Winter at Dun Hagan

So, here it is February and the novelty of cold weather has long since worn off. I've lost track of how many frosts we've had so far. No record breaking low temperatures though we did get one night of twenty one that hammered my grove citrus and may get another one come this Wednesday. February ranks right up there with August as my least favorite months of the year.

Nevertheless life goes on so we go with it. Not everything is dead or dormant.

This is a Pink Perfection camellia (C. japonica)I planted a few weeks ago after making the poor thing suffer in a pot for a year before deciding where I wanted it. It was horribly rootbound of course, but seems to be overcoming it. The blossom isn't fully open yet.

And this one is a Little Man camellia (also C. japonica) that I planted just this weekend. The blossom appears white in the sunlight, but is actually the palest of pinks.

The roses are slowly growing out there as well, but at the moment do not have any open blossoms. I'm hoping to have a nice Mutablis photo soon.

Winter in Florida can be a busy time in the vegetable garden if you want it to be. It's always been traditional to have a "greens garden" of turnips, mustards, and collards, but there is much more we can grow than those three standbys. This year I have succession planted three varieties of ordinary green cabbage, one of savoy, and a red variety. Joining them are broccoli, Brussels sprouts, pac choi, and Chinese cabbage. In the non-greens I've planted a couple hundred onions along with turnips, carrots, and sugar snap peas. Red skinned potatoes will soon be joining them. Not everything has been a success, but many of them have done well.

This is my paper mache garden. The white mulch you see is shredded office paper. In the walkways between the rows there is cardboard underneath the shredded stuff. Admittedly it's not very pretty, but it works well and most importantly it's FREE. I don't have to pay for it or rake it up. I wouldn't use it around my ornamentals unless I could hide it under a more visually appealing mulch, but the vegetable garden is on the backside of the property where it doesn't have to please anyone but me.

The row on the center right I have just planted red and green cabbage, broccoli, and collards. Towards the back just to the right of them is the pac choi and to the right of it is the carrots. That row came in very sparse for being hit with a frost just as they broke ground but what there is are growing well. To the right of them are the Brussels sprouts and it looks like this year I might actually get something to harvest. I plant them to keep me humble because I've yet to actually make them produce for me. Hope springs eternal though so I keep trying.

The row to the center left has the last couple of heads of cabbage from the first planting towards the back. In the front is the savoy cabbage I planted a month or so ago and the row to the left of them has the rest of them as well as some more broccoli and collards. They need fertilizing as they're starting to lag. Hopefully I'll be able to get to that this weekend.

This is the first planting of broccoli. It's all been cut now and is steadily producing side shoots. I haven't kept up with them as often as I should so a few in the front are starting to bolt (blossoming).

The onion patch. These are granex (Vidalia) onions that bulb well here in the Deep South. Big, sweet tasting onions. The twenty one degree freeze of the other day yellowed them out, but they've been coming back nicely. The two rows to the right were planted from sets back in November and some of them are already the size of tennis balls. The row to the left were from plants about a month later so aren't as big yet, but they're working on it. The paper mulch keeps the soil moisture even and slows down nutrient leaching so I can usually get very good growth. Elephant garlic has also done well for me in the past and keeps even better. I was tight for space so I didn't plant any this time.

In the greenhouse things are perking right along. In fact it's beginning to get rather crowded in there (big surprise!). Between the warmth, nutrients, and lengthening days the blossoms are really starting to pop.

A Key lime blossom surrounded by new leaves. No leaf miners this time of year.

Another Key lime. This one has mature leaves that you can still see some residue of sooty mold on from before I sprayed them. As the new growth emerges the citrus aphids grow with it so need a bit of control once in a while. Tis a pity I can't buy just a half handful of ladybugs...

This is a Buddha Hand citron. It's among the more persnickety of the citrus that I grow so it's only been recently that I've learned how to make it happy which shows in the new leaves and heavy blossoming it's doing. I'm hoping this time it will hold onto at least a few fruit.


This is a mature Buddha Hand fruit from Wikipedia. They don't really have any practical value beyond making candied peel or zest, but they're so odd looking that they make great curiosities. In some Asian nations they are used as room fresheners as they are highly fragrant.

Blossoms on a Eureka lemon. When I went to repot this one last winter I did not have the size container under the bench that I thought I did so ended up having to use one larger than I really wanted. This subsequently caused problems with drainage, root rot, and leaf loss over the course of the summer. Last September I finally realized my error and moved it into a more appropriate size of pot and it responded by beginning to grow again. Since moving it into the greenhouse it has put out copious new leaves and blossoms. As the new foliage comes up to size it drops older damaged leaves such as the ones you can see with leaf miner tracks in the background.

Another Eureka lemon. We've taken to calling this one "the little tree that could" because it doesn't seem to matter how much the leaf miners and grasshoppers harass the thing it always matures a large crop of lemons. As you can see from the bronzy looking leaves in the foreground it's putting out a lot of new growth as well. I'm hoping they'll all go into spring with a healthy crop of mature leaves before the first leaf miners show up. I could eliminate them, but it would require the use of systemic pesticides that I'm not keen on using so have to tolerate their damage.

I'm not completely focused on citrus. There are a few other things out there that divert me from time to time such as this pink geranium. Looks nice against the tomato foliage doesn't it? The poor thing needs a good pruning from having been squashed flat last summer when another plant fell on it, but it's been blooming so heavily I can't bring myself to chop it up!

Now my grandmother actually gave that pink geranium to the Kinder Major several years ago. One of several flowers at the time. But what I think is that it was really a clever plot to draw her daddy into flower gardening because she knew who it was that was going to have to do the looking after it! And it may be working too because a couple of months ago when I was at the Home Depot looking for something else I came across this peppermint geranium. I ended up buying the thing even though it was looking rather poorly because the blossoms really caught my eye. It turns out that it was badly overpotted and suffering from soggy roots. I moved it into smaller quarters and it has responded well. It stands out nicely against the parsley background.

The nut crop in some parts of the country last fall was nearly non-existent which has left the local squirrel populations in desperate straits to keep from starving so they are eating all sorts of things they normally wouldn't touch. One such was my grandmother's potted hibiscus that she overwinters on her back porch every year. When we were up to the farm for Christmas they had gotten onto the porch to eat every bud, leaf, and twig tip from her plants. So I thought I'd post one of mine so she wouldn't forget what they looked like while hers are recovering. ;)

Winter drags on. We've got another hard freeze predicted for the next three nights and I've still to do a lot of my winter chores of pruning and spraying and chainsaw work. Even if nothing is growing outside there's no end of work waiting to be done.

Y'all stay warm now.

.....Alan.

The 2008/2009 Greenhouse

As anyone who knows me would have said was predictable over the spring and summer of the last year my collection of cold sensitive container plants outgrew the space available in the 8x10 greenhouse I built for the previous winter. This meant I was either going to have to reduce my collection to fit or building a larger structure to use for this winter. There was only one correct answer to that particular dilemma so I started accumulating the necessary materials.

Now according to the natural laws that govern the universe this undertaking was not going to go smoothly and it didn't. My first problem was that I couldn't decide how big I wanted the new greenhouse to be! I first figured on going to a 10x12 structure, but quickly realized that it wasn't really going to give me much additional space so I stepped up to 10x16. A fit of greed overtook me though so I decided to go all out for a 10x20 house. As each change in dimension altered the necessary bill of materials Diana just shook her head figuring it was problaby still cheaper than me hanging out in bars.

The second problem proved to be the weather. Hither to now I've tried to have the greenhouse finished by mid-November at the latest in anticipation of our first frost of the season which usually falls within a few days either way of the first of December. Ma Nature had other ideas this year though and treated us to a suprise frost on October 29th! This meant doing the Large Thorny Plant Shuffle in and out of the workshop for the three frosts that occurred before I was able to finish construction. The old gal isn't going to do me that way next year because I'm going to have the thing ready by mid-October from now on!

