A Hot Dry Run: The Farm Report 07-25-2021

 A Hot Dry Run

The Farm Report
07-25-2021

July summers in Iowa are not known to be cool and comfortable. This year for sure, Iowa has lived up to it's reputation, in spades! Meridith Wilson knew Iowans - after all, he WAS one - and as he knew and told us in song, We're so By-God Stubborn.... Well, at least that's my excuse for staying here when it is so miserable outside. What I lack being smart, I make up for being stubborn! Annie and I keep on gardening in spite of it. Cooler weather will come. I put up a little hill with Henry Ford the other day, and we planted it with whatever seeds popped up from the seed box. Mostly, it is birdhouse gourds and late squash. I think there might have been some musk melons in the mix, too. I just stuck the seed packs in my pocket and walked down the row dropping them in. No signs, no measure, no logic, no real expectations. Just something to watch grow - if it wants to.

And you know, things DO want to grow. I've already got some birdhouse gourds coming up. But oh my! Is it ever hot and dry this year?!

Here is what I see when it is Front Porch Coffee Time at Oakdale Farm. That is Annie out there on the lawn. You can't see him, but Annie is 'supervising' O.J. down the hill to your right. He is hunting breakfast down in the orchard. He really doesn't need a supervisor, but try telling that to Annie Oakley. Dogs fascinate me, and herding/shepherd dogs especially. Annie, like Lucky and Ben before her, is always perched where she can see me and her 'flock.' Instincts!

Well, we were all trying to just mind our own business and get ready for the day when...ZZZZZOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!! Up from the valley came the flying tractor spraying the crops across the road. We use 'Air Tractors' out here more all the time it seems. GPS, onboard computer maps, and a guy in the seat who doesn't seem to worry one bit about ever collecting his Social Security money. Wow!

Here's a quick little video I made for you so you can have the same experience I had. If you REALLY want the same experience, turn your volume all the way up, and have somebody click this video for you when you aren't ready for it. If you compare the plane to the light pole you'll get a pretty good idea of how high off the ground he ISN'T. If you look carefully, you can see the corn tassels wiggle from the air flow. And, yes!, he was flying that low over my electric service wires. 

We have one tree down in the orchard that has always been my favorite summer apple. It is a Yellow Transparent - an old Russian variety that is a survivor. The ultimate for apple sauce, according to the orchard guides. It ripens right around my birthday, which probably has something to do with my liking it. These apples make the best pie you've ever had. Gotta pick 'em quick though - they go from tart sweet crisp to blahhhh mushy nothin' in a matter of days. You'll never see them in the stores for this very reason. 

I use my little cheapie 'refractometer' to check on the sugar level in the apples. You could just take a bite and spit, but I like tools and gadgets, and these are cheap, so....

All you have to do to use it is squeeze a little juice and drop it on the blue sight glass. Then you put the 'lid' on and look through the eye piece.

Not this. I had to get new glasses and they gave me this gizmo so I could tell how far apart my pupils are. Do beady eyed guys have to pay more or less for their specs? Anyway, you look into the instrument and it will tell you how much sugar is in the juice. 

It looks like this inside, and it works with a physics light trick. The line between the white and blue is the sugar reading. The higher up goes the blue, the sweeter the juice. Scientists figured this out. I trust 'em to know what they're doing but I don't need to know all the particulars. After all, I just want to know if my juice is getting sweeter or not - or if we have maxed out for these apples. Close counts.

Well, we decided that we had achieved maximum success with this year's crop. I've never made apple cider with these Yellow Transparents before. Why not? So we hauled out the gear and made a batch.

This little one-armed cider press is the go-to grinder for me. A five-gallon bucket of apples will make a good strong gallon or more of cider. The cider was good. Not the best we can expect from the fall apples - or from a MIX of different kinds of fall apples. Nevertheless, it was good juice.

Clean up is always Annie's favorite part. It involves water! You can tell by her tongue, it was a very hot day. We got 'er done and in the fridge though. 

