More Winter Reading

M.C. Beaton is one of my favorite authors. She's also a prolific writer with several series of books to her credit.  One of my favorite is her Agatha Raisin mystery series. 

 

Beaton's books (pen name for Marion Chesney) are not great literature.  Her writing sometimes reads almost in outline form, but her story lines and mystery plots are  intriguing and I always  look forward to her next book. 

 

Her Hamish Macbeth mystery series about a policeman in a small village in Scotland is also pretty good. It was made into a British television series back in the 1990's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'd love to see the Agatha Raisin books made into a television series.  The setting for the books is the English Cottswalds, so that would be beautiful. Agatha herself is a entertaining character and there are lots of other interesting characters in the books to make it interesting.

 

 If you are looking for a new mystery series with good plots and easy reading, give either one of these a try.

 

 

 

 

 



Salavating Over Seed Catalogs

Burpee's new sauce tomato

It's the week between Christmas and New Years and right on time the send catalogs have started to arrive in my mailbox - the one at the end of the driveway.  Jungs Seeds & Plants arrived on Wednesday and then on Thursday a whole bunch arrived including Gurney's, Henry Field's, The Cook's Garden, R. H Shumway and Burpee.

Burpee gets the award for the most eye catching. There on the front of the catalog is a big red tomato with a yellow sign proclaiming "Shown Actual Size".  Before I even opened the catalog I got out my ruler and measured the picture.  The tomato was five inches across and five and a half inches tall! SuperSauce is definitely not your average Roma type paste tomato and I don't think I'm going to be able to resist ordering it! 

The copy describing this new tomato, found on page three of the catalog, is effusive to say the least.
Burpee proclaims this is a "superhero" tomato, a "roma with aroma".

Just below the picture of the huge tomato is a picture of a large flower pot growing sweet corn.  This Burpee exclusive is called On Deck Hybrid and is the "first sweet corn bred for containers!".  Apparently you take a 24 inch pot and plant nine seeds in it and you can pick corn from your back deck!

Burpee boasts 80 new varieties this year including a pink raspberry, a white and purple striped potato and a heat resistant broccoli.

The Cook's Garden catalog has lots of pretty pictures and both Henry Field's and Gurney's offer big discounts on mostly standard vegetable offerings. Both Jung's and Henry Field's have a nice offering of perennials and shrubs.

But my favorite catalog to browse is the R.H. Shumway's Illustrated Garden Guide.  Shumway's is illustrated with old time looking drawings both black and white and colored.  They offer some hard to find heirloom varieties like Bohemian Horseradish, Howling Mob sweet corn, dark red Egyptian beets, sugar beets  and Shumway's Colossal Long Red Mangels (beets). The catalog says that mangels are "equal in nutrition to grain" and "relished by livestock, particularly milk cows".  I think I need to invest in some mangel beet seed! 

For 2013 they are announcing, beautifully illustrated on their back cover, Mr. Wrinkles Pumpkin and Mrs. Wrinkles Pumpkin.  Mr. Wrinkles is touted as a wonderful orange Jack O'Lantern type with a good barrel shape and large dark green handles.  Mrs. Wrinkles is a deeply ribbed orange pumpkin, growing 10 inches wide and only nine inches tall - like a Cinderella pumpkin I'm thinking. I might just have to get some of those too. 

As the days begin to lengthen etc.

As the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen - so goes an old saying. And as old sayings go, this one always seems to be true!   Winter has roared in on its appointed day and seems determined to stay awhile.  The Old Farmers Almanac (www.almanac.com) and Success Farming magazine both predict a colder and wetter winter than average for our part of the country.

Zeke among the 800 pound round bales.

Snow, ice and strong winds have made life outdoors pretty miserable - or so my cows are telling me.  They are rapidly eating through my hay supplies trying frantically to produce enough body heat to keep warm.  Hay is very scarce this year and I've been parceling out the round bales on a strict schedule.  The Angus herd of 8 pregnant cows and heifers has been getting an 800 pound bale every four and a half to five days.  My Limousin herd of nine pregnant cows and heifers, two bulls and four calves has been cleaning up a 500 pound bale every two to two and a half days.  They are also sharing a 50 pound bag of crimped corn every three days.

This week the Limi's have eaten a round bale in a day and a half. The Angus however, went through two 800 pound bales in six days! By yesterday evening they had eaten the last of the second bale. My plan was to put a third out this morning. But by 5:00 pm they were lined up along the fence, staring at the house and hollering.  I was running the vacuum cleaner around in the living room and they could see me through the windows.

