I thought I'd write some about my progress here at Little Bit Farm. Well, in the last few weeks we have built, and partially covered a greenhouse. The small greenhouse is built of two cattle panels compressed into a hoop house between some T-posts, with 4 mil plastic. The T-post have padded cloth covers over their ends to keep the posts from poking through my plastic. This has worked quite well.

In Oklahoma, the wind is quite rough on anything covered in plastic. So far my method has held up well. The plastic is secured to the panels with duct tape. My son helped me frame the ends, and we are installing a table of wire on one side for seedling trays. I hope to finish the greenhouse this week, and seed my tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. I'm crossing my fingers tonight as we are having quite a wind storm. Growing anything in Oklahoma is a matter of trial and error.

Today the grandkids and I went out and planted a scatter garden. We scattered several quarts of seed. This garden is part of an experiment in permaculture style gardening. This was as low tech as it gets. The kids and I just threw the seed far and wide.I am going to take notes on what sprouts, what wins out against the weeds, and late frosts, and what survives to bear a crop. This is going to be a limited care garden.

My purpose in the scatter garden is to watch how nature handles, what I usually work so hard for. The area that I planted is a smaller old goat pasture/pen. It is mostly covered in thick dead grass, at the moment. There was a little of everything in the seed mix, greens, corn, beans, peas, innoculent, root crops, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, melons, and so forth. I will also go back out there at the beginning of next week, and throw a variety of culinary herbs, and flowers into the mix. Then I will watch carefully.

One year, I had a cat pee in a bucket of dry beans that my kids had taken the lid off of. I took them out and dumped them all along the fence line in tall grass, and you know nearly every bean came up. They did not survive to form a crop, because that year we had a dramatic drought. However, I believe they would have in a normal year. The plants just took off.

So this year, I will have a traditional garden, and a multi-layered scatter garden, and observe the results. Hopefully, I will get to see some exciting things happen!  I know the grandbabies had a ball throwing seeds around today. The whole idea was worth it, just to watch them have a ball getting it started!

Wow, the wind is really blowing tonight! Oklahoma is a challenge for any plant. Our hard rains, ice storms, wind storms, tornadoes, periods of drought, and hot summer's, make it so that a plant has to be tough to survive! However, Oklahoma is also one of the most fruitful states, with incredible plant diversity. We have wild plums, pears, Apple's, peaches, blackberries, currants, blueberries, and a whole host of other useful plants that grow here. As tough as a plant has to be here, our weather also guarantees tenacity in our plant life, and also in our people.

To change the subject, we are getting eggs hand over fist from our 18 hens right now. I actually have two hens that are brooding now., which means soon, we should have baby chicks. This is great! My whole goal is to create a flock that reproduces itself, and provides eggs aplenty. Some people want just eggs. Some people want lots of meat. Me, I want both!  And I don't want artificially generated meat either from animals that can't exercise because they are too fat! I want meat from healthy normal chickens, whose bones ate strong so they make my bones strong!

I figure I would like about 22 more hens. This gives me a few eggs to sell, and plenty to eat, as well as some to share with family. It also gives me plenty of settings for meat! There is nothing like naturally raised young dryers, raised to that perfect tender age and fried to perfection! There is something about that meat with just the finest flavor, that melts into your mouth! Or, that wonderful chicken and dumplings which has those oh so good for you minerals just simmered into the broth, which surrounds the tender meat, and is balanced by the light and airy dumplings, which melt in your mouth!  There is only one place I can eat that way, and it is right here on Little Bit Farm!

So here I am writing my first post of 2014. Things are moving along here on Little Bit Farm. I have ordered and received my early spring seeds. I have, with the assistance of my boys, erected a greenhouse frame, and purchased plastic to cover it. I have also made plans on how to approach my garden this year with regard to weed control and such.

   This year, I am experimenting with several new techniques. For my main early garden, I am using cheap, blue, tarps to control weeds. I am going to level my raised beds, lay down the tarps, and secure them with u-shaped pins. Then with a box cutter, I will slit the tarps where I want to plant, in the shape of a capital I. I'll then fold back the edges, pin, fertilize, and plant. This will give me paths that won't grow to weeds, providing me with a clean place to work as well.

           
               My mom is visiting this week, and today we are going to make seed tape today. This way, I will be able to simply lay the tape in the row, lightly cover, and reduce thinning.  This will really help with the root crops that do better with some space between. The carrots will be planted with some radishes to help mark the rows and get two crops from one row.