I grow potatoes for the fun of it mostly. Mostly. I also grow them for the 'new' potatoes we get to eat. The row on your right is not quite ready. Annie seems to know. The row on the left has already begun to mature. That's where we'll start digging.

Bingo! New spuds. You can buy a bag of ordinary potatoes at Wally World for a couple of bucks all year round, but you can't buy these!

The 'big' ones are OK. It is those little ones that are the prize! According to my reading, the bigger and older the spud gets, the more the meat of the 'tater has begun to convert from sugar to starch. Those little 'uns is pretty much 'tater sugar. Mix 'em with some peas, or just steam them and put on a little butter - and maybe a shake of dill weed - and you're in heaven. I much prefer them steamed.

One thing about a dog, they never give up. One thing about a cat, they're amazed that the dog never gives up. Like Groundhog Day, it is the same story about every morning here at Oakdale Manor. Annie doesn't like Blue Ball, but she really really really would like to be friends with O.J.

You can tell by O.J.'s ears that he don't do friends very much. He tolerates Annie, but only to a certain point.

A quick strategic extension of Mr. Whoopper Paw, and Annie got the hint and moved back like a flash.

"I'll just be over here where it's safe, Tim," was Annie's reaction. She knows what was coming, after all. Another thing about a cat is how unbelievably smug they can be. "You stupid dog," was O.J.'s thought bubble.

The garden this year isn't a total loss, but it has been a learning experience - once again. The tarp garden is fantastic, and I'll probably never garden without one again. But this HOT DRY year, there has not been enough subsoil moisture to feed the 'maters and things on their own. I had - HAD - intended to put in a better drip irrigation system. HAD. Didn't get it done. So, second best is some five gallon buckets with drip tubes stuck into tight fitting holes near the bottom. I'm getting 4 drip lines per bucket here. I fill the buckets once each morning and once each evening. It is helping, but this year will not be a bumper tomato crop year.

See the little black drip lines? I've put in a floating piece of wood into each bucket now. The little honey bees were going in for water and not getting enough air lift to take off from the water and get up and out of the bottom of the buckets. The floating board will be their honey heli-port so they can have a dry lift-off.

Every morning while I'm shaving, Annie takes over my bed. I know, I know - I should make my bed when I get up. But really - who wants to make a bed when they can barely maneuver and have not had coffee yet. And, I know, I know - Joyce would be having a fit at my color coordination and selection of bedding materials. I sleep fine though. Annie would like to sleep there, too. Actually, by this time of the day, she is more interested - WAY! - more interested in a good old fashioned belly rub than a snooze.

This is a blurry pic, so don't adjust your set. It is the best one I could click that shows Annie's cheesy, "I know I'm not supposed to be up here, but could you give me a belly rub anyway, Tim. Pleeeeze. Pleeeeze with sugar on it."

"I'm ready whenever you are!" 

Well, this last pic will have to serve two purposes. One is to make you smile about Annie wanting her morning belly rub, and the other to let you know this is just how I feel in the hot Iowa summers. I'll be laying it out until the temps come down - and no, I don't have anybody to give me a belly rub. Sorry.

Other than that, all is well at Oakdale Farm.

Cherry Pickin': The Farm Report 07-01-2021

 Cherry Pickin'

The Farm Report
07-01-2021

Time for some good news! It is cherry picking time, and this year in spite of -28F last winter, late frosts, cold spring, flash burn to 103F and no rain for what seemed like forever - TADA! I have a boat load of cherries. HOOOORAAAYYY!

Oceans and oceans of 'em this year. I got them sprayed at just the right time - which is right after the petals fall off from the blossoms. The bees have lost all interest by then so they aren't harmed - and the moths and flies and other creepie crawlies haven't had a chance to do much damage yet. Meaning: this year's cherries are clean and wonderful - and plentiful.

I love trying to be self-sufficient. I know I'm not really but it is a game I like playing. I like my own food, too. I was involved in manufacturing paint and paint removing chemicals and all kinds of glues and stains and lacquers when I had a real job. I know what manufacturing is; I'd prefer to produce my own food whenever I can, thank you. "What are you going to do with them?" We will figure that out later. Now, we're just harvesting!