Happy cows with their big round bale of hay.

Finally about 5:30 I gave in.  It was a beautiful evening with a gorgeous big gold moon low on the eastern horizon, very Halloween like with a ribbon of cloud under it just so.  The temperature was just at freezing and the wind had died down. It was a lovely evening to be out doors.

I picked up a round bale with the tractor (I have a huge spear attached to the front of the tractor operated by an hydraulic lift mechanism).  The bale was sitting on a wooden pallet meant to keep it from absorbing moisture out of the ground.  With all the rain, then snow, then sleet, the bale was topped with a thick layer of ice topped snow and the pallet was frozen to the bottom.

The bales are wrapped in a fine plastic hexagonal mesh, which I usually easily unwrap from the bale just before I place it in the round bale feeder ring. This time however, I needed my big sharp knife to cut through the mesh in several places as it was frozen to the bale. The wooden pallet also frozen to the mesh so I had to cut both sides at the bottom and stomp on the pallet to free it from the bale.  The hardest part was pulling the mesh from the top of the bale, as the bale is taller than I and the snow was about five inches thick on the top.

I checked out the living room windows several times during the evening and out the bedroom window through the night and still again this morning. The feeder has never not been surrounded by cows all that time.  Of the 30 round bales the vet bought for his Angus herd and had delivered in late October and early November, 15 are left counting the one I put out last night. 

Oil Lamps and No AGA

It was dark when I arrived home from work last night and as I drove down the driveway I noticed that the outside lights did not turn on.  They should have turned on automatically. The wind was blowing like a hurricane and I figured the power was out - again!  I was right.

Oil Lamp

I keep a flash light on the counter just inside the door and an oil lamp on the kitchen island so within a matter of minutes I'd turned on the flashlight, located the box of matches and lighted the oil lamp.
Reality hit me square on when I remembered that my AGA cook stove broke down last month and I've not been able to get it repaired, so its comforting warmth and ready cooking facilities were as cold as the rest of the house.  The power goes off here often, as it has around the area with all the fierce wind storms we've had the last few years.  But I've always had the AGA at the ready, which runs on propane and requires no electricity, radiating its comforting warm and making it possible to cook a nice warm dinner or boil water for tea regardless of the electrical situation.

My AGA Rayburn Classic Cooker
 

The AGA is the perfect stove for a country house.  When its working properly (which it has most of its 14 years in this house) it runs on either propane of natural gas and is on all the time - you can see the stove pipe in the picture. The round silver domes on the top are insulating covers for two large round pads that are the stove top cooking units. One is set for boiling and the other for simmering.  I can put two or three saucepans on each pad or one big canner.  The boiling pad boils a kettle of water in 90 seconds. In the picture above, the tea kettle is sitting on the warming pad. I can keep a pot of tea warm by sitting it on the pad and covering it with a tea towel or I can culture yogurt by sitting the glass jars of milk and starter on a tea towel laid out on the warming pad. It's a great feature.

The AGA has four ovens. Top right is the roasting oven set for 400 to 500 degrees. Under it is the baking oven set for 300 to 375 degrees. The top left oven is the simmering over set for 200 to 275 degrees and the bottom right is the warming oven set at 140 degrees.  You can sit a plate of cooked hot food in the warming oven with a little foil over it to keep it from drying out and it will stay warm and tasty for hours.  It's also perfect for drying herb, corn and making tomato leather.

Wonderful smells of cooking roasts and such come out that stove pipe into the outside air. Working outside in the yard, you can smell a roast in the oven and know there will be a great meal waiting at the end of your work. When you come inside the kitchen is warm and cozy, thanks to the AGA which radiates a little heat - enough that I can shut off the front of the house, set the furnace at 60 degrees and know the AGA will keep the kitchen and family room a cozy 68 degrees all winter long. 

The AGA was an expensive addition to the house. It came shipped from England in crates and had to be built on site. We added extra floor joists to the kitchen floor system and installed a brick pad to house its 900 pounds of cast iron .  It's cost was more than 10 times what a plain electric range would have cost and since its a built in feature of the house it was financed as part of the mortgage.

But it's been well worth the extra cost and effort.  The warm and comforting AGA is the heart of my home. Without its gentle warmth I am bereft!

Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater

 Left Over Pumpkins

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater
Had a wife and couldn't keep her
Put her in a pumpkin shell
An there he kept her very well!

