Let's Stay Out All Night and Dance: 

The Farm Report 8-9-2018

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The 'Two Henrietta's' likes them some watermelon! Of course the reason they gets them some watermelon is 'cause Tim likes him some watermelon, too! - but he gets his first.

The Replacement Platoon, 'F Troop,' is beginning to come of age. At least they are of an age where they need to stop spending the nights in my wood shop, and get outdoors full time. Maybe they will dance the night away, who knows, but it is certainly time for them to stay outdoors all night. The chicken tractor has been sitting idle since June, and the weeds found it. No worries though. Zoey and the Ranger pulled it out without a struggle.

If Zoey only had thumbs, she could drive the Ranger. She knows she could. Couldn't she please try? Please??? Then after the new chicken digs were set up and the idea was to put out some irresistible oats to lure them inside, we ran into trouble. 

Can you see anything wrong in this picture? Zoom it up and take a closer look.  'F Troop' escaped, and the Two Henriettas went in! Oh No! O.J. was out and about, and he thought it was a great way to begin the day for him.  Mmmmmmm everybody loves to eat chicken; tender young chicken.... Sorry O.J. not today.

The onions were pulled and allowed to air dry for a few days, then it was time to 'put 'em up' for the freezer. I've never had luck trying to store onions until my Mom said one day, 'I just put them in the freezer and use them all winter.' Thanks Mom. So that's what I do now. 

The summer kitchen in the shop is great. Peel the onions, slice three or four times through the equator, and Bam! they go through the french fry cutter and spray out into the catch tub. 

 18 bags later, we've got fixin's for soups and stews and whatever else for the winter - when it will be much cooler.

The scraps go back to Mother Nature. The Two Henriettas do not like onions. And I clean up with the air compressor and the power washer.

Enough complaining about the battles of farming and gardening. Beauty is where you find it. Right now, the roadsides are beautiful. The yellow flower is Partridge Pea - a fav for the bees. I'm not sure what the white flower is; maybe Queen Anne's lace but I'm not sure. Is that some timothy blooming there? Could be.

And to know the seasons are beginning to change, the last rose of summer, the Rose of Sharon, is blooming. Also known as Althea, it is an hibiscus actually. It loves it hot and gets its blooms in before the season collapses. The corn is dented and drying; all is well at Oakdale Farm.

Farming in the Sky! 

The Farm Report for 8-3-2018

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The battle with the bugs continues! We're getting serious now - no more 'kid's stuff'. Reinforcements have been called in - the air brigades have arrived, and the aerial bombardment has begun in earnest. (And for those 'fact checkers' out there, yes these are not new pictures. But they are just the way it happened!)

That little tiny white dot in the middle of the last picture is a crop duster helicopter. Actually, there were two of them working the field at the same time. One was red, the other white. They were not taking their time. You will have to provide the sound effects yourself. Make Vrooom! Vrooom! noises like you would expect to hear in a John Wayne WWII movie, and you'll know what my morning coffee was like. The guy in the yellow plane has a death wish - or he's crazy - or both. Sometimes he was flying so low the corn tassles wiggled.

So then I walked out to the garden to check the new sweet corn patch. Racoons!!! But oh, no! Not this planting; not this time. Sorry my little masked friends. This time it is all for me. Out comes the electric fencer! Stopped 'em cold in one night. It is an evil pleasure, but I would just love to actually see 'em touch their little wet noses to that fence sometime. Ah the justice in it!

For the 'Worry Warts' who think something bad might happen to me working all alone out here in the middle of the giant Iowa cornfield, just look at this picture and ask yourself, "What could possibly go wrong here?" Heavy steel, antique tractors, chains, hydraulic power...What?

I watch Red Green for the instruction, not the humor. We needed a new rake, so I added one to the collection. That red one with the wooden handle, as Crocodile Dundee would have said, 'That isn't a rake.' 'This,' he would have said pointing to the back of Henry Ford, 'This is a rake!' 

This is an 'Oldie but Goodie' with a nod to Joyce. What could be better than taking some time out in the summer to do something dangerous down on the farm with the grand kids? Target practice! Miles was old enough to hold the gun by himself; Evie needed a little help from Grandpa. If you'll look very carefully at the first picture, you'll see a suspicious little target hanging in front of the circles. If you'll look very carefully at the last shot, you'll see Evie holding that little dangler in two pieces in her hand. Joyce had made biscuits the night before and had a colossal failure! (Unheard of for her.) They were hard as rocks. So....they made great targets. Boom! Went The Biscuit.