               Speaking of multiple crops from one space. My second experiment is an experiment in growing a plot more like nature. I have done a lot of investigation into permaculture. Permaculture is a practice of planned gardening that uses natural methods of producing food. One of the many components is working with nature, and combining many types of plants in an area to take advantage of the abilities of the various plants to resist pests, pull nutrients from the soil, and shelter one another. This allows for better soil conservation, and produces food with reduced effort.

                In the past, I have suffered with several stubborn weeds and grasses. I'm tired of the trouble that tilling seems to create on this plot of ground, so I am looking for methods to work with the natural system, rather than against it. So I am going to pick a plot, and just scatter seed. I have a lot of old seed. I am going to create a seed mix full of herbs, flowers, vegetables, vines, and fruit, and just scatter it with a hoe to just cover the big things. Then I am going to let it alone, let nature take its course, harvest any crop God provides, and study the results.

                 My intent is to actually do this in two places. One of these gardens will be here, and one out at my property. This will give me two soil types, and two different weed bases, and also two different animal and pest populations. By doing this out at the property, I expect to learn some things about how to manage the wildlife there. I also expect to learn about drought resistance, as neither plot will be watered. I also hope to learn about naturalization of plants. What plants will naturalize? What plants won't?  I am excited to see the results, and I will blog about it as I go. Of course, all of this will be in addition to my standard plot as a control as well as a hedge.

                 So that is what is happening here. I wish everyone a spring of growth and discovery!

So here we are in the latter days of fall. The year is winding down once again. I have been working on pears, and I purchased a bunch of pumpkins and winter squash due to my absolute crop failure this year. Got them for very little money after halloween.

    Many people don't know how to store squash and pumpkins. They do not store well in a cellar. They need warmer storage than that. The best place to store them is on cardboard, under a bed, in a cool room of the house. However, they must be watched. Speaking from experience, you won't like what happens when you neglect to do so. I have stored some varieties till May the following year this way. Just make sure you store only the ones that have a piece of stem still attached. Otherwise they will spoil quickly. Just use the ones with no stem right away.

   So why bother to store them? Well first of all they are a nutritional powerhouse! They are also just good tasting food. Yes there are all the favorites, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, mashed, buttered, seasoned squash. However, they are also delicious stuffed with savory meat, baked in chunks with onions, simmered in beef or vegetable stew.

   This week I am going to make a fabulous french soup from an heirloom squash from that region called, Galeux d'Eysines . This fabulous squash is extremely juicy, and renowned by french chefs for soup. Often people call them peanut pumpkins, because of their habit of forming rough warts due to sugars built up in their skins during storage. People buy them often as a novelty for their fall display and miss the fabulous flavor of them cooked.

   In the following link is a pretty good recipe for the soup as I make it. However, I use homemade chicken stock from my chickens, rather than veggie stock. I probably will leave my pumpkin soup chunky as I enjoy something to chew when I eat. The typical french recipe calls for blenders and such, but I like the rustic route better, and it is less work. No you don't get that smooth babyfood quality, but lets face it, I'm no longer a baby! Yummy French Pumpkin Soup.  It should also be noted that this recipe, unlike somes has you roasting the pumpkin which concentrates the flavor, and save a lot of time peeling, and dicing pumpkin.

    So I've been spending a lot of time on fall butchering. In the spring I purchased 50 baby chicks, most of which were roosters. I ended up with about 8-10 hens out of the lot. I have been harvesting them for quite awhile, and I am currently butchering the last of the roosters that I will not be keeping.
    In August, I purchased another batch of 25 chicks that were all pullets. These have been being raised in a chicken tractor, and will soon be moved into the regular henhouse, once the excess roosters are gone. They are so lovely, a mix of Easter Eggers, Barred Rocks, and I think some regular White Rocks as well, though as they came as a mix I could be wrong. I am sure they will go on to be a fine laying flock.
    As I have been butchering my mix of roosters, I have been reminded of why for some years Buff Orpingtons have been my go to chicken breed. They lay well, and do so even in winter. They are quiet and generally gentle. They also make a nicely weighted carcass upon butcher, and pick out clean. They will also brood their own eggs sometimes. Over all, they are excellent chicken, and after I butcher these roosters, I won't have many of them.
    One thing I can say, my home raised, natural, dual purpose chickens far outperform store bought chicken in nearly every respect. Their bones are strong. It takes all my strength to break one of my chicken's leg bones. When I cook them, the bones do not all fall apart, though the meat comes off the bones. My kids have remarked that the meat is a little tougher than store chicken, but to my pallet it is simply meatier, chewing like good steak, with body, rather than turning to mush when boiled. Most of all the flavor is simply so much more chickeny than store chicken. The stock is just to die for!
    One thing I am really looking forward to is a time when my chickens are reproducing themselves. I do not want to have to buy large amounts of chicks, because I do not want to have to butcher this many all at once. I'd like to get to a point where I can walk to the chicken house at any given point and grab dinner. Now that is a proper chicken system, very little storage space needed.