I had half a dozen left over pumpkins from decorations at the museum this fall and decided to bring them home, along with the decorative corn shucks, to feed to the cows.  The corn shucks each had at least one good ear of field corn attached to each corn stalk and the cows loved them.  Interestingly enough some of the animals knew right away what to do with the corn stalks and some didn't.Their behavior didn't have anything to do with age, because one of the first to grab a stock with an ear of corn and begin munching the corn was Thor, the coming two year old bull. Jealousy, a six year old cow had to watch Thor work on that ear of corn before she figured it out!  Fascinating!.

Anyway, I tossed a couple of pumpkins over the fence and they split open.  I was sure the cows would love them, the goats always did.  But almost a month later the pumpkins are still laying in the field.

I also broke a pumpkin open and gave it to the chickens, thinking they would peck it down to the rind in no time and be thrilled with all those pumpkin seeds.  The seeds disappeared but the pumpkin is still laying out by the chicken house. I'm not sure what ate the seeds, but no body seems to interested in the pumpkin. 

So, I had decided to throw the remaining pumpkins on the compost pile when I remembered what had happened one winter when I'd left some pumpkins and squash in the front yard a little ways away from the house and propped up against a tree. They had been part of a decorative display of mums and pumpkins and big Hubbard squash.  I planted the mums but forgot all about the pumpkins and squash until spring when I began cleaning up the flower beds for spring planting. Nestled up again two large Hubbard squash one of the pumpkins had been excavated and turned into a baby rabbit nest with a southern exposure.  Mother rabbit had a safe shelter for the babies and a ready food supply of pumpkin seeds all in one place.

Here's Zeke on top of a round bale of hay.  The cats love to sit on top of the bales and watch the world go by. It's a great vantage point for scoping out mice and rabbits. 

With eight cats around, I doubt any mother rabbit will have a chance of raising a nest or bunnies in a pumpkin any where near my house, but I'm leaving the rest of the pumpkins propped up against a tree in the woods, just in case.

Planting Garlic

Sprouted Garlic

I was making beef stew this weekend and wanted to add a clove of garlic.  Unfortunately both of the heads of garlic I had on hand had sprouted.  Most cooks agree that sprouted garlic has a bitter taste so I tossed in a little garlic powder and set the two bulbs aside to plant in the garden. You can plant garlic anytime during the fall but traditionally it is planted on the shortest day of the year which is December 21 this year, also known as the Winter Solstice and the day the Mayan calendar seems to say the world will end. 

Good, wormy composted cow manure and old round bale leavings! Good dirt!

 

It's December 17, but I don't think four days will matter so I cleaned out one of my four foot by four foot box gardens that had held beets earlier in the season to use for the garlic. I dug out chickweed, clover, grass and a big leaved deep rooted weed whose name escapes me.  The bed had become very weedy with this mild fall weather, but I'm glad to report that the dirt was full of worms! 

Eight cloves of garlic spaced about a foot apart.

The garlic bulbs had only four cloves each, but they were nice big cloves and the garlic was one of those large, lightly purple shaded garlics, very pretty really.  I planted the cloves, fat end down with the sprouted top sticking up, making sure to plant them deep enough to cover the sprouted green parts.

Clove of garlic ready to cover with dirt.
 

It's suppose to rain a lot this evening and through out the week, so I didn't bother watering in. The soil was nice and moist.  I confess this garlic was from the local Kroger store and may or may not be well suited to my soil or climate.  You never know for sure where Kroger may have purchased the garlic, and it is definitely not the same size and color and type of garlic you usually get at the Kroger.  Usually I get smaller, white bulbs that are made up of six or more small cloves.  I'm really hoping these grow because I liked the bigger, and what I thought were milder, cloves of this particular type of garlic. Time will tell.

Round Bales Arrive

One of the biggest problems I have in keeping cattle is finding them enough hay for their winter forage.  The other issues is paying for it! I don't have the equipment or the acres needed to make my own hay, so I am dependent on others.

Round bales of hay.

This year, with the drought, pastures were thin in the fall and I began feeding hay in early November. In the normal course of things that's not that unusual.  But in the normal course of things I would have sold at least one bull and several bred females by now - and that has not happened. With the scarcity of hay, many small holders like myself, and even some of the larger  herds, are culling cattle (selling the least productive animals) and not replacing them.

Better than average sized round bales of hay. These weigh about 700 to 800 pounds each.

I'm used to paying $25 for a round bale that measures four feet tall by five feet deep and weighs about 500 to 600 pounds.  This year those bales cost $50.00 a piece.  Most years, when hay is scarce and expensive, corn is fairly cheap and you can supplement the hay with corn at a reasonable cost. Last year for example, corn was $5.50 for a 50 pound bag. This year its $11.50 ish. I shouldn't complain I guess as I hearing that in the heavy drought areas in Texas and Oklahoma they are paying up to $100 for a round bale like this.

