Nuts!

So I'm cheating a bit but the title really sums up how I feel about this post!

I'm using my N  post to talk about nuts or actually nut trees that you can grow at home. Depending on where you live you have all kinds of options in what to plant and how long it will take for them to produce. Just think of planting a Nut or Fruit Tree as planting for your future or your kids future. Even small amounts of area can produce a good harvest of nuts, some can be quite profitable. And add to that general low maintenance, what's not to love! Once your stand is established the most work you'll have to do is the harvesting.

The first thing to do when considering what kinds of trees to get is to have your soil tested. Then you'll need to plan for the amount of space you'll need in the future. Then is your climate correct for the trees you want? Some varieties have to have a more temperate climate such as California for Pistachio, these are E's favorites and I imagine she would try if she thought she could grow them in the green house..lol.

 Pecans are a staple of the south and we are lucky/unlucky enough to have 9, 7 very old and 2 relatively in tree terms younger. When we first moved into this house I was thrilled with the trees, then after a relatively busy storm season, pecans turn into missiles in high winds and the wood is soft, so be prepared for lots of downed limbs, I was a little less ecstatic. I do enjoy having pecans available at the holidays for baking and such so I guess it's worth the trade off. Plus we do crack many pounds while we watch TV and sell them at the markets around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Leaves are just coming out good on one of our pecan trees.

In the first couple of years, trees like Pecans and Walnuts, have a  tap root that grows downward at a rate of least 2 or 3 feet, then they can continue to grow upward up to 100 feet over many years.

If you are on the West Coast of the US then you get the opportunity to grow more exotic trees like  Almonds and Cashews. Almonds can be grown anywhere that peaches are grown, the only problem is that they are often effected by late frosts, so they are generally grown in the more temperate climates of California.

If you aren't in the south or the west coast and still want to grow nut trees, there's still hope. As long as your area doesn't fall below 20 degrees below zero then you should be be able to grow Hazelnuts and walnuts. 

Nut trees don't need much in the way of pesticides or trimming other than when they are very young. You'll want to make sure that you have a straight strong trunk to ensure the tree is strong as possible. Pest such as squirrels can be thwarted by something as simple as a dog that runs the area periodically. You'll want to make sure that the orchard area is kept mowed low to help ensure there isn't competition between your trees and other shrubs for available water and resources.  

If you have a large or small area and some time, consider some nut trees for the future. The initial input will pay off multiple times in future harvests.

The crud has put me a bit behind but I'm going to try to finish out the A to Z Challenge before the end of the month, so post will be appearing randomly over the next week. Check back often to see what happens!

Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you in the garden! or Orchard...

Milkweeds and Monarch for the M

One of my favorite past times as a child was watching bugs, rolly pollies,Bees, Butterflies and of course lightening bugs, fireflies for those not native to the South. Now these things that represent the warm sunny days of my childhood are disappearing from our landscape.  With our love of lush green lawns, factory farms and the loss of the wild places we also loose a piece of ourselves, we are robbing our children of summer joy of watching the butterflies flit from plant to plant. Butterflies are the third most populous pollinator, so not only are they beautiful they are important to our food system.

Why is are Monarchs and other pollinators dying off? Deforestation, loss of habitat and the over use of glyphosate, Round up to me and you. These days Round up is used everywhere, it's even built into our corn and soy seeds to tolerate being sprayed with it. It's used along roads and in your yard. We have become a society that doesn't understand the importance of what we now see as "weeds". One of the main plants they are seeing major loss in, is the Milkweed. Doesn't sound too bad does it, to lose a weed. What if that weed is the only plant that Monarchs Caterpillars eat? Then it's a problem!

www.makewayformonarchs.net

I heard that milkweed is poisonous, and you still think I should have it my garden or yard? Yes, It is very poisonous to Animals and People but it's not something that you would be harvesting or handling. It's for the caterpillars remember. And the ingestion of the plant along with the showy colors are what keeps them from being eaten by birds and other animals. It's best to plant it in an area away from normal traffic, just to be safe.

Isn't it the same as a butterfly plant? No, nursery's will occasionally call it that since the word "weed" is so unpopular, if you are looking in a nursery know the scientific name for the species that will work best in your area. Milkweeds are adoptive to their environment, so you'll need one native to your area. Check out Monarch Watch for a great list of plant options for your zone.

