Category: Latest From High Reaches

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Winter Watch

Fall is here in the Ozarks, yoyo season. Winter watch is on as days alternate between fall and winter.

On the Hills

sycamore trees turn yellow
Sycamore trees are striking in the fall with their white bark and muticolored leaves. These should turn yellow. A good number stay green as they fall to the ground. Many turn brown.

On the hills the trees are sporting their fall colors. It’s interesting to watch the change creep over the hills. Robust summer green takes on a yellow tinge for a week or so. Overnight the tinge becomes the dominant color as hickories, pawpaws, elms and hackberries turn various hues of brilliant yellow. Oaks take on a dusky red.

Nubian dairy goats don't have winter watch
Approaching winter doesn’t faze my High Reaches Nubian dairy goats. They are spending the days gobbling up persimmons, fallen leaves, acorns and grass. This is a time of plenty for them.

Wind comes through for the winter watch. Leaves start their spirals to the ground. The black walnuts are first to have bare branches except for the walnuts. These seem to delight in watching me pick them up, then littering the ground again.

I miss walnut season. No one is buying walnuts in town this year. That’s a shame as my trees have big crops and I have a friend willing to cart them away, those not left for the squirrels.

In the Garden

plastic protection for winter watch in the garden
My raised garden bed has several crops growing including spinach, flat leaf parsley, mizuna and winter radishes. These wil take some cold, but the plastic turns the bed into a little greenhouse making them much happier.

The garden too is on winter watch. Light frosts, a couple of hard frosts have laid the summer crops low. The summer squash had buffers around it and the plants are still trying to grow more squash.

Tomatoes are gone. I’ve pulled the vines off the shade house and will put plastic over it for the winter. Cabbage, bok choi and Chinese cabbage need little protection, but grow faster with warmer air around them. The Chinese celery and rosemary need protection.

The raised bed has already been covered with plastic overnight. For now, the cover is pushed back as fall is in style this week. Winter watch begins again on Sunday.

Tadpoles still swim around in three rain barrels. The ones with legs might beat winter. The ones without will perish when winter pushes fall away leaving ice on the water, branches bare and a garden put to bed for a few months.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Autumn Blues

The trees here turn the usual autumn colors: yellows, reds, purples. There are blues out on the hills as the asters are blooming. Most of the ones along the road fell victim to the brush cutter.

I’m the one with the autumn blues.

My garden is sad as the summer crops wither away. A week of nights only a degree or two above freezing took its toll. Nothing is black yet, but soon.

autumn bounty for the goats
After gorging on acorns, my High Reaches Nubian herd moves into pastures now lush after rain broke the drought to gobble grass and delicious weeds. Later these goats will waddle into the barn, after I chase them in, and relax chewing their cuds, ignoring the milk room and grain.

Piles of tomatoes and peppers make me feel guilty every time I go in the kitchen until they are put up.

The days keep getting shorter. There is less and less time to get things done and the ‘To Do’ list keeps getting longer with autumn clean up added.

Black walnuts and leaves are falling like the rain my garden wishes would fall. No one in town is buying the walnuts this year. I still have to pick a lot up or go suddenly roller skating across the lawn.

New England Asters are part of the autumn blues
Fall is aster time. Most asters are some shade of blue. New England asters are royal purple with gold centers. The plants can be four or five feet tall covered with flowers, a spectacular sight.

Acorns are falling on the hills. My goats spend their days gorging and don’t bother to come to the gate in the evening, much less come in to eat and get milked. It can take almost an hour to find the herd and chase it in.

Autumn blues reflect the end of the summer, the coming of winter cold, another year gone by.

These are a matter of point of view. There are good things about autumn. The trees are lovely in their fall colors. My favorite New England Asters are blooming where I asked the brush cutter to spare them.

fall seedlings cheer up autumn blues
These bok choi and Chinese Napa cabbage are growing fast this fall. The bok choi is more tender frost wise, but the shade house will become an unheated greenhouse after killing frost. And old blankets and towels are great for seedling and plant protection.

My fall garden of cabbage, lettuce, bok choi, turnips and rutabaga is up. There is even a line of spinach missed by the mole that dug up many of the seedlings.

The goats are in breeding season. Even though I keep no kids now, spring kids are fun to watch and enjoy for a few months.

Out on the hills the barred owls are calling. The deer and wild turkeys are out.