The third problem made itself apparent when I began to make the bows only to realize that forcing twenty feet of PVC pipe into a ten foot wide bow was placing an unacceptable amount of strain on the joints. So on the fly I expanded the house to a twelve foot width. First though I had to make sure my twenty foot wide plastic would satisfactorily cover the bows while leaving me sufficient material left over on either side to fasten it down. I briefly considered lengthening the house beyond twenty feet but realized I might be exceeding the heating capacity of the available electric power I can run out there so I finally exercised some restraint. After all a man should know his limitations!

The wood frame at the bottom is made of pressure treated 2x6s. The corners are joined by pieces of flat metal bent into right angles with several screws into the wood in each leg. You can find them at your local hardware store in the metal fasteners area for building joists and trusses. They come flat and I bent each one in a vice. As usual you may click on each photo to see the larger version for more detail.


On the insides there are two pipe clamps at the bottom of each leg of the bows. This keeps them from wobbling in the frame once they are tightened down after the pipes have been inserted. A screwdriver bit in a cordless drill makes this an easy chore.

The pipes are one inch Schedule 40 pvc joined at the tops by 4-way fittings for the interior bows and 3-ways for the two end bows. All joints are primed then solidly glued and allowed to cure for at least a day in the sun before bending. The short sections that connect the bows to one another are not glued, but merely held together by friction.

On the long sides I sistered the two boards together using some old pieces of 2x6s that were kicking around. The two long sides used four 10ft boards and the short sides used two 12ft lengths. As the bows are set into place they begin to exert an outward pressure along the twenty foot length of the house causing it to bow outwards. To counter this I drove three stakes cut from 2x2s on each side evenly spaced. I did not otherwise fasten them to the frame in case I later decided I wanted to move the house (which in fact I did several days afterward).

In retrospect I think I'd use 3/4 inch pipe rather than the one inch that I did use if I had to build it again. Slightly more flexibility while still retaining sufficient stiffness with somewhat of a savings in cost.

With the basic frame and the bows in place it was time to frame the ends. My previous greenhouses did not have end framing, but with this expansion there was going to be too much square area for the wind to blow against for that to work. I didn't want to drill holes in the pipe as I figured that would weaken it so I used the method that I use for building chicken tractors and wired it in place.


It's not the prettiest job I've ever done, but it works. The wire is seventeen gauge galvanized electric fence wire which serves as the universal bailing wire around here. Just keep the part running over the top of the pipe as smooth as you can so it won't abrade a hole in the plastic over time.

Once the ends were framed it was time to build and hang the doors. The hinges are on the left hand side for both as you face them so that when I have them propped open they can catch the breeze to funnel it inside. The warm, bright sunny days can run the temperature up pretty high inside so good ventilation is a must.

Here's the house fully covered. The plastic is plain 4-mil twenty foot wide translucent builders polyethylene. It's not UV stabilized so here in Florida it will last through a fall and winter then begin to crack and shred sometime in the late spring to early summer. For my purposes this is OK as by then I no longer need the protection. For the next time I need to cover it I have a roll of six mill poly for somewhat greater durability, but it still won't last more than a year at best. For a more permanent installation I'd buy actual UV stabilized greenhouse plastic which is mail orderable from a number of supply companies.

The plastic is secured to the frame along both sides by using simple firring strips and screws first drilling small pilot holes before putting in the screws to eliminate splitting. You can see the end of one piece in the first photo at the top of this entry. I like to fold the plastic over on itself then secure it with the wood.

The plastic is secured to the hoops by the use of clamps that I purchased from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply.



They comes in various sizes for each width of pipe. You can also get some of the hard to find pipe fittings there as well if you aren't able to find them locally. I'm sure there are many suppliers for these products so feel free to shop around if you want to. The clamps have held up well for me thus far even after several gusty cold fronts have blown through. I think I'm using five clamps per bow leg which makes for a tight seal of plastic to pipe.

The photo above is the house fully covered. When I did the ends I first stretched the plastic upright so that I could fasten it evenly to the bottom frame with the firring strips. This done I then pulled it taught in an upward direction so that I could clip it into place on the end bows. Once it was smooth and even from side to side and top to bottom I could cut the door out. This was done carefully along three sides, but leaving the hinge side uncut for better weather proofing. The cut edges were folded over on themselves then secured in place with more firring strips. So far this has held well through several windy cold fronts.

And here is the house complete with plants, benches, power, fan, and heaters inside. I'm not using proper greenhouse heaters as are recommended because I can't afford them, but I am careful to unplug everything when I water and both heaters are supported off the floor by boards. I covered the bottom in landscape fabric to keep the grass growth down. It's available from most garden center in various widths and lengths. I used three runs of four foot width material in mine and secured it to the ground with the recommended landscape staples. It's not really necessary, but I thought I'd try it this time. It also makes it easy to sweep up inside which mine needs doing with the citrus dropping their old, bug damaged leaves as they grow new ones.

Between the two heaters I have a combined 2500 watts of heating power along with a small eight inch fan to move it around inside. The house passed our twenty one degree night without incident. I don't have automatic vents so I have to use some forethought about opening and closing the doors to either retain heat or let it out. On our coldest days that never climbed above sixty degrees I never opened it at all. Any warmer than that and I'll open at least one door a few inches. Warm sunny days I open both doors wide open.

In a climate that is significantly colder than Florida's I'd either need to reduce the size of the house or use insulation to keep heating costs within reason. Next year I may order one of the clear plastic solar pool covers (think giant sheet of bubble wrap) that some folks use with their houses. This should help significantly in retaining heat, especially in the event of a power failure.

This iteration is as large as I think I care to go in building a greenhouse. If I just had to have more space I believe I'd build a second. What I'm thinking about now though is where I'm going to put our permanent greenhouse and what design I should use. I'm thinking out past by sycamore tree by the corner of the vegetable garden...

.....Alan.

2008 Southeastern Citrus Exposition - Part Two

The Fruit Judging Contest

There was more to the exposition than the speakers and the tours there was also the fruit judging contest!

It was ironic that though this was the southeastern citrus expo no fruit from Florida could be shown due to the quarantine on shipping uninspected citrus out of the state. Even if an attendee had been able to run his personally grown fruit through through an inspected packing house the contest rules required that at least a few leaves remain attached to the stem of at least one of the fruits to prove it wasn't grocery store fruit which are part of what the quarantine bans. Given the inability to stop the spread of the psyllid this may change in the future I suppose. I had a hat full of beautiful Key limes this year that were the size of golf balls that I'd have loved to enter.

The lack of Florida fruit aside there were still some very nice specimens from dozens of varieties of citrus to be seen. The first five shots are of whole categories. There were more than just these, but they are the ones that came out the best.



Remember that none of these fruit came from Florida, but rather the other Southeastern states so citrus is a possibility in many areas. If you have a greenhouse or a sunny southern exposure window you can grow even the most cold sensitive varities. For the folks up to the line of central Georgia and Alabama you can grow certain sweet citrus varieties in the ground. The coastal areas of the Carolinas can grow many good citrus varieties as well. If you're willing to settle for a non-edible ornamental there are varieties that can be grown all the way to the Mason-Dixon and beyond.

Following are some close up photos of specific varieties. Some were grown in the ground and some in containers, but all came from the non-Florida southeastern states.

Page Orange (left) and Sunburst Tangerine (right)

The Page Orange is in my opinion one of the best tasting citrus varieties ever developed, but they were never able to achieve good fruit size with them and they are a bit soft at maturity for long distance shipping so it never gained commercial popularity. Technically speaking the Page isn't an orange at all. It's the product of a cross between the Minneola tangelo and the Clementine tangerine which makes it three quarters tangerine and one quarter grapefruit by breeding. Nevertheless the USDA called it an orange when they released it back in 1963 so many people know it as one so orange it's going to be here.