Yum! Seven cows and a bull share this round bale feeder. With the mild weather we've been experiencing they will consume one bale every five days.  When the temperatures drop down into the 30's in January and February they will gobble up one bale every four and sometimes thee days.  Digesting the hay is what keeps them warm.

High Drama in the Chicken House

Big Chickey and his girls

Big Chickey has been the head rooster in my flock since my sister gave him to me as a two year old in 2006.  That makes Big Chickey old for a chicken.  In 2009 I brooded a bunch of day old chicks I'd purchased from Murray McMurray Hatchery.  In that clutch of chicks was a Blue Laced Red Wyandot hen and rooster chick.  The Blue Laced Red Wyandot rooster grew up with Big Chickey and they seemed to get along all right. In August 2010 one of the white hens hatched two chicks. One was a hen and the other a rooster. I call him Booster Rooster. He also grew up with  Big Chickey.

Blue Laced Red Wyandot Rooster

Both the Blue Laced Red Wyandot rooster and hen were killed the summer of 2011. That left Booster and Big Chickey  as roosters in the flock and Big Chickey tolerated Booster most of the time.  The only time there seemed to be a problem was at dusk when the chickens would be going to their house to roost.  The chicken house has two rooms and Big Chickey roosts in most interior section along with most of the hens.  BC wouldn't let Booster into the Chicken house until all the hens were in and he had gone to roost. Then Booster could enter the house and roost in the room closet to the door with his hatch mate and one other hen.

Over the last month or so I've noticed that fewer and fewer hens are roosting with Big Chickey. They seem to prefer to roost with Booster.  Yesterday morning when I went into the chicken house to feed and water the flock, I found Big Chickey crouched down in a corner by the door with his head bent down. I often find a chicken who is dying in that attitude.  I checked to see if he was alive and he perked up a bit, but I thoroughly expected to find him dead when I came home last night.

When I returned home yesterday evening I was pleasantly surprised  to find Big Chickey all alone walking along the driveway. I've never seen him out by himself before but thought perhaps he'd gone looking for left over corn among the cows and was late getting back to the house.  All the other chickens including Booster had gone to bed.  I herded Big Chickey into the chicken house and shut the door. He immediately wanted out and about two second later Booster attacked him.

Buff Orpington Hen

It was obvious at that point that Booster had taken over and was determined to kill Big Chickey. I grabbed Booster by his tail and threw him out the door. Big Chickey retreated to the inner room where he roosts along with one red hen.  I put food and water out for the two of them and locked them in. Then I let Booster back in the first room where all the other hens were waiting to go to roost. 

This morning Big Chickey seemed fine though he looked a little bedraggled.  He and the hen spent the day in the in their room.  I kept the rest of the flock locked in the front room of the chicken house thinking it was best to keep eveyone in so they would all be equal in their confinement. This evening everyone was fine, but I don't dare let Big Chickey out with Booster yet.  Obviously Booster and the hens have decided, or they sense, that Big Chickey is on the way out, and rather than tolerate him the way he tolerated Booster, Booster has decided to do away with him.  This is the way of chickens.  If a hen or rooster shows weakness, the rest of the flock will kill the sick, hurt or old animal. Such is the law of the jungle - or at least the chicken coop!

Doe with Hurt Leg Surving So Far

Night camera shots of deer in the woods.

 

I'm not seeing many deer lately.  I know they are out there but unlike the shot above, taken last winter, the deer cams aren't picking up much activity. With the drought and the scarcity of pasture grasses,  I'm wondering if they are spending their time near harvested fields, picking up dropped corn and soy beans.

About 10 days ago I noticed a small doe running sort of crookedly around the perimeter of the calves pasture. She seemed to be having a hard time jumping the fence into the woods.  The next day I saw her going through the barbed wire fence in the back yard headed for the pond. It was obvious her right front leg was damaged.  Yesterday I saw her coming from the pond.  At first I thought she was a very large coyote from the kind of loopy gait she displayed, but when she came up the hill behind the house it was clear she was the injured doe.

I'm encouraged to think she's made it this long. I'd hate to see the coyotes get her. Much better to get my brother or a friend of mine to try to take her down quickly and cleanly.  Then again, maybe she will survive.  She uses the barbwire fence to move around since she can't jump well, and she seems to be staying near the cattle, so I imagine she eats off the round bales at night. Will keep you posted.