Gris-Gris Greens

Hubby is itching to get the entire garden turned over in preparation for the spring, so we cut all of the remaining collards, then cleaned and stripped them, and boiled them in the crawfish pot. Rather than blanch them, we cooked them all of the way down with some pork before freezing (like my grandmother does.) We then divided everything into small-portion containers for the freezer. Our 100-foot row of collards cooked down into about 3-4 gallons of greens.

Just in time for Halloween

We are late cutting hay because the hay tractors are all at the John Deere dealership. We also didn't spray this year, so the fields have a lot of tall weeds.

We had our first early-morning fall fog last week, and when the fog began to rise, it left dew all throughout the field. When I returned from morning carpool, there were THOUSANDS of small, shimmering, perfectly formed spider webs gleaming in the field.

I don't know that we will see anything like this next year, because like I said, the field is usually cut short by the time we have these heavy fogs.

Tree Cat

One of our barn cats has taken to sleeping in a cavity of one of the Live Oak trees. Perhaps we should have named her "Mr. Macavity" instead.

Winter Garden

After much procrastination, our winter garden is finally planted.

At the end of September, the stock market fell to a record low and hubby came home early from work with several flats. Nothing like a little recession to get you in the planting mood :)

We planted hybrid cauliflower, collards (couldn't find turnip greens,) spinach, carrots (seed,) beets (seed) which mom suggested to start with a little lime in the soil, broccoli, cabbage, and english peas (seed.)

By spring, I hope to start everything from heirloom seed.

By all means, send me any suggestions you may have for our garden!

First sprouts of English Peas:

First signs of the beets:

The garden:

Chicks aren't so cute anymore!

The baby chicks that hatched during the summer are getting so big! After getting 7 chicks over the course of 30 days, we had to break the setting hen's broodiness because she was getting so skinny!

5 of the 7 have inherited the poofy crest of their father, "Puff-Daddy" (shown above.)

The 4 yellow and spotted baby chicks eventually turned black. The only difference is that they have lighter, mustardy-green eyes.

I think that at least 2 are roos, but we learned the last time that we should wait and see. With last year's chicks, some of the pullets we were convinced were roos turned out to be hens after all.

For those of you who aren't up to speed on chickens, the only way to tell their sex is to look inside their vent, which even Mike Rowe has declared a "Dirty Job." There are entire books written about the art of sexing chickens, but I think I'll stick to waiting patiently for a crow or two.

Hurricane GUSTav

Here is the email update that I sent to family and friends the moment our cable was restored:

Hi all,
Our electricity is finally back on, and our cable/internet was reconnected today (after 5 days without power.) Others aren't as fortunate...St. Francisville and Prairieville (our last home) could possibly be without power for a few more weeks. Many homes are flooded as well.
We lost a lot of shingles, but hubby was able to patch each area with extra shingles and wet tar. We have been ready for a new roof for quite some time but are waiting to find out the sex of this baby first. If it's a girl, we'll probably move forward with our plans for an addition (thus we'll redo the roof once it's time to roof the new room.) If it's a boy, he will easily share a room with DS.
We also lost quite a bit of siding, but that is next in line to be remodeled as well, so we're not upset. Most of the siding was ripped off of the carport, which we were planning to tear down anyway.
We lost 2 trees, but none were our centennials. One large limb fell on our power line that feeds the barn, so that will need to be replaced. Hubby has taped it and strung it up high to make do for now. We have the nicest couple from Georgia staying with us. They are members of the Insurance Company Catastrophe Team and have been assigned to help hubby with his customer claims. They are retired, except for when they work catastrophes (about 3 months out of the year.) They were unable to find an RV resort in the area that could either take their large RV or had power. So, we were quick to welcome them to stay with us. They arrived yesterday in their super-nice RV bus, which is now parked out by the barn and is being fed by the patched up power line. We are hoping it holds up!
We have just about gotten up the last of the limbs. The photos don't show how much clean-up was involved b/c you can't see all of the small sticks! We raked nearly every square inch of the yard that we keep mowed. That's about 4 acres! The burn pile has been squished by the bucket of the tractor, so it's really compacted in that photo!
We are thankful to have had the generator and the 2 window a/c units. Hubby hardwired the generator to the house, so everything except for the main a/c, dishwasher, and washing machine worked. On day 3, hubby drove to McComb, MS to find more gas for the generator. He is already looking at diesel generators so that we can store fuel more easily. I felt terrible when I realized that we spent nearly $400to keep cool. I don't think of myself as a wuss! I think I could survive without air if our house was designed for it! We removed the pre-a/c circulation fan from the house when we first began remodeling. Perhaps we should have kept that monster of a fan in there!
Compared to Haiti and other areas, the people of Louisiana have nothing to complain about. Children there haven't even eaten since the storm!
Anyway, here is the link for the photos...

Cheap Cheep!

Our black australorp started setting a few weeks ago. We've gone out to the nestbox several evenings to candle the eggs with the kids.

After swimming this evening, we went to fetch the last of today's eggs and were greeted with a lovely chorus of cheeps.

Out of the 15 or so eggs, 3 have hatched so far. There are two solid black chicks, and one is yellow with gray/black spots.

We only have one polish crested rooster, and several of the hens have been sharing the same nest box. This nice mama hen has been looking after everybody's eggs! It's like we have our own little FLDS chicken commune.

The kids are overjoyed. The baby even squealed and couldn't stop pointing. This is the first time we've ever hatched our own chicks here at home (others were school projects or mailorder.)

They'll stay in a rubbermaid in the foyer until they start to poop a lot, their chirping gets annoying, and/or the "newness" rubs off. Then they'll go outside to the brooder box in the dairy barn.

All in all, another exciting summer day.