The Sunburst Tangerine on the other hand is very popular with commercial growers and is now the most common commercially grown tangerine in Florida. The flavor is great and the color everything one expects of a tangerine.

Page Orange

A little better view from the previous picture. In my opinion, when grown in Florida, the Page is the best tasting citrus variety to be found. It also has fair cold resistance which is why I have one in my own grove. Come the spring I will be replacing my old one with one I bought recently that is grafted on trifoliate which performs better for me here than the rootstock my old one is on.

Owari Satsuma

Like tangerines all satsumas are mandarins, but not all mandarins are satsumas. Some of the distinguishing characteristics of the breed is that they reach their best flavor in areas generally too cool for sweet oranges and their easy peeling 'zipper skin.' They are popular in Japan which is where many varieties originated though the earliest ancestors are Chinese in origin. The Owari is one of the most commonly grown. Nice flavor when picked at the peak of ripeness. They don't hold up well to long distance shipping though so their market is mostly local.

Ambersweet Orange

Like the Page Orange above the Ambersweet Orangeis not a pure orange, but a hybrid of the Orlando tangelo, Clementine tangerine, and an unknown sweet orange which makes it both seedless and gives a greater cold resistance than common sweet oranges which is why I have one in my grove as well. They make nice sized, good tasting and juicy fruit. I like them right well.

Honey Orange

I'm not familiar with this one, by that name anyway. Moderately seedy, but plainly juicy and with a good color. Given the name it's probably rather sweet as well.

Orlando Tangelo

Another hybrid that has become popular as a grocery store fruit. Good color, size, juiciness, and flavor with only a moderate amount of seeds. The Orlando has a degree of cold resistance so I have one in my grove. Unlike many varieties this one is not self-fertile so requires a pollenizer. The Sunburst tangerine is the same way and fortunately one will pollinate the other so I have one of each planted in close proximity. I like the Orlando more for juice than eating out of hand.

Nansho Dadai (Citrus Taiwanica)

The Nansha is an exotic sour orange originally hailing from Taiwan. I don't know much about it other than what you can read at the link.

It is possible for many types of citrus to be completely mature and still green as grass in their peel color. In fact this is rather common in the more tropical areas that do not receive enough cool weather to cause color change in citrus peels.

Duncan Grapefruit.

Remarkably few seeds for this variety. The Duncan is the grandaddy of all grapefruits being the first named variety from which all others were developed. Many expericed citrus people think the Duncan is still the best tasting of all grapefruit, but it's white flesh and (usually) many seeds now render it commercially unattractive. If you can find one picked fresh off the tree along about March it is worth your while.

Blush Grapefruit

Red or pink grapefruit are what is popular in the market these days. Pretty color and no seeds.

Variegated Pink Lemon
Not only attractive, but can make your own naturally pink lemonade!

Australian Finger Lime

This was the only Australian citrus entry that I recall seeing. The finger limes are still rather rare in the United States, are not the most easily grown citrus and the flavor of some varieties leaves something to be desired, but they have a high curiousity value.

Yuzu Lemons

The Yuzu has developed a catchet among certain foodophiles. I haven't tried one myself yet as I haven't found a tree to bring home, but I'm told it's a different sort of lemon flavor than one gets from ordinary grocery store lemons.

Meyer Lemon

Some of you may have seen the Meyer in the grocery store where it's not uncommon in the southwest. It's a cross between a lemon and a sweet orange and is one of the most common container citrus grown. It has a degree of cold hardiness so I have one in my grove.

Key limes (left) and Persian/Tahiti limes (right)

Key limes are what got me into container citrus as I'm too far north for them to survive planted outside unprotected. They have a flavor that is different from the larger Persian limes that are more commonly found in the grocery in the eastern U.S.

Calamondin

This is another common container citrus variety. Calamondins are similar to kumquats in that the flesh is sour, but the peels are rather sweet. They have a nice color as well. Even a small tree can give a lot of fruit.

Trifoliate Orange

Trifoliate orange is a common roostock plant when maximum cold resistance is needed. The fruit itself is essentially inedible. Assuming you can find any pulp to eat between all the seeds it has a bad flavor and aroma that one can often smell across a room. This time though the room was so full of good smelling citrus I couldn't smell the trifoliate at all. It has been crossed into many other varieties in an attempt to achieve better cold resistance with varying degrees of success. One usually loses the cold resistance before the awful trifoliate flavor fades, but there has been a lot of work done with them and is still being done.

Rusk Citrange

There has been a lot of cross-breeding done with trifoliate orange over the years in an attempt to either develop a desirable edible fruit with good cold resistance or a rootstock plant with characteristics improved or minimized from the original trifoliate parent. The edible fruit experiments largely never worked well, but the rootstock work very much did so that they are now some of the most common rootstocks used in Florida and many other parts of the world. The Rusk Citrange pictured here falls somewhere in the middle in that as an edible fruit it's one of the better produced meaning it has only a trace of the disagreeable trifoliate aroma, good color, good juiciness, is essentially seedless, but the fruit tend to be small. The faint trifoliata aroma and small size were enough to keep it from becoming popular as an edible fruit and the lack of seeds makes it difficult to use as a rootstock. Supposedly it is a great one for tangerines, satsumas, and mandarins though.

Swingle Citrumelo

Another of the trifoliate crosses, this one developed by one of the founders of the modern citrus industry, Dr. Swingle who worked for the USDA in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in both Florida and California. Swingle citrumelo is now the most common rootstock used in Florida. The fruit are essentially inedible though.

Troyer Citrange

A trifoliate and sweet orange cross. Troyer makes a nice sized fruit with good color, juiciness, not too many seeds, but it's trifoliate parentage comes through so is not popular as other than a rootstock except for where a citrus is wanted in areas otherise too cold for the more palatable varieties. Juiced, diluted, and sweetened it can make an acceptable drink.


For you citrus growers in the southeast come on down to the 2009 expo and enter YOUR fruit! See you there!

.....Alan.

2008 Southeastern Citrus Exposition - Part One

2008 was much too full to get it all into one post so I've decided to do a couple more looking back over the year.

In early November I drove up to the University of Georgia Coastal Plains Experiment Station in Tifton to attend the Southeastern Citrus Exposition. It's an annual event held in various states and attended by citrus enthusiasts from all over the country. This time it was close enough that I could day trip the thing so off I went.

I left the house at five a.m. driving through on and off rain all the way up and one truly torrential downpour between Gainesville and Alachua to arrive at the confence center at 8:00 a.m. when the registration opened. When I got there the plant sale in the parking lot had already started.


Naturally being a citrus exposition there was a lot of it on offer but there were also many other plants as well such cycads, palms, deciduous trees and a nice selection of camellias.

I got close to them just long enough to snap that shot then kept my distance before I lost all reason and started buying as I really like camellias.

After nearly spending myself broke I finally made my way inside to register and settle in for a long day of all things citrus.

There were some good speakers. Monte Nesbit from the Auburn University, Gulf Coast Research Station in Fairhope, AL. spoke about their continuing efforts to bring back the commercial satsuma industry in southern Alabama and the rest of the upper Gulf Coast. Before commercial citrus became as big as it is today in penninsular Florida there used to be quite a few satsuma groves across the upper Gulf Coast. They're more cold hardy than most sweet oranges and need cooler fall temperatures to develop their best flavor.

Dr. Wayne Dixon with the USDA spoke about the citrus greening disease problem that has broken out in Florida, Brazil and now possibly California. This is a potentially devastating disease that first renders the fruit inedible then ultimately kills the tree. If we cannot come up with a successful management plan it has the potential to eliminate citrus as a commercial crop in Florida. Unfortunately the disease is spread by a small insect called the Asian Citrus Psyllid. It looks like a small moth and has proven to be easily transported by both man and weather so that now it has been found in nearly every Florida county, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Southern California (by way of Mexico they think). Complicating matters further is that the disease can remain latent up to four years before the first visible symptoms in the tree occurs which in practical effect means that if the psyillid has been found in a given area it's very likely the disease is there by now as well, but not yet visible.