The cherries are smallish this year. And I'm busy, and I'm good - really good - at making up excuses for not doing things I don't want to do. Like pitting cherries. Now not to be mistaken; I have two or three machines to take the pits out. It isn't really that big a chore when you've got equipment. Still, my heart just wasn't into pitting cherries this year - and I've still got bags full of pitted cherries safely laying in their beds of suspended animation in the deep freezers. So, I decided to dig out Joyce's steamer and just nuke 'em into juice.

Each steamer pan held about 15 pounds of cherries. These are Balaton's. I also have North Star and my new favorite - Danube. Danube has been with me for 7 or 8 years now. This is the first year she has decided to cough up any bounty.

 Danube is a hybrid cross between a Balaton sour cherry Prunus cerasus and a sweet cherry Prunus avium. (These were found in Hungary by Amy Lezzoni. Dr. Lezzoni is a researcher and plant breeder at Michigan State Univ.) In Hungary, Balaton is named, Újfehértói Fürtös. Lake Balaton isn't far away from where the tree was found, and we can say, 'Balaton' easier than Újfehértói Fürtös, so the North American name is Balaton. Now you know. Dr. Lezzoni is also responsible for bringing us the Danube cherry. In Hungary, it's name is, Erdi Bötermö. I like Danube better, and the Danube river runs through Hungary. All dots connected. Well as they say, 'A rose by any other name....' 

All three of my cherries have dark juice, dark flesh, and even though they are actually tart pie cherries, they are nearly sweet enough to eat without any honey or sugar added. Homemade black walnut and cherry ice cream may be in my future!

So here is my setup back in the Official Shop Canning Kitchen. Anybody can set up a canning kitchen - and you should. All you need is a source of water ( a hose? ) and some heat. My clunky old hand-me-down kitchen range ain't pretty, but she does the job. Water goes in the bottom container, the middle section is a fancy piece of sheet metal work that resembles an angle food cake pan on the inside. There is a stainless steel chimney that directs the steam up to the colander pan which is the pan on top holding the cherries. When you pour the cobs to this contraption, the steam goes up, the cell walls of the cherries pop and the juice runs down through the colander into the middle pan and collects there. The hose on the side is to drain off the 'pure quill' juice as my Grand Dad would have called it. 

The steam does not dilute the juice. In fact, the steam has nothing to do with the process except exploding the cherry cell walls. After about an hour or an hour and a half of boiling, I'll have about a gallon and a half of juice. The stainless kettle on the left is to collect the juice from the steamer.

Or not.... Here is another reason to have a summer canning kitchen. Cripes! The first batch was perfect. "No Brainer!" said I. Then I got to fooling around in the garden and working with one of my new inventions for Henry Ford - and I'm an old guy - and I forgot to check progress on the juicer. Poop! The middle pan holds about a gallon. I already knew I needed to drain off some juice midway through. Obviously, knowledge was not trumped by wisdom this time. 

In the canning kitchen, we clean up with a power washer and floor dry. "Meh" and we go on. In the house, this would have been a nuclear disaster. Oh well.....

These are my grandkids, Miles and Evie. This is a farm report, and I don't usually put people pics in here. But hey, I'm Grandpa, and I don't get to see my kids too often. Humor me. They live a long way away, and with COVID-19 it has been 2 years since we've been able to be face-to-face together. I'm a big guy. Miles is a really big guy! Evie is my sweetheart.

Speaking of sweethearts, Annie has found her new BFF. Evie and Annie were pretty much inseperable for their whole visit. That's Evie's mom, my daughter in law, Tracy, sitting next to her. She is an RN. 

I'm going to put in a plug for Tracy and all the nurses and doctors who have spent the last year watching people get sick and sometimes die from COVID-19: She has been on the front line in the hospital for the last year and a half, exposing herself and possibly her family (and me, which is why we haven't been together for so long) to this virus. So, whatever your position, I think we owe all the docs and nurses more than an extended political middle finger when it comes to getting vaccinated and protecting ourselves - and others like her! I'll stop preaching now, but please get vaccinated.