By adding a clump, you'll need more than a couple of plants, of Milkweed to your pollinator garden you'll not only be helping out the Monarchs but you'll be helping bring a species back and we must act now before it's too late. Every little garden helps.

Want to learn more about Monarchs and their decline check out these sites.
Monarch Watch 
Monarch Joint Venture
Butterfly Conservation

Thanks for stopping by I'm a bit off pace this week but working to get back on track.

See you in the garden!

Weather and Old Wives

I've been privy to lots of advise from old wives and I can tell you that there are nuggets of wisdom in some of those tales. Yes, I ran around barefoot for years as a child in the mud and the muck and I never got "ground itch", still no shoes and I haven't gotten it yet as an adult either. What is it you ask, I have no idea but it was a general threat/warning to me as a child. And personally I'm glad it never caught up to me.

My Grandmother always said that collards are best after they have been frosted on, hold off a bit and I think you'll agree. Ours are moving right along and should be ready for Thanksgiving, hopefully we'll have a good frost by then and they'll be just right. I'm making myself a note to post our awesome vegan collard green recipe for you guys!

Another common comment was if it Thunders in the winter, expect snow in seven to ten days. Sometimes it works out and other times  it doesn't. Thankfully we don't get much of either around here. Maybe the scarcity of both works for the tale.

I know there are  lots of tales about watching the birds, wasps and the sky to determine if it will be a cold or mild winter . My personal favorite weatherman is the Woolly Worm , (we call them woolly bears in our family) and we just happened to run across a few this weekend while cleaning up the garden. Isn't he cute? And he's got good news for us too!

Not from the south? Never fear I'll explain. The woolly worm tale says that the color bands predict the length and the temperature outlook for the winter. A larger area of brown as compared to the black should forecast a milder winter. A smaller band of brown, you guessed it, a harsh winter. So we should be in for a milder winter in our neck of the woods, as you can see the larger brown section on our friend here. Here's hoping he's right, we had an unusual amount of ice and snow last year.

I wanted to check and make sure I was right about the markings and I found out this little guy is so popular that he, well maybe his relatives, are the theme for a festival in Banner Elk, North Carolina.
As well as forecasting the weather they also have  Caterpillar races, that's different!

Just for you scientific sort, I'll let you know that this little guy spins a  fuzzy cocoon in the spring and comes out as a Isabella Tiger Moth. I guess I'll be on the look out for them come spring and then we can have a discussion on just how accurate he was!

Chickens are strange

Just for the record our chickens are family and of course free range. They are totally spoiled and have minds and personalities of their own. So when one decided it would start sleeping under the carport at night with the cats, we thought sure why not. She's not hurting anything and maybe there was a dust up in the coop. We did check and the coop seems okay, no strange dangers or unusual issues. We do have a few who like to play wild chicken by roosting in the Magnolia tree during good weather, at night but to each their own.

Then I came out one morning and I saw this...

The goof ball was in a bucket. I came home and there was an eggs. Okay that's fine. She was out scouting the front yard for bugs and aggravating the cats and coming back at night to roost. 

Then that's when the strange comes into play. She has decided to go broody.. on this!

This bucket that she had been laying in and that had been retrieving an egg a day is half full of pecans from last year. We had picked them up late and never did anything with them. So there they sat until she came along. Now she has decided that they must be small eggs and she is going to hatch them!

I thought she might be laying on some eggs.. nope.. just pecans. If you bother her she fluffs out and rearranges her "eggs". She does get off to eat and drink if it's brought near to her. 

I figured she's give up after a week, nope still there. So we were talking to some friends last night and they have ducks. Their ducks won't sit on the eggs and they suggested we give her a couple of eggs that could be viable to try and hatch since she's been trying so hard. So last night we took her out and placed the eggs. She was very excited and settled back in after our disruption. She poked and prodded and got comfortable again. We'll give her a few extra worms this week as a treat and see how it goes. I have already laid down the law and we won't be keeping the ducks, just fostering for now. The original owners would like to have them back. E is very upset that we would take them away from her after she hatched them, but I think she would be a bit confused about what to do with them, if they do hatch. I'll keep you updated on the chicken/duck progress.