There doesn't seem to be any way to stop the spread of the insect and eradication of the disease is impossible so management is the only alternative. The only upside of all of this is that there is now a twenty million dollar research effort underway here in Florida to come up with that management plan. There are experiments using salicylate compounds to treat the disease, but they're still too preliminary to know if they're going to amount to anything. And there are some indications that some types of guava may deter psyllids from trees they are interplanted with, but those experiments are still in early days as well. I'm personally going with the plan to keep on keeping on with what I'm doing until they come up with some sort of management or defense or until the disease kills all of my trees and I have to move on to other types of fruit. The situation may look bad, but we're not dead yet.

After Dr. Dixon we heard from Jerry Selph, retired from the Helena Chemical Company down to Indian River county in Central Florida on identifying and managing common citrus pests and diseases. Some very good photos and management advice. For a chemical company man he was not really big on the use of pesticides, recommending using them only to the extent that was necessary to bring an out of control problem back to where naturally occuring predators could deal with them. Over spraying was he said one of the best ways of turning a difficult management problem into an impossible one when the naturally occurring predatory insects had been killed off.

The last speaker was Dr. Jack Hearn, Retired USDA Citrus Scientist. For anyone interested in ag history he was one of the most interesting speakers of the morning and I wish there had been more time to hear him talk.

When the speakers were finished it was time for the fruit contest awards and the raffle drawing. This is my one halfway-decent photo from inside the auditorium as the awards were being given.

That citrus fruit shirt he's wearing really stands out doesn't it? The plants on the stage are for the raffle and the bit of the palm you can see him standing in front of was the first item drawn won by yours truly - a European Fan Palm. It was somewhat like carrying a porcupine getting it into and out of the truck. I still haven't decided where I'm going to plant the thing, but I'm sure something will come to me presently. The bad thing about it is that it's gotten me interested in palms now as if I needed yet another type of plant interest...

Once the awards and the raffle were over it was time for lunch which gave me a chance to pick Monte Nesbitt's brain more about his work with satsumas in Alabama and the various cold resistance strategies they've employed. I have a terrible memory for names so I can't recall everyone that I spoke with that day, but there were a lot of them! There was an amazing amount of knowledge walking around the place.

Lunch finished it was time for the walking tours. The first was with Dr. Wayne Hanna. He's the turf and forage grass specialist at Tifton, but he's taken an interest in cold hardy citrus and is trying to develop seedless varieties that can be grown in South Georgia. Here's a photo of us all out in the field near to the conference center where he's telling us about his experiments with Changsha tangerine and Ichang lemon. The conference center is the large building in the far background.


Behind him are his trees. The Changsha row on the left, the Ichang on the right.

He says the lemons have only just begun to bear so I was only able to find one fruit in a position that I could get a photo.


It's too soon to say if they are going to pan out, but it looks promising so far.

The Changsha he is further along with. As you can see the trees are loaded with fruit.


The lighting is a bit weird because the sky was starting to lighten a bit and I wasn't able to improve it more than that in the editing.

Here's a close up of the fruit on the branches:

They had nice color and most of them had good external qualities.

But what he's working on is seedlessness so it's the inside that tells the story. Here are several of the fruit that he cut for us.


As you can see most of them have a fair amount of seeds, but you'll note the one fruit in the lower left is seedless. Here's a close up for a better view.


He's still working on identifying the specific branches of specific trees in the row that are producing the seedless fruit and whether they'll continue to do it year after year, but it looks promising so far.

Of course no seeds is only part of the story. The fruit has to taste good as well and Dr. Hanna graciously allowed me to sample some of the seedless one that he cut when the presentation was over. It was surprisingly good. A decent Page or Ponkan would still be better in my opinion, but had I paid money for a sack of those Changshas at a fruit stand I'd have been pleased with what I got. If he's providing any cold protection for those trees I must have missed it. I can say they are all out in the open just several hundred yards from the conference center. If ever he is able to develop one that he's satisfied to release I'll be in the line to get one.

The second walking tour was Dr. Ruter's ornamentals work at the plots on the other side of the Interstate. The only photos I took of that area were the oil camellias he's working with. The species name is Camillia oleifera and they look much like any other camellia in the appearance of the plant itself. The flowers are mostly single though he had some nice doubles as well. What makes them of particular interest are the rather large seeds they produce. The pod with the seeds inside is about the size of a ping-pong ball and they have a high extractable oil content. Given that the plant is a long lasting perennial there is potential for development of an edible oil source similar to olive oil in chemical composition and with a higher smoke point. He's still fairly early into his project but I think it shows some promise.

The 2009 Exposition is scheduled to be held November 21st in Charleston, South Carolina at Magnolia Plantation. I don't have any further information yet, but when it becomes available it should be posted on the Southeastern Palm Society website who sponsor the exposition every year. I'll try to remember to post it here as well.

In the next post will be the photos from the fruit judging competition. If you have any interest in citrus you want to see them!

.....Alan.

Where have I been?

Hello! Good to see you again!

Even though it has been a year since I last updated this blog I still receive the occasional e-mail about it so my nagging feeling of guilt over having abandoned the thing has finally motivated me to start posting again.

2008 proved to be an eventful year so catching up will take some time to cover the ground, but if you’re interested here it is.

In January of last year we were expecting a hard freeze down to fourteen degrees (f) the day after I made my last post, the coldest we would have seen in many years since at least the Christmas Eve storm of 1989. Fortunately it didn’t really go that low but the twenty two degrees we did get was bad enough for my unprotected citrus out in the grove.

I was puzzled by the damage seeing as how everything out there is supposedly cold hardy until it occurred to me it had been reaching nearly eighty degrees every day for the week prior so the trees had not hardened off as they should have. No fruit out there this year, but I didn’t lose the trees outright so they spent the year growing back what froze off. I bought frost cloth for this year so will hopefully not repeat last year’s mistakes.

As annoying as the losses in the grove were the situation in the greenhouse was much better.

Those fat Eureka lemons made some fine lemonade. The blossoms that you see are now the fruit for the lemonade we're enjoying right now. The leaf miners and grasshoppers did their best, but the tree shrugged them off to do its duty. We’ve taken to calling it “the little tree that could.”

Keeping it company was this Key lime with blossoms, green and mature fruit. Those blossoms are now a colander full of fruit on my kitchen counter. Limemade, meat marinade, or just squeezed into a glass of selzter water it's all good. Add a little rum for a great end-of-the-week treat!

Here is the brother of the first Eureka lemon. I had a bit of trouble with this one last year as I had repotted it into an overly large container which subsequently gave me drainage and root problems. I realized my error in September so moved it into a more appropriate size pot. It responded by putting on a new flush of leaves and seems to be recovering well now.

This is one of two Tahiti (Persian or Bearss) limes, both of which have produced nice crops this year. Had a bit of scale problems over the summer that I treated with horticultural oil and copper in the hopes that I won’t have to go to anything stronger. So far, so good. It's much easier to deal with pests like those before moving them under cover than trying to eradicate them once they are inside.

Winter is also the time to gear up for the year’s new birds and this year was no exception. My 2008 order from Privett Hatchery arrived on February first.

This year's list was:

4 Easter Eggers (lays green/blue eggs)

8 Production Reds

6 Barred Rocks

1 Barred Rock cockerel

10 White Leghorns

6 Black Australorps

3 Jersey Black Giants

6 New Hampshire Reds

8 Red Sex Links

1 Red Sex Link cockerel

3 Speckled Sussex

The Black Australorps and four of the Leghorns were for others. The Jersey Giants and Speckled Sussex are for pretty with the rest being working birds.