I may have the autumn blues now, but they will pass leaving the anticipation of making plans for next year.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Pawpaw Bonanza

After a couple of lean years due to late frosts, this year is a pawpaw bonanza year. The kitchen window sill and counter are piled up with these delicious fruits.

Although pawpaws can be used in most of the ways bananas are, we choose to eat them fresh. I do little dessert baking now, so freezing them for this is pointless.

That is one of the annoyances of growing old. I look at desserts and spend a couple of months taking the extra pounds off.

pawpaw flowers
Once spring has warmed up, the pawpaws open their flowers. These red/purple bells hang down in lines from new twigs. Often a line of flowers from green bud to fully open line the same twig.

Can Pawpaws be Commercial?

There is again talk of making pawpaws a commercial fruit. The idea is doomed as a pawpaw bonanza year is not reliable and growing them is not easy.

First, pawpaws are a true understory tree. Others like redbuds and flowering dogwoods are called understory trees, but they grow is many directions seeking light. Pawpaws grow straight and tall in deep shade with their large leaves spread out.

Redbuds and flowering dogwoods grow happily out in full sun. Pawpaws, if they survive the first couple of years as UV light kills them, grow with their leaves hanging down as if to show their misery.

Second is pollination. Many of our fruits are pollinated by bees with their hives moved around on trailers. Pawpaws are pollinated by flies and beetles farmers like to assault with sprays.

pawpaw bonanaza fruit
Pawpaw fruits can be single or up to seven in a cluster. Larger clusters have smaller individual fruits. They spend the summer growing from tiny green tubes to these large green potato-shaped fruits. Raccoons move in just before they ripen and nibble the ends off or toss them on the ground, breaking branches as they move through the tree. For home use, pick the fruits as they start to soften. They will continue to ripen in the house and are ready to eat when soft.

Third is their fruit. Pawpaws look like green potatoes. They have two rows of large seeds. Not everyone can eat them without reacting to the flesh.

Our Pawpaws

We don’t mind. Our pawpaw bonanza is disappearing rapidly. We’ve been planting them for years and have many patches in addition to the original one now. The trees tend to have large fruit on them.

Smaller fruits are left for wildlife. They are popular with raccoons, opossums, foxes, coyotes and deer among others. They appreciate the pawpaw bonanza too.

A plus for us is having a native fruit tree growing in our ravines needing little care. The apples, Asian pears, pears and plums we planted have mostly perished from insects and disease in spite of our attempts to care for them.

This makes the year’s native persimmon and pawpaw bonanza even better.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Brushcutter Coming

City people don’t have brushcutters. In the country a brushcutter serves an important purpose as so many rural roads are lined with wild plants.

That is the draw of the roads for me. Many plants grow along the roads and are hard to find anywhere else. There are other advantages to plant hunting along the roads too.

before the brushcutter comes
Yellow ironweed lines the road. Tucked under it are the asters just starting to bloom. Several smartweeds, ground cherries and more line the road trying to set seed to grow next year.

Why Walk the Gravel Road?

First and foremost at this time of year is the lack of seed ticks. You’ve never heard of seed ticks? Lucky you.

Ticks lay eggs. When these hatch into hordes of barely larger than microscopic seed ticks starving for a meal, any passerby is fair game. They latch on by the hundreds, even thousands. And bite. And suck up a blood meal. The only good thing about them is their lack of diseases. Those they pick up from their hosts.

Second is the ease of walking. Roads, even gravel roads, are fairly open, level and hard making walking easy. Pastures and hills are much harder walking due to exuberant plant growth and terrain.

Third is the definite path. I don’t know how many plants I’ve found out in the woods and could never find again. Not even trying to have a landmark near the plant helps as some creature can come by eating or stepping on it.

brushcutter coming
The brushcutter is big. The rotary cutter can be turned to shear off bushes sticking through the fence. It can reach up to trim the trees overhanging the road. Very few plants escape it.

Disaster Looms

My nemesis is the brushcutter.

This huge machine has a rotary blade on a long, jointed arm. It mows down every plant along the road to a height of four inches. It shatters tree limbs to keep them from sagging down into the road.

After the brushcutter leaves
The flowers are gone. The plants are four inches tall. Many people like this as it increases their visibility driving down the road. Those people rarely notice the wildflowers. The brushcutter operator did skip a few places I flagged and I savor those places still covered with wildflowers.