Evie loved driving the Ranger around the farm. Around and around and around the farm! She did fine, but of course she needed some Grandpa coaching before leaving port.

Her Dad, my son Jon, also coached her for awhile. She smiled and let it happen. Annie never lets the Ranger out of her site, so Annie rode every trip with Evie, every trip with Evie, every trip with Evie. Around and around and around the farm. You can't see it in this pic, but Annie has her own rear view mirror she's looking into. She actually uses it! Amazing.

Tell me that ain't cute, and tell me which one in this pic is having more fun.

I'll let this one speak for itself mostly. I've never seen Annie so exhausted in my life. This is Annie after a long fun day Ranger Riding with Evie. She's had a swim in the pond and ready for some restful laying under my bench. I think she might have been hiding - but let that Ranger fire off, and guess where Annie would be!

Inside, Annie was still in love with Evie. Like her Ranger, Annie never let Evie out of her site.

Outside, Miles and I made smoked St. Louis style ribs. I'm explaining the fine points - Miles is just hoping I'll stop talking and get the meat into the smoker! Miles and I wear the same shoe size.

A shared family secret for smoking pork. A shared fun family time smoking pork, too.

Cherry picking season also means Japanese Beetle and other bug problems too. We farm with tractors in the air out here now. I think it would be really fun if they would paint this bright yellow crop duster airplane (piloted by a guy who has an obvious death wish!) with some John Deere green on it somewhere. Wouldn't that be fun to imagine seeing a yellow and green John Deere crop duster tractor-plane in the sky?

Part of my insect control program is in that little nest box down there in the distance. 

I love barn swallows, and I've decided to put little nest boxes around for them. I have a family in the making in this one already.

Another insect control specialist at Oakdale Farm is this little guy. Tree frogs are fun. They change colors depending on their backgrounds. This little guy just about made me wet my pants the other day.

I didn't know he was around when I grabbed my office door knob to go to work. OOOOOH, that squishy cold feeling in my hand was not nice. Fortunately, this guy was not hurt, but I watch for him carefully now.

So here's what it comes down to: The kids are all home safe and dry. I've spent the better part of the last week picking cherries - and cleaning up my messes. O.J. doesn't like heat, and apparently seems to have lost his sense of smell. He spends most evenings with me like this while I watch the news. He doesn't care about the news at all. Full food dish, fresh cool drinks, and a safe warm dry place to nap away the hours and he's good to go. Me too. All is well at Oakdale Farm. Have a safe and happy 4th of July. Don't forget to check on your juicer from time to time. 

Odor in the Court: The Farm Report 06-15-2021

 Odor in the Court 

 The Farm Report  

06-15-2021

Odor in the Court? Let's just say that is my clever way to blow off a little steam. I was selected to sit on a jury two weeks ago. It wasn't fun. In fact, it was so disgusting that I went home each night and just wanted to A. Scream, B. Choke somebody who needed it, C. Kick some butts up between their respective shoulder blades, and/or D. Go even deeper into my hermitage and ignore 'society' all the more. I went back each day to do my civic duty though. The trial took all week long.

The case was a civil case between two brothers who have apparently hated each other's guts from day one. The court case is open and public record, so I don't have to mask my comments. Like Ron White, the comedian says though, although I have the right to remain quiet, I might not have the ability. I'll try not to say too much. EXCEPT THIS: When your parents have gifted you with quite a lot already, and you're doing fine with what they gave you, PLEASE do not drag me into court to waste my time sitting on a jury tasked with deciding which of you two pinheads might get just a little bit more of your dead mother's estate than the other one. And since both of you two knot heads had obviously decided you would rather give more of what was left to the entire panel of expert witnesses and lawyers (who all appeared more than willing and ready to accommodate and soak up everything they could) than to each other, it seems a colossal and disrespectful waste of my time - and everybody else's too. So there. What a travesty. And my butt still hurts from 5 days of sitting on antique courtroom benches for hours on end. I'm sore in more ways than one. 