Unfortunately my good mail order bird karma ran out on me with this batch as they had a rough trip via the Postal Service which translated to the worst brooder losses I’ve ever had. I ended up losing most of the Easter Eggers, several of the Leghorns, and one or two from the rest were lost. Still managed to deliver the birds I’d promised other folks and the remaining ones were enough to meet our needs. I really hate losing chicks like that, but it’s going to happen once in a while.

Here’s a photo of the little ones freshly installed in their new home. A couple of months prior to their arrival I painted the brooder box and hover so that I could eliminate the plastic sheeting, but I think I’ll go back to it this next time. Much easier to keep things clean that way. The paint does improve the lighting inside the box though. The frame with the hardware cloth on it in the foreground is where the waterers and feeders go once the birds have recovered from their trip and can be out from under the hover. This helps to cut down on wet bedding which is a sin where brooding chicks is concerned as it encourages coccidiosis which is a common killer of poultry chicks.

Here’s a close up of the fuzzballs. For the first couple of days I like to feed them out of an egg carton because it allows them to get into the food without being able to scratch it out and waste it. Once they’re eating well I transition them over to reel-top feeders then eventually to tube feeders. I have never found a system that is really efficient at keeping chicks from wasting feed, but one can reduce it to a tolerable amount. When the chicks finally go out on pasture the brooder bedding with its attendant manure and spilled feed goes into the garden. What you see in there now grew a fine crop of sweet potatoes that I dug up the first week of November.

Shortly after the chicks came in we went down to St. Petersburg to visit with Diana’s grandparents who do the snowbird migration every year. One of the payoffs of slogging through Tampa/St. Pete traffic is stopping by Jene’s Tropicals. They’re a great source of tropical and subtropical plants, especially fruit. I picked up a Williams Seedless tangerine (a Murcott selection) that I may keep as a container plant. It’s a late season fruit so would be vulnerable to the hard freezes we often receive in January.

While there I made a wholly unexpected score of perennial peanuts!

I've been wanting some for years, but had not been able to find any in small quantities. For those of us who live south of central Georgia they are an alternative to alfalfa which does not generally grow well here. The University of Florida has done a lot of work with them developing four or five varieties for ground cover, forage, and hay uses. Once home I divided the six pots of plants into forty two to grow out over the rest of the winter. I planted the first plots over the summer. It can take several years to get a good stand from the initial planting so this will take some time but I'm excited to give it a try because it is very nearly the only practical summer legume I can grow here in my soil type and it's a perennial to boot. This allowed me to start a project that will hopefully lead to us being able to produce more of our own animal feed.

Of course with all those new birds I had to build more housing to keep them. I don’t have any photos yet of the Mk. III chicken tractor. It looks pretty much the same as the earlier iterations but for using 4x4s for the sledge runners rather than 2x4s of the previous models. This brings my chicken tractor fleet up to three and I have plans for at least three more. I’m going to have to have at least one more before I can take the 2009 birds out of the brooder and the Kinder Major will need one for her 4H birds when we find them.

Spring eventually rolled around, a trifle late, but it did finally get here. Unfortunately my spring garden was later still so that I actually got it into the ground in the first week of May! I figured I’d need all the help I could get so I enlisted some fertility magic by going to see the Kinder Major do the Maypole Dance at the local ladies club.

The Kinder Major is the blonde in the blue vest.

Just in case that wasn’t enough I enlisted the Kinder Minor’s aid as well.

Losing a months worth of growing season cost me in production, but we were still able to make out OK. We brought in enough summer squash (2 varieties) and zucchini (just one type) to keep us in fresh produce and filled a couple of half gallon jars with dried product before powdery mildew finally killed the plants as it does every year.

The rest of the garden was a mixed bag. The sweet potatoes and okra did well.

The five varieties of sweet and hot peppers on the other hand turned out to be a loss. This surprised me as I have always found peppers one of the easiest things to grow but every one of them did poorly. For a while I thought they’d contracted a virus until I read in a gardening forum about a new introduced pest afflicting us here in Florida - the Chili Thrip. The adult pest is less than two millimeters in length and likes to hide on the undersides of leaves so can be tough to spot - especially if your eyes aren’t as good as they once were like mine. Well, live and learn. Next time I’ll be looking for them and know how to handle them.

Also in May I planted the citrus trees I had bought in January. The Flame grapefruit, Sunburst tangerine (again!), Ambersweet orange (again!), and a Kimbrough Satsuma. At the same time I planted the Mutablis, Bowbells, and Madame Joseph Schwartz cracker roses I bought from a vendor at the Dudley Farm when they were doing their cane grinding and syrup making in December. The Madame Schwarz did not make it through the summer, but the others took and are now patiently waiting on me to get out there and give the rose bed the attention it needs. I haven’t planted them out yet, but I also have four little rosemary plants for that bed as well. My plan is to put a rosemary between every rose so that I get both a pleasing scent and beauty at the same time. We use a fair amount of the herb in the kitchen as well.

June came around at its appointed time bringing with it our rainy season. We caught our first big thunderstorm on a 20% rain chance to get three inches of rain in less than an hour! Just for dramatic effect it also threw in copious lightning, high winds, and hail, but other than a bit of erosion in the driveway we suffered no damage. The chicken tractors rode it out well though I did realize I needed to put rain caps on the feeders for those times when the rain comes down sideways. Haven’t had any problems with wet feed since.

The new birds we received in February started laying about then so our egg production ramped up. Lost several roosters in a brief period of time to what I think was coyotes - Fred the Barred Rock, Noodles the Rhode Island Red along with Ping & Pong the Red Sex Links - which annoyed me no end as I really wanted them for breeding. The predators always seem to take the ones I want most to keep first. In the plus column though it turned out that one of the three Black Jersey Giant pullets was a cockerel. He fooled me for a while as there were two other cockerels in that particular tractor with him so he never crowed and wasn’t showing any obvious signs of not being a pullet. Like all young males coming into their own though once his brothers had gotten their transfer orders to the Bachelor Pad he had to crow about having it made. I named him Black Jack then moved him in with the other boys. Predator losses have now left me with just five roosters.

Later that month I picked up a Kaffir lime on a trip to Lowes out of their ten dollar citrus area. I try to give that area a quick once over when ever I’m there just to see if they have anything unusual. Most of the time they don’t but every once in a while they’ll surprise me. I expect the lime will mostly serve as a curiosity like the Buddha Hand citron I picked up the same way. But I might decide to try some southeast Asian cooking sometime so will have an important ingredient fresh to hand if I do.

In July the Kinder Major spent a couple of weeks at a 4H summer camp held at the county extension office where among other accomplishments she earned her Hunter Safety Certification. As we were dropping her off one day I noticed there was a different type of perennial peanut planted in the flower bed in front of the building than what I already had. It turns out they were taking some of the plantings out to use the area for other purposes so the secretary told me I could have all I wanted to dig up! Like all good gardeners I keep a shovel in the car for just-in-case so I did. I’ve been propagating it since then and hope to have enough to put at least one planting in the pasture in the spring of next year. I don’t know the name of this variety either as the extension agent told me it had been there for at least twenty years and no one could remember what it was called. It’s one of the taller forage/hay types rather than the ground cover kind that I’d bought the previous winter. Things are looking up on the homestead feed production front!

August rolled around in its usual hot and humid way so the fruit began to ripen. We made a fair crop of grapes this year though we only harvested about half of them. Tropical Storm Fay never amounted to much in the way of wind (for which we are thankful) as she passed us by about fifty miles to the north, but she did drop twelve solid inches of rain. I picked all of the grapes and pears that were ready before she arrived for just-in-case which was a good thing because when she’d gone the remaining grapes were on the ground and ruined. We put up nearly fifty pints of pear sauce and about thirty or so half-pints of pear-butter. The grapes are still in the freezer waiting on me to turn them into jam. No fruit from the orchard citrus this year thanks to the freeze in January except for one solitary Meyer lemon.