I am left with few alternatives. One, I can stop photographing plants for the year. Two, I can restrict my walks to ShawneeMac Lakes Conservation Area. Or three, I can brave the seed ticks out in the fields.

No sprays seem to discourage seed ticks. I will lay in a supply of masking tape to remove them. And continue to take pictures.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Datura aka Jimsonweed aka Thorn Apple

You can buy various varieties of Datura through garden catalogues. A lovely one, D. stramonium, grows wild here in the Ozarks.

This plant isn’t popular with livestock owners as it is poisonous. Another reason to avoid it is its seed production. If you grow one this year, you will have a hundred or more next year.

In a good location and year, these Datura plants get four feet tall with many sturdy branches. Each branch has tufts of large leaves and lots of flower buds.

Datura trumpet flower
Although in the nightshade family along with potatoes, tomatoes, ground cherries and more, Datura stramonium or Jimsonweed has big, spectaculat flowers. These resemble trumpets and are six inches long.

Since the flowers are lovely white trumpets, I leave a few around the workshop area. The rest succumb to the mower.

Other enemies attack any I miss. Flea beetles riddle the leaves with holes. Other insects come and go, usually escaping before I get close enough to see what they are.

Last year there was a huge plant growing in the barn lot next to the fence. The goats ignored it completely. The plant does have a rank odor when you are close to it and the goats don’t seem to like that. Poisonous plants and animals often advertise themselves to ward off nibblers.

After frost, I cut the plant down as it had a three inch trunk and dragged it out to a brush pile in the pasture. It had lots of thorn apple seed pods on it.

Looking into a Datura flower
This Datura flower isn’t open all the way, but this is my favorite view with the pinwheel effect and violet center.

This year I have a Datura colony around the brush pile. These plants are short as the grass resents the competition. They are retaliating by covering themselves with flowers every evening.

Datura is a night bloomer pollinated by moths. Big sphinx moths home in on the flowers as soon as they open. One variety of sphinx moth then lays hornworm eggs on my tomatoes.

There are very few hornworms on my tomatoes in spite of this abundance of moth food. This might be due to wasps as these very useful insects need protein for their larvae. At least one variety attacks young, soft caterpillars like hornworms.

So I get to admire the lovely Datura blooms without a hornworm infestation.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Monster Squash Attack

Winter squash does put out long vines. But my Yuxi Jiang Bing Gua squash and Tahitian Melons are monster squash.

I’ve grown them for several years so I know they tend to get big. This year I planned for that. At least, I thought I did.

Yuxi Monster Squash
Those leaves really are huge, nearly 18 inches across. This Yuxi winter squash can be eaten young like summer squash or allowed to shell and kept as winter squash. These have a scallopped edge with a shape much like patty pans.

The Yuxi went into a plot about twenty feet square. It has deer fence eight feet tall on two sides, chick fence six feet tall on another and the four foot tall garden fence behind it. I expected to keep the vines growing around the area.

This monster squash had other plans. It stayed small for a week or so gathering root power. Then the vines shot off in all directions. I tried to curve them around. They sent out branches. They climbed the fences. They invaded the garden.

How fast does this monster squash grow? I’m not sure, but a foot a night might be a low estimate.

Tahitian Melon Monster Squash
Although called Tahitian Melon, this is a winter squash allowed to shell with huge keeping times, a year and more. They are large with a long curved neck. The vines are huge and refuse any efforts to contain them. The male flowers with their single fused stamen are large. The female flowers with their four sided pistil are the size of dinner plates. The baby melons grow fast.

The Tahitian melons, actually a winter squash, had no intention of letting the Yuxi have all the fun. These had a thirty foot run to the far fence. This had deer fence along the side and at one end. The other two sides are against the garden.

Ten tomato plants are unfortunate enough to be against the garden fence side. Picking is done by leaning over the garden fence. The melon vines are climbing over them and up the side deer fence.

Tahitian monster squash has huge leaves, bigger than the Yuxi which is no slouch. These are bigger than dinner plates. It too grows at least a foot a night. That is every vine tip doing this.

The Yuxi finally opened a few male flowers. It is behind the Tahitian melons. And those have the biggest flowers I’ve ever seen on a squash plant. The melons are over two feet with a strong hook.

Will these monster squash ripen any fruit before frost? My goats hope so. They love these almost as much as they love pumpkins now buried under the Yuxi.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Stopping Future Weeds

Gardens attract seeds of all kinds. The objective is to grow the ones the gardener plants, not the ones that blow in from wherever. Part of my fall garden work is aimed at stopping future weeds.