So to make a little lemonade from the lemons, here is another complaint. Due to COVID-19, we were not allowed to use the more comfortable juror's chairs. We were sat on the narrow Civil War era narrow observer's benches in the back. Appropriately spaced of course. Some of you probably know that my 'real' job was working as a furniture conservator and restorer. Can you imagine my chagrin seeing the Official Yellow Sticky Tape stuck directly onto the seating to isolate us? Oh well - permanent employment for restoration people I guess.

This doesn't mark the spot where the treasure is - unless your treasure comes from fixing the finish where this tape tore it off. Yes, I did mention it. All I got was a shrug. The court really only cared about whether Momma had sufficient mental capacity to know the kind and extent of her bequests at the time she signed off; and whether somebody had diddled with her to entice her to go to the new lawyer or not and make yet another in a long list her many of wills. I'm going to be bent about this waste of my time for a long time - so if you see me out in the garden mumbling to myself, you might want to just drive on by that day. Just sayin.....

The Cardinal Red Weigela has been just gorgeous.

Like most flowering shrubs, it is in bloom for just a short season each year. Then it reverts to one more of the woody bushes around the farm. But oh my! Those two weeks or so of bloom make it worth while. The time had been just perfect to take cuttings and root this bush - while I was cooling my jets sitting in court. I'll still try. This bush came from a bouquet brought to my wife Joyce, by our neighbor, Chris J. one summer. We enjoyed the flowers, then stuck the stem into a rooting bed and Hey Presto! Now we have a plant to propagate from. It is not only fun to propagate your own shrubs; it is also great to have the 'where it came from' stories to tell.

Now is the time for everything to propagate. The annual cereal rye we plant as a cover crop is seeding.

Each little kernel has it's own flower. The yellow part is the blossom which will become the grain.

Up in the greenhouse we have success. I've been enjoying fresh zucchini from the Dutch Buckets. Soon, it will be just too darned hot inside my greenhouse even with the doors wide open. I'll move the Dutch Buckets outside for the rest of the summer.

Speaking of too darned hot - I had not yet cooled off under my collar when I heard a very unusual, very suspicious BZZZZZZZZZ sound coming from the downstairs window AC unit the morning after I was set free from court duty. According to Youtube, and everybody else I could talk to, this part - a running dual capacitor - is 95% of the time the trouble child. It is a cheap part - if you can get one.

Remember where I live - way out in the middle of the country in one of Iowa's least populated counties. Nobody had the part. So, Amazon to the rescue. Two days later - and for the record that would also include two hot nights as well - a fine upstanding young man in a brown shirt handed Annie Oakley a doggie treat, and handed me a package with the new part in it.

Of course, as it turns out, that part was not the problem. I'm on a roll. Another day of blue cloudy skies filled with vile language and ill wishes beseeching the Great Spirit to condemn this thing and any surviving male dogs and/or their mothers around Oakdale Manor, and a flying trip to Omaha, and I now have a totally new super duper AC unit chilling me with panache. I think I'll get my winter coat back out of the closet.

 

Annie looks nice. That blue thing is her favorite INDOOR toy. If she looks a little 'guilty' in this pic it is because she knows she should not have Blue Bone outside. But she does, and she wants to be sure I see her with it. 'Hey, Big Shot! Look what I've got.  Why don't you try coming out here and taking it away from me? You're so old and slow I could be half way to the Timber before you get up any steam.' She's like that. I also know she will lose interest and be disappointed if I don't even try - then after she moves on I'll pick it up. We do this game a lot.

But if you look over Annie's head way down there in the background you'll see this. While I was off to town last Friday, we had one of our famous 'sudden blasts' of super wind. And yep! just to top off all the rest of the events so far this month, my Hale Haven peach tree snapped off. We had -28F actual temperatures one night last winter, so there weren't going to be any peaches this year anyway. Darn it though. Now there won't be any peaches from that tree at all. Ever. How has your summer been going? 

Other than that, my summer so far is like just about all my summers; I'm not a summer fan, and I'll leave it at that. Cheers from Oakdale Farm.