Over the summer I experimented with using paper mulch in the vegetable garden. It’s not pretty to be sure, but it works rather well. After planting out the sweet potatoes I laid paper feed sacks between the rows then covered them with shredded paper which I also put between the plants. Except for a few places where I put it down too thinly it held up all summer long suppressing weeds, slowing nutrient leaching, and limiting water loss. I liked the way it worked well enough to do the entire winter garden the same way. It looks like a paper mache’ project run amok, but it’s working.

Also in August we advanced our homestead security by bringing home a pair of Great Pyrenees puppies. Our next door neighbor has kept Pyrenees for years to guard his goats and birds and I’ve wanted pups from those dogs ever since I first saw them. He showed up unexpectedly one day to tell us that he had a litter ready to sell so ready-or-not we bought two males. I let the girls choose their names and seeing as how we’d just finished reading The Lord of the Rings I suppose it should come as no surprise that they chose Merry & Pippin.

It’s been an educational experience for the dogs, myself, and the girls since we brought them home! (laughing}. Here’s a shot of the K. Major taking them for a walk, or them taking her for one, it wasn’t clear which. It was starting to get dark so they are in their night vision mode. The next day they drug her through a patch of stinging nettles!

We’ve been working with them around the chickens since bringing them home so they are well used to being close to birds. Being pups they still want to chase once in a while, but a firm “NO!!!” is all it takes to make them stop. As pups will do they’ve been growing rapidly and are now in the 60-65 pound range.

Merry is the one on the left. He’s slightly larger than his brother now, his badger markings are slowly fading away and he carries his tail curled upwards more often. He’s more aloof than Pippin who likes to stay near when we’re out for a walk. You can’t see it in this shot, but Pippin has a dark ring around his tail and his puppy markings are still fairly dark though they too will eventually fade to the usual Pyrenees all-over white.

We bought sturdy collars but when we went to pick them up I quickly discovered that even on the first hole the collars were much too big for either of them so had to punch more on the spot to make them fit. That was then. Three weeks ago I had to let them out to their last hole so they wouldn’t be too tight. In another month or so I may have to go buy new ones! They get a good grade of large breed puppy food with a couple of eggs apiece every day which obviously agrees with them. In fact if I don’t mix their eggs in they’ll sulk and won’t eat. Spoiled rotten, but they’re a part of our family now.

As a part of training the dogs to the birds I moved the Bachelor Pad from its place under the trees off the end of the garden to the end of the new dog pen that I put up next to the workshop. Jacques le Coq, Picky, Fred the Second, and Black Jack didn’t seem to mind once they realized the dogs couldn’t get into their side. After a few days they all pretty well ignored each other. Once in a while Jacques will get into a spat with the other boys and fly the fence over into the dog pen. He’ll spend the day there scratching around where the dogs pay him no mind. Come dark he flies back to his side to go to roost. I did once remove the dividing panel between the two which is the only time I ever had trouble as the dogs suddenly showing up on their side of the fence caused the roosters to panic which in turn caused excitement among the dogs who then wanted to chase. I put the panel back and they all calmed down. Out in the pasture where there’s lots of space they don’t act that way so I think it was the confinement that was causing the problem.

On another trip to Lowes I picked up a small Temple orange which I’ll also keep as a container planting to extend the season. The citrus collection is steadily growing! For my family members who read this - stop smirking! It’s cheap and it keeps me out of bars doesn’t it? {laughing}

With the arrival of September it was time to start thinking of the cool season garden. We don’t normally see much of a break in the weather before mid-October but the ground needs prepping while the weather is still hot. This time I wanted to use the north end of the garden which is within the fenced area, but had not really been planted before. A little time with the hundred yard measuring tape and some flagging pins had it laid out so that I could start penciling in what was going to go where. To my surprise the last week of September proved to be unusually cool so I consulted my gardening books about cool weather crops which said that carrots and turnips can be planted in September so I did. Alas, the next week proved to be quite seasonal so those two rows were not successful. The carrots faded out completely and the turnips were spotty, but enough of them made it through that I left them and we are eating the roots now. Diana and I are delighted with them, but the Kinder are appalled. {insert kid making yuck face here}

As it became available I laid out more feed sacks, cardboard, and shredded paper mulching between the rows. An area feed store proved to have granex (Vidalia type) onion sets so I bought enough for a couple of rows. At the same time I put in a couple of rows of hot and sweet peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. We got a nice rain from Hurricane Ike as he toured the central Gulf on his way to Texas, but other than giving us some much needed precipitation presented us with no problems.

Also during September I got the 2009 chick order off to Sand Hill Preservation Center. They had a special going that if you got your 2009 order in before the end of November you could get their 2008 prices. We ordered Buff Orpington, Black Jersey Giant, and Delaware chickens along with Midget White and Wishard Bronze turkeys. We’ve kept Buffs and Jersey Giants for years, but this will be our first experience with the Delawares. I haven’t kept turkeys since I was a boy so we’re really looking forward to getting them. I’m hoping the K. Major will take an interest in maybe showing them for 4H. We’ll have plenty of time to get ready for the new birds as the order isn’t scheduled to arrive before May, possibly as late as June, depending on how their hatching goes. I might even have a chicken tractor or two built by then!

October was more or less seasonal, a little cooler than usual in the first half, but not greatly so. The last few days of that month though proved a surprise when we got our first frost of the year! The night of the 29^th/30^th we broke a fifty year record when the mercury sank to 30 degrees which we do not normally see around here until a few days either side of December 1^st and I was not ready. The sweet potatoes hadn’t been dug yet, the peppers were full of fruit, and I had only just started buying the material for this year’s greenhouse rebuild, never mind having it finished! I spent an evening carting all of the container plants into the workshop then covering the peppers and tomatoes with cardboard boxes. The potatoes were nipped but I was planning on digging them up that coming weekend anyway which I did.

It was a fair harvest, but would have been a good bit more had I not lost so many roots to something eating them. Mice or voles I suppose. Next year I’ll dig them at the beginning of October to see if I can forestall some of that. Until now I’ve always dug them the first week of November, but if we’re going to get early freezes I’ll have to dig earlier.

I played the “cover before frost” with the peppers several more times after that before finally giving up. They were green healthy plants, but they hadn’t grown an inch since that first frost. By the time December rolled around I wrote them off. Such is gardening. The next frost did them in and I replaced them with a mix of cabbage, collards, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, and pac choi. It’s all doing well so far though the grasshoppers seem to really like Chinese cabbage. You’d think with the five frosts we’ve had so far the grasshoppers wouldn’t be a problem, but if we get one good day of warm weather they’re out again. During this same time I also bought some onion plants from another farm supply and set them out. I misjudged how many were in a bundle so bought twice what I thought I was getting so that I now have two double rows and one triple row of them. If they make at all we’re going to be set for onions all year!

My other “must get done before frost” project every fall is getting the greenhouse ready to move the container plants in. Much of my container citrus are cold sensitive so won’t survive our North Florida winters the way they would further south. I had a problem though in that my collection of potted plants had grown rather a lot since last winter so there was no way I was going to be able to get them all into the 8ft x 10ft house I built last year. A rebuild was necessary and I was doing just that when our unseasonally early frost turned up the urgency. This year’s greenhouse measures 12ft x 20ft which is more than enough to hold the collection while leaving some room for seed starting. I’ll talk more about the construction in a separate post. So far it has passed a 28 degree night with flying colors so we’ll see how it goes when we get our coldest nights in late January and February. For next year I’ve decided to buy one of those clear solar pool covers for insulation in the hopes of cutting down heating costs.

So that brings us up to now. It’s been a long, busy year that I wish could have been busier still, but family and employment simply will have their share of our time so we gardeners have to do the best we can. We’ll eat the first head of broccoli from the garden tonight. We’ve been eating turnips for weeks. The first planting of cabbage is about ready to cut and the first onions are beginning to swell nicely. I’ve got second and third plantings of most of those out there to get us to the warm season when we’ll start the gardening cycle all over again.