    Today was the first big day in the garden! Winter time is a time of less physical labor. It is a time for eating warming foods, and working on indoor projects. The tasks of winter are not heavily physical. Since I had a case of pregnancy related heart failure in 2006, winter is a time to simply keep warm for me. I have always been a cold-natured person, and since the heart failure, I am more sensitive to cold. Certainly my family notices, always telling me that I want the house too warm.

   The first days of gardening in the spring are a time when my body reminds me that I haven't been doing as much over the winter. Tonight as the result of my first real day of planting, I am aching. However, there are a few things that I do to help the process of returning to the garden.

    One of the first things I do, is purposely start working late in the afternoon. This insures that it is the warmest part of the day, and also that I do not over-extend myself. The sun going down, then becomes my timer.

    Another thing that is important is to stay hydrated. Today, I found myself feeling pretty blah toward the end, and I knew I needed to go drink some liquid. I went as soon as I realized and got a drink. When it is cool out, it is easy to ignore your body's signals for thirst. Cool wind, and late winter sunlight are often more drying that you realize. It is very important to drink enough, even when you don't feel like you need it. Muscles suffering from dehydration cannot carry the load you put on them. So drink plenty of fluids!

   It is also important to eat good meals, when you are asking your body to do work that you haven't done all winter. Today, I was shoveling, hoeing, weeding, and planting. It didn't take long for me to start to feel the effects of this difficult work, which at the end of the summer, is not near so difficult. I had a sandwich before going out, but felt the need for a few carbohydrates, when I cam back in for my water.

   Another thing that is helpful, is to make sure that if you have to cook a family meal after returning to the house, that you have an easy meal to prepare. Tonight, I made the third meal from a 10lb. bag of chicken that I have served. We had chicken tacos.

   The other day I roasted half a bag of chicken for dinner, one night. At the same time I boiled the other half for chicken stock. I took out half the chicken, and made a pot of chicken soup with the help of a few Ramen noodles, and some vegetables for another meal. The remainder of the chicken, I stuck in a ziplock in the refrigerator. I also put several bags of stock in the freezer for future meals. Tonight I used the chicken from the refrigerator for chicken tacos, and fed the four of us that are in the house tonight.

   So tonight I had a good nutritious meal ready within about 15 minutes of coming in the house. The only thing I wish is that the chicken would have been home raised. However, I am still in recovery mode from the great animal annihilation of November 2012. Even so, I've got lovely chicks just doing fantastically, and today we got 5 eggs from our few hens that are just beginning to lay. So grateful for those 5 eggs! Won't be long until we will have beautiful chicken to eat right here on the farm.

Projects And Commentary

Cole Crops Ready For Transplant 2013

Tess's Land Race Currant Tomatoes Rising

2011 Apricots As Pretty As Ever!

Lovely Candied Lemon Peel

  


The preceding are just some homesteady projects of the past and the present:

    So today this blog post is going to respond to the following article: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/01/the_foxfire_books_are_modern_diyers_just_play_acting_.html#

       I found the above article quite interesting. I myself have read most all of the Foxfire series! In fact, it has had a distinct effect upon my life. So much so that I doubt that I would be where I am today, had I never been influenced by it, and by John Seymour's "The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency." However, I think the author of the article above, though making some valid points, is really missing some insights.

       Let me start by telling a little of my story. In 1997, my second son, Matthew, was born. The years previous to that had been a real emotional roller coaster. I had had a couple of early miscarriages, and lost two children in my second trimester of pregnancy. Because of my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I was able to carry on, but not without much sorrow.

      By the time Matt came along, I had been on such a long hormone roller coaster, that I was bound to suffer from the effects of it. So, I went through a postpartum depression, as my hormones were taking their sweet time to level out.

      It was not the first time I had dealt with some postpartum blues. After my first son, Ken was born I experienced some mild depression as well. Enough so that my parents were concerned. Even today, I don't remember it being nearly as bad as they were making it out to be. They recommended some counseling, which I did not find to be very helpful. Truthfully, I was mostly, just grieving over the fact that my parents had moved far away from me, right at the time I became a wife, and then a mother. My Dad surrendered to the ministry, and within a year, I was married, abandoned(conceptually by my mom and dad who were off living their own life, without me), and then became a mother. Actually, I think I did pretty good:^)

      However, what I endured when Matt came along was more severe by far. I got through it, after I discovered what was wrong, by much prayer, Bible study, and singing to Jesus. Once I came to understand just what depression is, I spent my time forcing my mind out of the rut that hormones had thrown it into by changing each negative thought I had into a positive one. It was a painstaking process. So whenever I would feel panicked, or I would have negative thoughts, or be overcome with grief, I would replace it with prayer, or quote scripture, or a spiritual song. In addition to this, I supported my efforts with some mood lifting herbs, and a few vitamins as well. This worked very well!

