Good morning, and welcome back to Ridin’ Out the Recession, in Miz Judi’s Kitchen. We’re glad to see you guys today.
We’ve been pretty busy the last couple of weeks. It all started with Deb’s spring cleaning, and we’ve been busy ever since.
We bought a piece of land last March that adjoined us in a corner of our property. This piece is 3.7 acres, but has a lot of road frontage on two paved roads. 850’ on one, and right at 1000’ on the main road. We’ve cleared it, I say clear, we took out as few trees as we could, but enough to plant bahaia grass, and this will give the cows a little more grazing too.
We use Pensacola Bahaia, and this is a very drought resistant strain of grass. We went over it last week and picked up roots to clean it up prior to planting seed. We also lifted up some of the oaks where I could mow up under some of them and underbrush them.
This winter though when it gets cold, the cows will underbrush it for me, as they’ll be looking for roughage to eat. During winter time we keep out plenty of mineral, protein and molasses blocks.
The cows will eat palmettos and most anything else during this time of year, but there’s little to no nutritional value in much of anything during this time. The protein, and minerals supplement this for the cows, and they lay to them pretty heavy.
During spring and summer they eat very little of these, as we have the pastures fertilized, it’s warm and we’re getting showers, so there’s plenty just in the grass for them.
But anyway, this week we’ll seed this property, and shut the fence until spring, or possibly next summer. This will give the grass plenty of time to get established. We’ve got a pretty good size pile of roots and things, so we’ll have to burn this first, but we need a good shower prior to lighting it.
We just built a new fence around it, and it made it look nice. A new fence really improves the looks of a place to me. It’s just a four strand barbed wire fence, but if you take your time, and get all your posts even, this dresses a place off.
The garden…
I’ve got to pull my almanac out and see when I can plant our peas. I know it’s right around the corner, but not sure of what dates yet. If we make half the peas we made last fall, we’ll be very happy. The dern peas made super last year, and I’m lookin’ for a repeat!
We’ve gotten the garden pretty much prepped, but we’ll till it lightly another time or two. I hope to be able to extend the garden here in the next couple of weeks as well. If we only double it, this will produce so much more, and really give us the room and the option of keeping something going all the time, or most of the time anyway.
We went to the feed store Saturday, to pick up a couple things and I went ahead and got 8 Parks tomato plants and 6 Big Beef. Deb told me it’s too hot, and she may very well be right, but I’ve got a spot with some afternoon shade, and I believe they’ll be fine.
It may still be too hot for them though. They literally scald in really hot sun. But good gracious, they will make you not even want one from the dern store. So I’m hoping these things will take. We’ll put some in the ground a little later, but they might make it.
I’m gonna try them in our raised beds again, and see what happens. If you remember, we got Fusarium Wilt in our first batch of tomatoes in these beds, and this just knocked ‘em for a loop. I’ve got some Serenade now, which is supposed to control this wilt some, but we’ll just have to play it by ear, and see what happens.
Well, Red’s back home again. They got back last week, and had been gone since July the 4th, working in Tampa. It’s about an hour and a half ride, but I put them up in a room while they’re over there. A lot of people make the drive, but with the fuel cost anymore, it’s just as cheap to stay.
Then the other potential problems you may have, traffic backed up, possibly an accident, oversleeping, whatever, are all negated. This to me, and Red as well, works better for us…he’s gone, and I ain’t! Not really, but we both like the idea of being close to the job.
He’ll be working in Orlando for the next couple or three weeks, which really is right here at the house…30 minutes or so. Honestly, Red is still at that point in his life he kinda’ enjoys a two to three week stay out of town. But by then, he’s ready to get back home and see ole’ Shelby Lynn, and her Mama.
He and Shelby Lynn came out Saturday to see her Nana. I’m telling you all, Shelby Lynn thinks the sun rises and sets in her Nana’s you know what. Deb can tell her anything, and to Shelby, its fact! Deb will blame stuff all the time on me or Shelby’s Daddy, and Shelby asks, “Well, why they’d do that, Nana?”
Speaking of Deb…she’s doing fine. She still has some dizzy spells from time to time, and this bothers us some, but I guess this is common?
With John Minn’s help, we started Deb on a higher alkaline intake diet, to go along with our other things we’re doing. This is just another way of attacking this stuff, and she’s really getting back to her old self.
John sent us quite a bit of info on this, and we sure appreciate him doing so! All of you have been such a big help to Deb, since we found out about this mess, and she thanks you all.
She is doing good though, and now is getting her thinking cap back on. There for a while she just couldn’t focus, but like I say, I’m seeing a big difference in this now. Actually, I’m very proud of her.
Well, that’s about it for today, and we appreciate all you guys. You have a great day, and God Bless. As Deb likes to say, “Keep a smile on your face, and one in your heart!”
Dub and Deb