I can’t promise how often I’ll update this blog, but I will endeavor to get at least a couple of posts a month in. See you the next time!

…..Alan.

New Years Day 2008

As New Years Day goes this one wasn't bad. Pleasantly cool but not so much that I felt the need for long sleeves until about dark or so. Could have been sunnier, but it wasn't gloomy or anything. The ground is still moist from the three tenths of rain we received two days ago though a day or so of sunny, dry, and breezy will soon dry that up. We're predicted for a freeze tonight - 27 degrees - but the real show will be tomorrow (Wednesday) night when the Weather Service predicts we'll sink to a chilly 16 degrees Fahrenheit. If it really happens it'll be the coldest I've seen it here since the Christmas Storm of '89 when the official low at the airport in Gainesville was 16 but my front porch thermometer said 11! Fortunately this time we won't also be dealing with a thick coating of ice and a dusting of snow too.

With an impending severe freeze on the horizon I shoved everything in containers back into the hoophouse snapping a photo or two as I was doing so. This is a Eureka lemon, one of the varieties commonly sold for grocery store fruit, with both fully mature fruit and blossom buds about to open. The greenhouse always smells heavenly when they do. Sometimes I have mature fruit, half-grown fruit, and blossoms all at the same time, but I was negligent with my fertilizing schedule back in late summer so no immature fruit this time. This one is a Key lime, also known as Mexican limes for our Left Coast readers. I couldn't get the blossoms to show up nicely but they are there if you look. As always if you click on the photo you'll be able to see a larger version. I picked the last of the mature fruit off before I thought about taking pictures, but as you can see there are immature fruit there with the blossoms. Key limes aren't as fragrant with their blossoms as the lemons, but they are still sweet if you bend a little closer. This one is NOT a thornless variety so pick the fruit at your own risk!

My Tahiti limes are putting on some nice leaf flushes, but it's hard to distinguish the new growth from the old in a photo. Even the Buddha Hand citron is beginning to blossom though I wish it would put on some new leaves first. Back before I repotted it last month I let the old media dry too much forgetting that it didn't retain moisture as well as the coconut media so it dropped a lot of leaves. I'm sure once this blossom flush is finished the new leaves will be forthcoming to support the new fruit. I'm looking forward to using the tree as a specimen on my back porch if it sets some nice fruit.

The vegetable garden is plugging along. You couldn't tell it from looking at the photo but I took seven buckets of weeds out of there over the last several days. A bit of moisture and some warmish weather and they fairly shot out of the ground. The hens in the permanent yard would get excited everytime they saw me coming with another bucket for them.

A couple of hens in the new flock on the other side of the garden fence decided they wanted to see if the grass really was greener on the other side so they flew over. Thirty two hundred square feet of winter forage wasn't enough it seems. Neither of them did any damage except to the rutabagas which they devastated. Nothing else, just the rutabagas. It's a mystery to me, but it seems they really like them. I'm not sure how much of the two rows are going to make it through. I don't think they like our erratic warm/cold/warm winter weather here. This doesn't seem to bother the turnips though as they are growing rampantly. After I took the photos I thinned the second row, the first being done a couple of weeks ago. I also thinned the carrots once again. I've never had any luck with them in the past so I tend to leave them a bit more thickly than I probably should. Both of the root vegetables are starting to swell and color up. The elephant garlic that I planted directly is getting rather large in spite of the fact that I haven't weeded their row yet. The stuff I transplanted after sprouting other places is lagging, but I attribute that to having to grow out new root systems. I think they'll catch up in due course.

The chickens are loving their winter forage. I moved more birds into the tractors so there are now thirty of them out there. This being the first time I've attempted this I can't decide if the forage is going to last through the winter or not. They may well wipe it out before the end of March. Next year I think I'll till up a patch out in the pasture for winter forage as well. Feed consumption is down about twenty percent or thereabouts, but whether I'm saving any money or not is an open question considering what I spent to grow it. I can say though that the egg yolks are staying nicely orange which is the main reason for doing this. No need for food coloring when making yellow cakes around here!

With any luck we won't take any significant freeze damage tomorrow night. I cobbled together some greenhouse insulation this afternoon using old blankets and a tarp which should allow the little heater inside to keep the temperature above freezing. The orchard trees are on their own, but I chose them all on the basis of their cold hardiness so other than some twig damage I think they'll come through OK. I did clip all of the Ponkans tonight as they are completely ripe. I may clip the remaining Satsumas and Seville oranges as well tomorrow.

Here's to staying warm!

.....Alan.

Merry Christmas from Dun Hagan

The Hagan family wishes you a Merry Christmas
and the best of gardening New Years. .....Alan, Diana, and the Kinders Major & Minor.

Pilgrimage

Well, Saturday the Kinder Major and I struck out overland on our annual pilgrimage to that mecca of North Florida fruit growers Just Fruits & Exotics near Crawfordville in the Florida Panhandle.


For those of us who live in the Zone of the Damned that comprises North Florida and the southernmost portions of the other Deep South states we are caught between just a little too much cold weather for tropical and most semi-tropical fruits to survive and not quite enough of it for many of the temperate fruits of the more northern states to bear fruit. This means that finding worthy varieties to plant can be a challenge. Fortunately the determined fruit grower is not entirely without resource because there are suppliers such as the Just Fruits folks and others like Peacocks Nursery in Florahome near to Palatka. One has to be a determined fruit grower though because in the usual way of things they are always far away. Crawfordville is a six hour plus round trip from Dun Hagan and this year it was an eight hour plus trip for meeting my cane syrup connection still further west to pick up my year's supply of the Southern delicacy.

Because of the time and distance involved I always buy a lot when I go though this trip was the least I've ever brought home. Too near Christmas for major garden hoggery this year.


Also in the usual way these things work I took a list with me of what I wanted and did in fact buy them - a Sunburst tangerine, Ambersweet orange, Kimbrough satsuma, and Chinotto orange. But they always stock more than they list on their website and just as soon as I walked in I spotted a Eustis limequat that I've wanted for some time that wasn't on their site. This wrecked my fruit budget, but Diana has come to expect that I'm going to spend more than I planned when I go to Crawfordville! The stuff on my list all have a fair degree of cold tolerance so will go into the orchard with the others. The limequat doesn't so will be joining the other container citrus in the greenhouse. This gives me a Lakeland and Eustis limequat so next on my list is to acquire a Tavares which will then give me all three of the Key lime/kumquat hybrids developed by Dr. Swingle long ago. With the two thorny and two thornless Key limes and the Tahiti limes and Eureka lemons we certainly do not lack for acid citrus.

Once we finished our fruit and syrup business I decided I'd better air out the child who had been remarkably patient in her riding so we went down to the old lighthouse at St. Marks. This too is becoming something of a tradition in that I've never taken her there that the weather was good! This time was no different as a cold front was moving in. It drizzled and sprinkled all the way from home to Crawfordville and back. Never really raining hard, just enough to get everything wet and limit the visibility. This gave something of a different atmosphere to our usual sunny Gulf weather as the mist softened the edges and colors of the landscape.

We took her last years Christmas present binoculars with us to take advantage of any bird watching opportunities that might present themselves and as they always do at St. Marks they did.


My little point and shoot camera isn't really suited to such work as bird photography, but I was fairly happy with this one shot of a pair of great white herons.


There was a little blue heron standing next to them but just as I pushed the button he suddenly darted behind the little grass point on the left after a fish.

The fresh water areas looked very low to me so I figure they're suffering with the drought much the same as the rest of the state is.

My other half-way decent bird shot was the pelicans on the old dock pilings near to the light. The mist was so thick that you couldn't see more than a couple of hundred yards on the water. There are several anhingas or cormarants at the bottom of the pilings.


The child had a misadventure with falling in the water so we cut our visit short in favor of returning to the comfort of the truck and its heater.