      When the fog lifted nearly a year after Matt was born, It was like the sun came up, and flooded my life with renewed energy, and an intellectual rainbow of creative thought! It was then, that through prayer, I discovered that God was telling me to stop casting around for what I should do with my life, and focus on what he had already given me to do. He told me to be the best wife, mother, and Christian I could possibly be!

      So I began thinking about how I could do what I sincerely felt, and still feel, God wanted me to do. In my mind I decided on priorities. One of the first goals I set for myself was to raise godly men(and later when Lacey came along, a godly woman). I also began looking at what kinds of food I wanted to give my family. I felt, and still feel that in the area of food, our nation is starving itself.

      How can I say that, living in one of the most over-weight states in the nation? Because being over-weight is a symptom of starvation. What? You say, "How can this be?" I say this, because in most people, not all(everybody is different), a person gets over weight when their body is not getting enough nutrition. The body, starved of the nutrients it needs, desires more and more food in order to get that nutrition.

      Now anybody who reads this section, that knows me, is going to say to themselves, "This woman IS overweight. How can she talk about being overweight?". My weight came along with my pregnancies. In high school to stay thin, I had to eat one meal a day. My metabolism has never been very fast, not sure why. Honestly, I think the starvation of my years in high school, probably assisted my weight gain once I had babies. The body, once denied, works very hard to pack pounds on. Early in my marriage, I seriously did not get near enough exercise. I was busy being a mom.  Believe it or not, I am not a heavy eater. Anyway, ultimately, what got me here is exactly what I am talking about above.

     Anyway, at the end of 1992, I looked at the devolving state of food in the grocery stores, and said to myself this is not good enough for my family. I realized that the food at the stores, were being sprayed heavily with pesticides, and that artificial fertilizers were allowing crops to continue to leach nutrients out of the soil, without adding anything back. Added to that was the appearance on the scene of genetically modified food, which I did not trust to be healthy at all. My instincts were right: Don't Eat GMO Food

     As I was researching giving better food to my children, I stumbled across the Back to the Land movement of the the early 70's, otherwise known as "homesteading". It was then that I read the Foxfire series. Someday, I'll go into how we went from renting a lot, to renting 2 acres, to renting a couple of different 5 acre places, to finally owning 4 acres, and now 34 acres. For now, I'll just say that the people that the guy in this article pokes a little fun at were me at one point or another.

     I went from a lot in the city in southern California, to an on again/off again subsistence farm in Oklahoma. Why on again/off again? Well if there is anything I have discovered, it is that feeding oneself solely from what one raises is HARD WORK!!! There are weeds, predators, disease, weather catastrophes, seed fertility loss, and physical disabilities resulting from injury! It has always been that way too! What person's grandpappy, or grandmama didn't have stories of great crop losses or starvation times on the farm??? The answer to that is NONE OF US!!!

    The man who wrote the article I posted, which is the topic of this post, is right in a way. However, the author misses much of what should be the point of his article! The generations that knew how to truly survive, have died, or are dying! We,  who are left, are trying to revive, or keep alive, knowledge that is rapidly being lost!

    I thank God for Martha Stewart's fancy chicken coop! Thank the Lord, there is somebody out there in the public eye, showing the public that good organic fresh eggs are better for you than store bought mass produced eggs that come from a chicken that has about a foot of space between him and about a hundred thousand other chickens! Because those chickens get no sunlight, nor fresh air, nor healthy bugs or grass, and cannot produce healthy eggs! Martha Stewart is NOT playacting! Martha Stewart is helping families across this nation!

    We need more people, "playacting" at raising their own food!!! We need them, because there could come a time when the house of technological cards we have built, could fall! Some day we may HAVE to scrabble a living out of the land again! Someday, whether we can raise a chicken, or plant a seed, or even own a seed that will grow a non-toxic fruit or vegetable, may mean the difference between life and death for us, or our country, and even our planet!


Britt Peterson, in the article writes:

   "Emily Cook, manager at Virginia’s Farm at Sunnyside, told me she was sick of “farmer groupies” who weren’t actually interested in the real problems farmers are facing. “The discussion needs to move beyond how great heirloom tomatoes are to how are we going to have farmers 20 years from now,” she said. “Our system really needs to change to make farming a viable career to people.”"