Have you done any switcheroos on your chickens? How did it work? Share your stories I'd love to know what to expect!

Only Here...

 

This was not quite a headline for the local news but it has been a Hot Topic at the local lunch place.

EMU on the loose.. Yes, you read that right. We have a 24 year old Emu on the loose in Eastern North Carolina. Some how I wouldn't be surprised to wake up to see this humongous chicken bedded down with ours.. On the other side I do hope they find her soon, it's going to be nasty tonight..

Seeing a little green..

Here are a few of Mother Nature's works in progress that we have going right now. We always start our plants but this year we are adding a few more to the list. We have a local florist that would like to have a few veggie plants to sell this year. It's a small rural community after all. I'd personally take a nice Kale plant (or some yarn) over roses any day!

They don't look like much now but give them a week or two and they'll be real plants! It's keeping us busy with the new demand and the extended variety but I've been ready to get my hands back into the dirt. It's a great day when you get noticeable result from all of your hard work. We'll be starting seeds for another month or so, and I'm ready to get that greenhouse done, so they can move out there and really take off!

Cotton and Traffic Jams

If you aren't in our neck of the woods or even in this hemisphere you might not realize that it is Cotton Picking season right now, along with soybeans but they aren't nearly as dear to my heart. I know you may have read or seen movies where they are picking in the summer but trust me cotton is done in the late fall. I'm a fan of Fall, it has all the great tree colors, Pumpkins, my favorite holiday, Halloween and the weather has generally toned down a bit. You get those great cool nights, when you can sit outside with out being eaten alive by bugs or melting from the heat. But Fall really means harvest time around here. The winter crops are planted and the last of the summer crops are coming in. I few weeks ago I was walking around down our road and we have a few fields on either side. The cotton was just about ready so I appropriated a couple of stalks for a fall wreath I was working on. I neglected to get a picture of the wreath but I did get one of the Cotton, Some of the bolls (that's the green thing on the right side) hadn't opened yet so it made a great addition to the wreath, along with a few magnolia leaves. I'll have to make a point to make another for me. I think I still have a branch or two of the cotton left.

As someone who works with fibers, crochet and spinning, I get all worked up when I see how much cotton actually gets left on the ground after the harvest. It will look like it has snowed around here for a couple of weeks until it gets worked back into the ground. I always want to run out and pick up a few bushels for combing but then I think about the thousand of pounds of pesticides they spray it with and it keeps me from snapping it all up. Just barely but that is some pretty nasty stuff. You can see the huge bales on the left, that they compress it into so that it can be transported to the mills. It's hard to tell from here but those are huge piles of cotton.

And I'll sum this all up with the reason I got on the cotton kick for today. I was trapped behind this, on my way out this morning for a good while. These things just crawl along..

We don't have to worry too much about traffic around here but tractors can certainly back everything up for a while. I wouldn't have worried too much but I was on my way to Michael's with a great coupon AND yarn is on sale, so it wasn't very welcome this morning. I did make it to the sale and I'll have some posts soon showing off a few projects I've got planned.

Here's Hoping you'll have a traffic free day also!

Why I Farm Now

I was one of those lucky kids that got to grow up next door to my maternal grandparents, my parents moved from "town" back to the farm when I was nine and built a house between my grandparents and an uncle. Some days it was awesome and some days I complained loudly about being dragged away from civilization and my friends. My days before had been filled with riding my bike in the neighborhood, taking the quick walk to the library or to Dairy Queen for a dipped cone with my group of friends. All of a sudden I was out in the country, no local anything. But I was lucky enough to live on a loop road, so I was able to ride my bike as much as I wanted with little to no worries about traffic.

While I won't say it was all rosy and wonderful, I can say that I had a different, happier, independent childhood than the friends that lived in town. My parents both worked in town, not on the farm but I did learn about farming. My uncle had cows, my grandmother had  a wonderful garden full of flowers and vegetables, and my grandfather had the all important tractor. We had ponds, woodlands, a small creek and dirt, lots and lots of dirt. I never did catch the elusive "Ground Itch" I was constantly warned about and I am happy to say I still avoid shoes whenever possible.

