I cut everything as far back as I thought necessary, bagged and tossed it.  Then nuked the heck out of my shears :).

 

 

So, that was my first pruning adventure.  I did make a discovery though....see when guys prune, at least the ones I have met (ahem, TWS ;) ), have to be WATCHED LIKE A HAWK when they go to prune or trim.  Entire yards of trees around here are topped off like they went through a ham shaver.  TWS does NOT top off trees, but he does get a little happy with the tree trimmer, so we have an understanding that *I* point out the limbs to be removed, and if he wants to cut off anything else, he has to tell me why ;).  Normally I do not boss him around like that AT ALL.  In fact, I trust him implicitly with my life, my children, my future, my spiritual growth....but not with trimming back the trees.  (Actually, he only went trim happy once, long ago, and now it is sort of a joke between us ;) ).

BUT once I started trimming back my own berries and tree, I realized WHY that happens.  WOW the power of a tiny pair of pruning shears is astounding.  I went from "Be VERY careful, only prune a LITTLE bit that is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY" to "PRUNE ALL THE THINGS!" (insert that little pinterest guy as a visual...but put a pair of pruning shears in his hand lololol).  I allowed myself, as an experiment, ONE berry bush to trim way back.  We will see if that was a good idea or not. ;)

 

 

OH!  Speaking of berries!  A friend of mine mentioned that she has discovered a ton of wild blackberries on her property.  I have been looking around mine and all I have discovered is more poison ivy.  HOWEVER, last night after we visited the back pond, we drove around the back 40 and discovered a blackberry thicket!  So even if my cultivars do not make it, hopefully the wild ones will.

 

Cheesecake Strawberries

Hey Sweetie!

I am so tickled--the sun is finally shining after several days of rain!  While there has been much flooding, even some in the fields at our farm, the water drains fairly quickly and I expect to be out digging in the dirt soon.

When we moved here, I had many things I wanted to get better at.  One of them was cooking delicious and healthier food and more often.  Before we moved, I had spent hours coming up with menu plans for each week of the summer.  As I mentioned before, we make dinner (lunch) our big meal, and then we have a lighter supper.  Pinterest has been my go-to for meal ideas.

Well, the best laid plans, etc, etc.  I am finding that it is more cost effective for me to buy on sale then to go with a set list of ingredients for specific meals.  Since we do not have our freezer or pantry built up and our garden is not even planted yet, let alone producing, I have very little in the way of flexibility in terms of "Oh we are supposed to have flank steak, and I bought that on sale back in March".

Additionally, my menus were made before we realized that Precious has celiac disease.  This means many recipes will have to be tweaked or tossed.

I must say on many things I am flexible, so this is not too big of a wrench :)  I will just cook what I have, and someday the menu and the stocking will meet up. :)

One thing I really wanted to do is to have a nice snack at about 3 pm.  I love the idea of having a small perfect bit of numminess to take the edge off before our light supper.  One of my first snacks were cheesecake strawberries--a recipe I got off of Pinterest.

Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries

1 Lb Large Strawberries (I used one of those clamshell sets of strawberries)
8 oz cream cheese, softened
6 TBS (to taste) powdered sugar (the recipe calls for 4-5 TBS, but I found that not quite sweet enough)
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Demerra Sugar (the recipe calls for graham crackers, but we did not have any gluten free ones)

Pick large, firm strawberries.  While it is tempting to try to use the more flavorful medium or smaller or very ripe ones, that does not really work with this recipe.
Core the strawberries.  I used one of those "apple peeler/corer" things and it worked wonderfully.
Mix all the ingredients except the demerra sugar.
Place in a piping bag (or, do as I do, and use a quart sized ziplock with a LARGE decorator tip pushed through a corner and secured by a ring).
Squirt the cheesecake filling into the strawberries.
Sprinkle with demerra sugar.

Easy peasy. 

This was a pinterest success story.  Not only was it easy, it was quick and tasted wonderful.  And it is pretty enough to serve to guests.

Berry Plantings

I started musing about deeper things in my last post and forgot what I was originally going to say!

Like I said, we are a bit behind in the planting.  Yesterday we came home and planted 10 blueberries, 15 blackberries, 26 asparagus, and 53 strawberry plants.  The berry patches are done, as is the orchard.  Now TWS will continue to work on the irrigation system for the orchard, garden, and tomato greenhouse.  He will be running pipe from a well that the dept of ag had put in years ago.  It is 100 ft down, hitting a good aquifer.  The house is on city water, but the land can be on free well water.

TWS is amazing.  He is a literal genius in anything that needs building.  His engineering skills are so far beyond my understanding that all I can do is watch in awe.  He tries to explain everything he is doing, but honestly, I have a hard time visualizing. It is funny that the Lord blessed him and me in ENTIRELY different skill sets. :)  It works beautifully in our marriage, as we each have a pretty clear lane of expertise and interest.  I am thankful :)

Today it is supposed to be rainy, perhaps with severe weather.  I will pray that there is no hail to hurt the trees or the bushes, but I am trusting the Lord that whatever happens, He has got it taken care of :) (that is a really hard lesson, and one I am not good at, so you will probably see me mention it often as I need to keep reminding myself) :)

I think, as the weather is bad, I will turn on a movie and do laundry.  I am not sure if I will be cooking ribs or chicken and dumplings today.  I would like to try the gluten free chicken and dumplings for Preciousness again, but I also love the Stubbs marinades I have found.  Hmmm.... I think the ribs today would be good.