As any wise old feline would know, O.J. thinks the best thing to do in the miserable waning hot days of summer is to just sit on the front porch steps and wait it out. I agree. 

The Farm Report 7-26-2018: Shake Your Tail Feathers and Show Me Your Melons!

The Farm Report 7-26-2018: Shake your tail feathers, and show me your melons!

Baby! Shake your tail feathers and show me your melons! Did I make you grin? The 5 new replacement recruites are growing like weeds. We think one, the little black one, is probably going to be a rooster. See his little tail feathers? Nobody else in the platoon has 'em. So.....

Meanwhile, out in the melon patch...the girl blossoms finally showed up, and we have little melons! We have musk melons - or cantaloupes if you're not from here - growing well hidden in the vines. The little Crimson Sweet watermelons are out in the open mostly. The musk melons are 'Papa's Melons' - a seed reportedly from my Great Grandfather Myron Inman's collection. We've grown 'em for generations and they are still unbeatable for flavor.

Up in the bee yard, things are looking a little 'needy' this year. Hive Number 2 pretty much says it all. Unlike the leaning tower of Pizza, we have straightened it up and hope for a better year next year. 

The mornings are now bringing what Joyce always called 'Chinese Mornings' because she thought the Walnut Creek Valley looked like the misty paintings on the walls in Chinese restaurants when the morning fogs settled in. A sign of the changing seasons. Time to pull the onions.

I've added this long shot of the onion row to make a point. Pretty gardens are for magazines. When things are ripening, and the seasons are beginning to grow whiskers, the garden doesn't look nice - but to be sure, it is still a productive patch!

And, we're still battling the dread Japanese Beetle. Harry Truman and Winston Churchill, among others, are often credited with the quote that 'History is just one damned thing after another.' Well so it is with the Japanese Beetles. One story about Bess Truman suggests that when a friend asked her if she could please get Harry to say 'fertilizer' instead of 'manure' she responded by telling her friend it had taken her 25 years to get him to say 'manure.' So when I saw the beetle damage on my sweet corn silks, I thought, Harry was right, it is indeed one thing after another. 

But when I saw the beetles on Joyce's Roses, I sure as the world didn't say, 'Aw fertilizer.' I didn't say, 'Aw manure,' either. 'Aw, $%&* !' is what I said. Out loud and on purpose. So I've turned in my Organic Farming card and resorted to the tried and true. You have to fight for everything out here - or you won't have anything.

O.J. assures me that it isn't good to be upset all the time. The world is still round, and all will be well in the end. Chad's flowers are doing great, and so am I. 'till next time...Try to remember to say 'fertilizer' - when it happens.

The Farm Report 7-20-2018: We're Under Attack, But Still Growing

The Farm Report 7-20-2018: We're Under Attack, But Still Growing

The view from my shop window

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 It is gorgeous here at Oakdale Farm right now, as long as you can stay where it is cool. Here is a view from my shop window. Thursday last week was 105F. And what was I doing? Putting up hay, of course.The newly tassled 2d sweet corn planting looked like this just 2 weeks ago. Yes, I think you can hear corn grow at night in this weather.

But we are under attack! The Japanese Beetles have invaded. They have come 'not quietly like thieves in the night, but as raging hordes of cavalry!' They find the sweetest trees and fruit and swarm them like bees. Absolutely devastating....

Japanese beetles don't seem to like Persian Walnuts though. These trees began bearing nuts 2 years ago - after only 17 years of growing. They are beautiful trees. They are Carpathian Walnuts, sometimes called Persian Walnuts, or here in the USA, California or Christmas Walnuts. Can you find the nuts? They are hard to see. Unlike black walnuts which fall to the ground in their messy husks, these nuts will open up and fall free and clean this fall leaving the husks up in the trees. If I can get to the nuts before the squirrels ( a daily task ), they make wonderful 'pecan' pies and pastries.

So if it is too hot to be out, and it isn't time to make pecan pies, then it is time to make sausages! What do you use to smoke them with, I'm often asked? My Grandma Chlorus' favorite - good old Iowa corn cobs. If you've never tried it, tip your nose down from out of the sky and give it a go. I'll bet you never would guess how good they can be.