 My early memories of summer are working right along side my grandmother, in the garden with a old large kitchen spoon. I was allowed to dig and make mud pies to my heart's content, my cousins called me the dirt dobber (which is also a name for a wasp so I never understood that one..lol) and they claimed to find spoons in the garden space many years after I had moved out and away. 

Later I would be consigned to a chair in the yard shelling beans, shucking corn and scraping potatoes for hours. I didn't realize how much of an impression sitting in the shade with my Grandmother, Aunt and other assorted relatives had really made on me. I was given a job, which taught me responsibility,  I learned about growing food and "putting it up", which gave me confidence that I was a valuable helper and best of all I got to listen in on the gossip which made me feel included, as well as gave a bit of leverage over my older cousins..lol. Along with that I learned self sufficiency, we weren't poor nor did we do without but we made sure everything was used to it's fullest. I learned where food comes from and when it's available. I learned how hours in the sun snapping or shelling beans pays off at Christmas when everyone is enjoying the family dinner. The best part was being let loose after the work was done, to go play hide and seek in the cornfields or to splash around in the creek with the crayfish and turtles, and more than often it was just to find a sunny spot to read a book

Late Summer and Early Fall brought harvesting, I still miss the smell of the tobacco curing and the smokehouse in full swing with hams and homemade sausage. Growing and Carving our own pumpkins and not to mention the 100 year old grape vine that was first picked and then pruned back. That meant jelly had to be made and then grapevine wreaths and baskets were made for family and friends for the holidays. Sweet Potatoes and other crops to be harvested by hand and have no doubt my cousins and I were easy and cheap labor. 

In the winter there were always barns to play in and trees to climb. My Mom got ambitious one year and we trekked through the woods until we found the perfect cedar tree, we dug it up and transplanted it in the yard, only because I couldn't stand the idea of it being cut down and then thrown away. Then there is the fact that my grandmother was a professional seamstress and I learned so many crafts from her. We pieced and hand-quilted a quilt for each of her grandchildren for when they got married. She valiantly worked with me on learning to sew, Showed me time and time again how to crochet and  I in turn taught her how to cross stitch. We both decided embroidery was a waste of time.

Then spring finally rolled around and it planting season again. I loved being able to go to the FCX and help pick out the seeds for the year. They sent them home in small brown paper bags and I spent hours counting and sorting seeds when I was small and then being allowed to gently place the seeds in the rows, (that was my personal take on it, I'm sure they were strewn all over and some happened to land in the right spot, but no one complained)

Yes, time makes the memories seem better than they were, at 18 I swore I would never ever shell another bean and I couldn't get out fast enough. Were there time it was awful, yes but those fade with time. Now I'm glad to have had the experience to learn about where my food comes from, understanding that local really is better and that a cool stream on a hot day makes it all worth while.

That's why many years later we continue to garden, make preserves and "Put up" veggies, and sell it to others so that maybe they can catch a glimpse of how great it is to have a connection to a farm including the dirt, the sunshine and the past.

Find a local farm, take a tour, get some veggies and most of all play a bit in the dirt, it will make everything just a bit better.

The Joys of Rural Internet


I was trying, I really was, I signed up  for Blogher's  NaBloPoMo, promising to post everyday in November and then the internet went down on me on day two. Sigh
We have to live in the only county in the United States that doesn't have access to some sort of Cable. We are left to the mercy of the phone company, while we do have DSL now, the first two years we lived here we had dial up. Yes you read that right Dial up! I didn't know that even was an option anymore.
In the county's defense they are trying to help and give us another option but I don't know if it is any better than what we are currently subjected to by the phone company. They are putting in a WiFi system on the county's water towers. So if you can see or are in a certain radius of these towers you have the ability to get on this system, for a price of course. Is sounds fairly archaic but necessary since the local Middle and High School were given a grant by a former Senator's foundation (that has since been to court and created a bit of drams for the country and not to mention the state) to make sure every student had a laptop to use at school and also bring home to do homework and research with.
Having said all that I plan on subjecting you to another post later today to hold myseld accountable to the total amount of posting for the month if not the correct days..

I really can't be living in the only county or state with this sort of problems, Can I? make me feel a bit better and tell me about your rural internet issues..