    Oh, how much the above line of thinking misses the mark! The idea that we need to make it so farmers can have "careers" on more factory, over-sprayed, antibiotic laden, nutrient stripping farms, is the opposite of where we need to go! Farming was never a career, anymore than being a doctor was a career, or being a preacher was a career! Farming always was, and should be, a calling!

    We need more people! From the smallest backyard enthusiast, to the subsistence homesteader, to the organic grower at the farmers market, to the yuppy CSA, to the small organic raw milk dairy, we need them all!!! Those people, are the security of not only this nation, but the world!

    In the 1920's and 30's a revolution took place in agriculture, called the tractor! It was a miracle to farmers everywhere! It gave them more free time! It made their lives easier. About the same time, another revolution was occurring, a revolution of how farmers thought about farming! Instead of farming being a calling to feed others in their communities, and their families, suddenly farming became a "Business!".

    There were some good effects from the revolution of farming from calling to business, but there were a lot more bad effects! The thing about big technological changes, is that it is like throwing a a big stone into a clear, still, pool. Whatever havoc the stone creates, for good or ill, gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger! Once farming became a business, then businessmen took over our food supply, and it became more about making money than it was about surviving, or health, or even the  happiness of the farmers themselves! This is why since the 1930's we have gone from about 55% of the population owning of being associated with a farm, to 2% of the population.

    What the Foxfire books show is the history of an extremely self-sufficient society, and their remnants who have since died, leaving us with a lack of skills to do for ourselves! Yes, we do have a number of very yuppy back-to-the-land hobbyists, who have very little concept of just what they are messing about with. What blessings they are to the world! For they are the ones awake enough to see we have a problem! They are the beginnings of a new revolution, heading us back toward balance, and stasis until the next stone gets thrown in the pond!

    In the meantime, there are those of us, who are NOT playacting! We are working, and striving, and failing, and getting up, dusting ourselves off, and striving some more! We raise our gardens, milk our goats, and cows, raise our poultry, grow feed crops for our animals, grow orchards, preserve our harvests, spin our yarn, weave, crochet, and all manner of other things!

    To me, all these people, from the child who plants bean in a cup, to an old man who still follows a furrow in spring, to the woman who milks her first goat with one hand while reading about it with a book in the other(like I did myself), to the dairy farmer who has done it all his life, deserve to be lifted up for their courageous actions! They don't need to be discouraged, rather encouraged, and assisted!

   

   

                                          Our Plum Trees Loaded With Unripe Fruit

       Last year at plum season I was searching around for something to do with plums besides jelly(as I have plenty of that from last season), and canned plums which I am not very fond of.  I decided to make a plum sauce for meat. I did not have a lot of time, because I was about to leave for camp. So I made it up, and threw it into the freezer. Last night I finally tried it on pork strips.
    The original recipe I came up with involved running the ripe plums through my food mill, and cooking the sauce with onions, garlic, some vinegar, and sugar, and then blending it all together in a blender. Then I returned the sauce to a pot, and cooked it all down real thick. Then I just tossed it into the freezer, and basically forgot about it until last night.
    Last night I blended some of the sauce with soy sauce, and brown mustard, and added just little bit of pineapple juice. Let me just say, YUMMM! This was a fantastic meal! We had the Plum glazed pork strips,  Roasted potatoes, and onions, and salad with Poppy Seed dressing. It was a very good meal!
    Today I am planting Peas and Fava Beans. This year I am planting Tall Telephone shell peas, and Mammoth Melting Sugar peas, and probably some Super Sugar Snap peas.. I like all the different forms of peas. They each have their purpose in the kitchen. The shell peas make a nice table vegetable, especially with new red potatoes, or in cream sauce with baby onions. The Super Sugar Snap peas are wonderful and a nice fiber vegetable, to serve in butter, or as a finger snack. Most of these get eaten right in the garden(by me!). The sugar peas are really nice when making Asian dishes, particularly in stir-fry.

    I am in the process of writing a book. I am writing a cookbook.  When it is completed, I will be releasing the book on CD-Rom. I plan to enforce a 5 year copyright on the book, after which I plan to allow the book in the public domain. I'm not much of a believer in egregious copyright laws. I think it is more than acceptable to earn some money, and then let it go for the use of others. It is my intent to create a series of youtube videos immediately preceding the release of my cookbook. This will be a fun and educational experience I think!

                        Here is one of my gardens from a few years ago. This was quite a productive garden that year. However, the bean teepee did not do as well. Needed to put the mulch down before I put the teepee in.