Those weeds aren’t growing yet. I’m hard at work removing the rest of this year’s weeds. Why don’t I forget about these hypothetical weeds and concentrate on today’s growth?

Because I’m tired of doing so much weeding.

Last year I had very few weeds in my garden. I had taken the time to prevent those seeds from germinating and growing.

Over last fall and winter life threw me a few curve balls. Stopping future weeds was shunted aside. And I am paying the price this year.

Not next year. At least, I hope not. And that takes preparation this year.

One Idea

My method of stopping future weeds is not new. Ruth Stout had a similar method in her book “The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book” back in 1971. It was called mulch.

I like using mulch. It helps with retaining water during dry spells. Mulch keeps the ground cooler during hot spells. And it discourages weeds.

Note the word discourages. My weeds are discouraged, not prevented by mulch alone. Morning glories for one will grow through six inches of straw. I need more than mulch.

cardboard working to stop future weeds
Tomatoes are crowding this garden pathway now covered with doubled cardboard. The plants in bloom at the end are garlic chives, good eating and great for attracting pollinators.

Enter the Cardboard

I wanted a way to keep those seedlings from getting up through the mulch. Gardening catalogues sell plastic to put down. This blocks planting the seeds I want and puts plastic in my garden.

Now, I’m not fully organic. I use wormer and medicines for my goats. However, my garden is as close to organic as I can manage. Plastic is not organic.

The idea is good. Cardboard is a more natural alternative. My feed store is a good source of cardboard. Furniture stores and neighbors who order lots of stuff online are other sources.

Cardboard Results

If I put down cardboard over my pathways in the fall, I’m definitely stopping future weeds from germinating this fall into winter. However, the cardboard must be weighted down to prevent removal by wind. And it must be replaced in the spring.

On garden beds mulch over the cardboard keeps it in place. It breaks down over the winter for easy spring planting.

And cardboard is a success in my garden.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Fall Gardening

Hot, dry days are a memory now. Summer crops are bountiful. Still, it’s time for fall gardening to begin.

Timing is everything when planning for fall crops. Killing frost (dreadful thought) is not that far away. These plants need to be nearing maturity before it arrives.

Ozark weather has become increasingly erratic over the past five years or so. The average frost date may be the beginning of October, but cold snaps start in September.

Fall Crops

Good fall crops for me include spinach, winter radishes, lettuces, bok choi, Chinese cabbage, turnips, beets, rutabaga (I like these, but rarely grow them successfully.) and cabbage. There are other good crops available like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, Swiss chard and kale. The first three take up lots of space for low return. The last two are not on my menu.

Some of these crops need little protection before the temperatures get down around twenty. Some of the others need protection by the mid-twenties. Grouping them accordingly makes things much easier.

cabbage transplants are part of fall gardening
Cabbage and other cole varieties are good fall gardening prospects as they laugh at light frosts. Cold weather does slow them down, so planting them at least a month before frost date is a good idea. Mulch helps cool the soil in warm weather and keeps it warmer in cool weather promoting plant growth. Fall weather starts in August in the Ozarks.

Winter Protection

My main raised bed is set up for a plastic tent. In low temperatures, old blankets are added protection. I plant spinach, winter radishes, mizuna and bok choi in it. These crops will provide fresh food into January or even into next spring.

After killing frost, I pull off the tomato vines and cover the shade house with plastic. This turns it into an unheated greenhouse. Since it gets full sun, I often have to open the door to keep it from overheating during the day.

Larger drops like cabbage, beets, Chinese celery and Chinese cabbage grow inside. The Chinese celery is frost sensitive, but I grow it inside a wire ring and cover it with old towels on frosty nights.

My new raised bed is an unknown quantity this winter, it’s first winter to be planted. I will try various lettuces and a few cabbages in it. It too is set up to be covered with plastic.

Turnips and rutabaga are planted in an open bed. These too can be covered with plastic and old blankets on really cold nights.

Winter Supplies

By now it should be obvious my fall gardening plans include a supply of old blankets, old towels and so-called clear plastic from the hardware/lumber yard. A water supply completes my supplies.

Fall gardening lets me enjoy fresh, home grown produce well into December and beyond. All it takes is planning, work and care.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Mushroom Time

With the recent rain, all the plants are starting to come alive again. That includes others that depend on the plants. It’s mushroom time.

