Category: Latest From High Reaches

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Separating Wants From Needs

I’ve lived a simple, what most people call a simple, life for close to fifty years now. I have become an anachronism. Separating wants from needs has become so ingrained, I cringe looking at shopping carts in the stores.

This is the second post on this topic. The first is on Telling Wants From Needs from last week.

Food

I am addicted to eating as are all the people I know. The smart homesteader will plan a garden to supply food all year. This isn’t as simple as it sounds for lots of reasons.

There are some foods easy to grow that I just don’t like. Green beans come to mind. The only reason for me to grow green beans is to sell them. What do I do with the ones that don’t sell?

I grow crops we will and do eat. Yard long beans can be used like green beans and I like the flavor. And I put up the extra peppers, squash (Frozen summer squash is a great soup base.) and tomatoes to use next winter.

separating wants from needs can include growing squash for food
These Zephyr summer squash are useful to the homesteader several ways. One is food. Second is a product to sell. Third is soup or stew stock for next winter. Successful squash plants need frequent squash bug checks and a shovelful of compost under the hill.

One of the things not done here is eating out. I cook. That doesn’t mean I never use frozen meals, but they are rare. Take out buffet can have vegetables added and make meals for more than one day.

Skipping most snack foods and sodas has side benefits. One is saving money. The other is better health.

For me caffeine, most white flour and sugar are not options. Weaning away from these food drugs, and they are drugs, does have withdrawal challenges. For around two weeks not even you will want to know you. You will feel terrible and grouch at everything. If you stick it out, things do get better.

I used to read book about pioneers and wonder how they could get by on five pounds of sugar for a year. I opened a bag last November. Half of it is still in the canister. Cakes, cookies and other desserts are not on the menu except for special occasions.

Side benefits of this are having less tarter on the teeth, fewer calories to burn off and finding food actually tastes good. Mentioning those fewer calories matters as a person gets older. Your metabolism slows down meaning you need less food. And those extra pounds get a lot harder to shed.

okra is a good crop
I grow three varieties of okra, Burgundy, Jing and a green variety (Burmese is preferred). Each one has a different flavor and degree of slime. Many people don’t like okra as it tends to be slimy. That slime thickens soups. It can sell well as it is an unusual crop at Farmers Market.

Clothes

When I was teaching, students were so concerned with their clothes. Sometimes they seemed more concerned with their clothes than with their education. They were more focused on rating what other people were wearing than on what they were putting into their minds.

And ten years down the road, those clothes mean nothing. The education is what opens doors to your life.

My goats are not worried about my clothes. They don’t care if I show up in jeans or shorts or fancy slacks as long as they get to eat. My chickens are the same.

Jeans last me about three months before I’ve worn holes in the knees. Those holes may be the fashion in some places, not here. Thrift store, here I come. Out come the scissors and cut the legs to length.

These won’t do for town, so I do have a town wardrobe. But this is simple. Most of the clothes have lasted for years. Forget the latest fashions. They are only a way to get you to spend more money.

I guess it’s time to close for this week. Separating wants from needs seems to cover more territory than I anticipated. Which is strange as it is so normal for me. Continued next week.

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Telling Wants From Needs

I seem to be an old school homesteader, what was called a back-to-the-land person. These people had a few things in common: live a simple, basic life; and little to no money. That last made telling wants from needs essential.

Needs

Needs are things a person must have to survive. Shelter, food, water are the ones most people think of. In our society clothes should be added.

One most people don’t think of is trash. Much of our trash now consists of plastics and other things that don’t rot away. Dumped into a back corner, they can contaminate the water table or hurt wildlife or domestic stock.

Another need not often considered is recreation. Working all day, seven days a week wears a person down. Everyone needs a break of some kind, even if it’s only sitting quietly in the woods or reading a book.

Water

Surface water (creeks, ponds and shallow wells) isn’t a safe source. Even springs need special filters as I found when researching a story for “The City Water Project”.

cover for "The City Water Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
Although “The City Water Project” is a science activity book, it has stories about water, what it is, where we get our water supply, use this water and dispose of it as well.

Hauling water in bottles from town gets cumbersome fast. Roof gutter drain pipe showers aren’t popular in the winter. Drilled wells are expensive. City water isn’t always available.

Shelter

Tents are great shelter in the summertime. They get cold and are difficult to heat in the winter. Many people opt for mobile homes which aren’t safe in tornado and strong wind areas. Building a small, simple house isn’t that much more expensive, if you do a lot of the work yourself.

Electricity

Is electricity a need?

I’ve lived without electricity. Propane lights were adequate. This was far enough north refrigeration wasn’t a big problem.

However, I like having electricity. It runs the water pump so the house has running water. It runs the computer, the lights, appliances, so many things.

Electricity is easy to abuse. How many freezers, refrigerators, TVs and other things does a person need to have? More than one is probably in the want category.

When telling wants from needs in this, be ruthless. Exactly why and how are you using this? Can you achieve the same end in a simpler way? That smaller electric bill or generation need will repay you.

More next post.