And for Martin especially, here is Zoey being passive/aggressive. Miss Kitty, the official shop cat, refused to use her new kitty basket. Zoey decided that if Miss Kitty didn't want it, SHE would sure use it-even if it was a little small. Of course, that made Miss Kitty jealous and she wanted it back. Watch the video to see what happens. Hint: Zoey ain't movin'. (You may have to go to Google Photos Album to see the video.)

The Farm Report 7-12-2018 May We Order a Bucket of Chicken, please?

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May we order a bucket of chicken, please?

My good neighbor, Chris, brought a birthday present - 5 brand new little chicks to replace the lost tribe. Chris brought the new chicks over in an ice cream bucket - not a KFC bucket. It's OK.... Now the 'Two Henriettas' have a new paragraph in their job description: "Mamma Mia!" I think they are warming to the idea.

The bees are 'bearding' which probably means they want to take half the colony and the old queen and fly away to new digs. With this particular hive, I'm just fine with that. This queen lays aggressive feisty bees. Go! And populate the earth - someplace else. On another front, my pride and joy 1952 Henry Ford 8N has been throwing fits and needing hospital attention. And finally, here is Zoey. She always thinks it is safer to keep her frog between herself and the enemy - O.J. the cat.

The 'Michigan State' Carrot project is coming along nicely. The tall grassy stuff is oats. If you look down deep below, you can see the little baby carrots coming up. The oats are the 'nurse' crop. They have done their job, and it is now time for them to exit the stage. Fall carrots! Nothing sweeter. AND, the musk melons are beginning to bloom. These are all male flowers, but they will be there when the girl flowers show up. A lot like real life - the guys are always waiting around for the girls to get ready.... Just sayin'

And a year ago, this is what we saw from the front porch at Oakdale Farm. If you look at the cloud blowing up at the tip of the funnel, what you are really seeing is our neighbors house being blown to powdered bits. Nobody hurt, but WOW! So Carlos, if you're following this from Costa Rica, here is a real tornado, and 'NO' you do not want to experience one!

Weather is hottern' blazes, but as they say, 'There are very few cases of frostbite reported during hay season."

Cheers,

TBI

The Farm Report 6-28-2018

Grosbeaks!

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We have red-breasted grosbeaks here at Oakdale Farm! They are pretty, they are mean. They are the culprits that answer the question: What is happening to all my gourd wren houses? No, it wasn't wind. No, the gourds weren't rotting. These grosbeaks have big heavy beaks like parrots. They saw/gnaw off the gourds like saws cut them, then they kill and eat the little wrens inside. They also like to eat my cherries and fruit! Next year, as we say, something must change.

The spring wheat I planted in March is now ready to cut and sheaf so it can be taken to the shop building to dry - in protection from the hens. They have found it and love the wheat! I have some of the new little wheat berries in my hand. They are still in the 'dough' stage, so are not yet ready for breadmaking. But they soon will be and the bread we will make this winter is wonderful. I use about 1/4 cup of wheat berries ground in a coffee mill per loaf with the regular white flour. Grind it immediately before adding to the flour. Extra special flavor that way!

The apricots are ripening, so it is time to put the electric fence around the bottom of the tree to keep the racoons from getting the fruit before I do. They will strip the tree bare all in one night if I don't do this. Ask how I know.... The Early Transparent spring apples are just about ready for pie! They make the very best of all apple pies. And finally, especially for Chad, here is the total rose production from Joyce's rose garden so far. I think we have to call this a 'building' year and hold out hope for a better rose garden next year. Fall roses can be very nice though, so we'll see.

The Farm Report 6-18-2018

The Farm Report 6-18--2018

The Week in Review

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The week in review: Chad's sweet corn planting from 5-5-2018 has tassles! The garden is beginning to look like a garden. The sweet potatoes are starting to leaf out, the electric fencer is protecting what remains of them from the deer. We have new carrot seeds started under the white plastic 'house wrap' - and under high security protection. Some strawberries are also in jail. Some yellow onions have decided to give up, and the wind spinner seems to be keeping the birds away. But this morning, alas!, a raccoon had reached in through the chain link fence and grabbed a sleeping chicken for breakfast. Rats! .... And so it goes at Oak Dale Farm.