Mushrooms do taste good. They add something special to lots of dishes like quiche and spaghetti. Going out and picking some of those appearing in the woods now might be a deadly mistake.

I do have several mushroom guide books. That does not make me an expert. Gilled mushrooms especially are difficult for an amateur to identify positively.

mushroom time for tiny mushrooms
These little red orange mushrooms like it a little moist as they edge a hole where a large tree fell over and mingle with the moss.

That doesn’t mean I can’t go out and admire the various mushrooms in the woods. They come in so many shapes, colors and sizes.

These things don’t just appear. Underground is a wide network of filaments, the real organism. Some of these attach to tree roots, not as parasites, but as collaborators. The filaments gather water and minerals for the tree. The tree shares sugars with the filaments.

I came across two special ones. One was a little colony of orange red mushrooms only a couple of inches tall.

The other was a dead tree trunk decorated with white shelf mushrooms. Usually, I find these when they are a day or two old and dull. These were fresh with a delicate pinkish cast when light lit them from behind.

shelf mushrooms on tree snag
Shelf mushrooms grow on dead or dying trees. They come in a variety of colors. Some are edible. Some aren’t. All are interesting to see when they first appear. they turn dull and woody quickly.

The chanterelles I was watching for were no where to be seen. Well, there were a couple barely the size of a quarter. These orange vase shaped mushrooms are easy to identify and very edible.

These and others are written about in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“.

That is the best part of mushroom time: eating wild mushrooms. They are so much better than the button types sold in the market.

I only searched one hill. I have a few more to check out. Perhaps I will get lucky and find a patch of chanterelles.

If I’m really lucky, I’ll have a successful mushroom time and not find another nest of seed ticks.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Balancing Wants and Needs

As I grow older, I do seem to sneak more wants into my life. Balancing wants and needs is not just denying purchases, it’s an ever-changing way of looking at your life.

Going to bed hungry makes going to sleep difficult. Eating an evening snack like a handful of potato chips helps. When I’m running too late or too tired to cook, having frozen dinners works.

Could I do without these? Yes. But denying all wants isn’t good. A small piece of any budget should be what was called mad money, money to be spent on whims. Note the word small.

Driving

Gas prices are coming down a little. That will ease my budget a little. There are other ways to help too.

Separating wants from needs includes separating necessary and unnecessary trips to town. My drive to town is nearly half an hour. When added to time to dress for town and change back to farm clothes plus time to get whatever, that’s an afternoon. What else could that time have been spent on?

Homestead ‘To Do’ lists are endless. Repairs, chores, gardening and more never get done completely.

Trips to town are done with lists of things to get done. It makes for hectic trips, but only one day covers a lot of territory. I make three trips to town every week, but one is on the wants list much of the time.

Oops. Wants? The idea is to reduce the wants, isn’t it? But it goes back to balancing wants and needs. Working seven days a week wears a person down. I now take one day to sell at Farmers Market, if the garden is producing and the woodchucks are not around (four this year, so far), followed by an afternoon hiking away from thoughts of chores and work needing done.

taking personal time helps in balancing wants and needs
Homesteading is work. Chores, repairs and more constantly vie for attention. It’s easy to fall into a routine of working all day, every day until you hate to get up in the morning. Maybe that moves taking some personal time away from the wants to the needs column. My get away is hiking at ShawneeMac Lakes Conservation Area ond afternoon a week. I do plead guilty to taking plant pictures, but that is as much fun as work. The work part comes later downloading, sorting and using the pictures.

And it’s important to have a little slack in your life and budget.

Budget

Everything seems to be rooted in money. Making it. Spending it.

For the homesteader with limited funds, separating wants and needs on a budget is very important. And having that budget is essential.

Over my life I’ve had jobs paying daily, weekly, bi-weekly and monthly. It is so tempting to skip making and keeping to a budget, just pay as you go. Until the bills mount up to more than your income.

A budget doesn’t lock you up financially. It frees you up, out from the pressure of owing, paying late fees, the spiral of debt that’s so hard to climb out of.

Making a budget isn’t hard. Start with two lists. One is headed income. The other is headed expenses.

If income exceeds expenses, you are in good shape. It expenses exceed income, you are in trouble. Either the income must increase or the expenses must shrink.

And that’s where we started: balancing wants and needs.

This is the third in this series of posts on homestead finances. The first was Telling Wants From Needs. The second was on Separating Wants and Needs.