The ride home was as cloudy, damp, and uneventful as the ride up. We'd left just after dawn and arrived back just at dark. All of the drizzle and mist didn't amount to enough to even register in my gauge.

The show wasn't over though as the Weather Service had been steadily increasing our rain chance while we were gone. By the time I went to bed we were under a tornado watch over a wide area so I left a window in the bedroom half open as I always do when these late night active fronts come in. About two in the morning the sound of heavy rain and wind woke me and for the next two hours or so we had quite a show. A lot of lightning for December, but fortunately very little of it was close. The wind got a little sporty for a time, but never enough to concern me much.

This morning I woke to find this!


That two and three-tenths inches of rain is more than we've had in pretty much the last three months combined which made up for costing me two hours of sleep. We're still pretty deep in the rainfall deficit hole, but this helps. I heard a news story on the radio last week that our projected agricultural losses from the drought here in Florida for the year are going to top a billion dollars so you can bet there a lot of folks giving thanks for what we received.

The weather today was damp, breezy, and just a little on the coolish side but when the sun would peak through the breaking clouds it was pleasant. The winter forage I planted in the corn patch was prime so this morning I did a proper job of stretching the fence dividing the corn patch and the garden then moved in the chicken tractors. As these things are sometimes wont to do this did not go smoothly but I did eventually get them moved in.

The original Mk. I chicken tractor is OK on firm, even sod, but get it into soft dirt and there's going to be problems. I tried retrofitting runners onto it that raised the height of the cross member but achieved no practical difference. The Mk. II version moved much easier though the soft dirt made for slow going there as well. I need to get some grass growth over that portion of the garden which I will attend to this next month or so.

The vegetable garden is coming along nicely. I thinned one row of turnips on Friday and still have another just like it to do and the two rutabaga rows. Also have at least another half-dozen volunteer elephant garlic to transplant. The whole thing needs a thorough weeding which I hope to attend to over the Christmas holiday. The birds in the henyard really get excited when they see me coming with a bucket full of weeds this time of year.

We're predicted to go to 29 tonight I expect we'll get a nice frost out of it. I have come to love this time of year when I can spend the day working hard outside and not break a sweat. Sure is a lot more pleasant than working outside in the summertime!

.....Alan.

Snug in their bed for a long winter's nap.

Well, our last frost caught me by surprise coming as early as it did so I didn't yet have the hoophouse covered. Fortunately my cold sensitive container plants were able to pass the night on the carport no worse for the wear.

Fool me once, but not twice. The Kinder Major and I quickly did the deed with the greenhouse so naturally the weather did not turn cold again. Until this coming Tuesday night when the friendly folks at the National Weather Service predicts a low of 36 (this is two days out) which is not in itself low enough to really injure anything, but chilly enough to bring growth to a halt.

I hate having to work in the dark with plants as thorny as lemons and limes so this afternoon I moved all of my cold sensitive citrus into the hoophouse. When it's partially buttoned up it stays a good bit warmer than the outside air which makes things like limes and lemons happy enough to put out new leaves and blossoms. On the frosty nights I close the house up completely which keeps things in a non-frozen state. If it really drops into Jack Frost country I have a small space heater and fan that keeps things warm. The heater has a thermostat so if the interior temperature begins to rise too high it turns itself off. The fan keeps the warm air from pooling in the top which it is wont to do when there is no air circulation. This keeps the heater in the bottom of the house from having to run as much.

I had hoped to have some genuine UV resistant greenhouse plastic to use this year, but it didn't work out. Once more it is just simply builder's plastic which is good enough to get through a winter and spring, but will finally grow brittle and crumble in the hot Florida summer sun. If I were able to really go whole hog on house covering I'd use two layers of plastic with a layer of bubble wrap in between for insulation which would reduce the amount of power needed. Maybe next year.

We've been enjoying Satsumas for a couple of weeks now from the little tree in the orchard. The Ponkan (Honeybell) tangerines are coloring up nicely. They're actually ripe even though the peel is still half-green. Citrus is funny that way in that the peel color of a fruit can be as green as grass yet the interior can be perfectly ripe. For the orange colored citrus they need exposure to a certain amount of cool temperatures to evolve their sunny color. In the tropical areas they may never change color and once in a while you can find green colored but ripe citrus for sale in the markets. The Seville (sour) oranges are beginning to color up as well. I'm looking forward to this as I want to try my hand at making orange marmalade from our own fruit. The juice is well suited to Florida style barbecue and ade type of drinks as well as that good Cuban mojo marinade.

The vegetable garden is coming along nicely but I didn't take a photo as I'm still weeding the rows out. I made a start this morning, but didn't have time to make a lot of progress so it will have to wait until next weekend.

.....Alan.

Giving Thanks

So, here it is Thanksgiving 2007 and what do I have to be thankful for?

Well, how about I start with this wonderful rain that is coming down. We haven't been in quite the same straits as parts of the Upper South but we've been in a drought just the same. If there is anything growing here at Dun Hagan lately it's because I've been watering it.


What else? How about a good harvest? Here's a bucket of limes I took off my potted citrus recently. They're a mix of Key and Tahiti (Persian) limes. Most are riper than I'd normally pick them but we haven't been eating them fast enough so some of them went full ripe. I'll juice these out soon and freeze it. I have about that much more of Eureka lemons to harvest soon as well for some of that good wintertime lemonade.


Last weekend the Kinder Major and I recovered the hoophouse so I've been prepping the container citrus for the move. They've been cleaned up, pruned, fertilized, and will soon be given a good copper spray to see if I can beat the greasy spot that afflicts the Key limes every winter. On the sunny days the hoophouse can be rather humid which seems to promote the disease. I also have three citrus to be repotted for which I have been prepping some coconut husks and coir.


This evening I mixed some nutrients into the chips below and repotted the citrus pictured above.


If you're growing citrus in containers or just about any other sort of largish perennials in pots these chips are worth searching for. I have to go all the way to Orlando to get them and they need some prep work before they are ready to use, but compared to all of the other media I've ever used they are easily the best. It's nearly impossible to over water yet they don't dry out rapidly either. They're fairly slow to break down as well compared to other media such as pine bark nuggets. Sure wish they were easier to find though.

The winter garden is coming along well. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, elephant garlic, and onions. As soon as they are a little bigger I'll get a photo. I need to get out there and weed out the sprouting oats that the chickens missed when they were still in the garden.

Speaking of the birds the new flock are laying like champions and the old flock is coming out of their molt so egg production is picking up nicely. This is especially good considering that I'm selling every decent egg we can produce.


Cogburn is still the boss of the old flock and the top cock over all. He's in the middle of his molt at the moment though which is why he is sans tail feathers. Most of his hens are about done, but there are still a few running around a little bare.

This is Leroy and some of his ladies and the first tractor in the background. At the moment I have him and eleven hens in their and will add three more when I have the birds.

This is Jaques le Coq with some of his ladies. He is the last of the Cuckoo Maran roosters that I started with from last year and has matured into a handsome bird. His flock are in the second tractor which you can see here:

The focus is a little soft due to the rain fogging up the camera. It is essentially the same design as the first tractor with the only real differences being in the way I put it together which makes it easier to move. I also used a tarp cover rather than the tin that I used on the first tractor. As much as I like it, the metal runs the weight up too much for easy moves.

Here's the second tractor again with a corner of the first one in the foreground. That's Leroy in the background under the persimmon tree with some of his hens. On the right is Noodles, one of the bachelor roosters and a real scamp that all of the flock bosses have to keep an eye on for trying to jump one of their hens! In the foreground is Picky, also one of the bachelors. He's a bit better behaved towards the ladies, but if no one happens to be looking well...

And lastly there is Fred Barred Rock. He's a handsome boy and quite personable. As soon as I have another tractor built he'll be promoted out of the bachelor pad. We have been rather lucky to have so many roosters and none of them being aggressive towards the kids. In fact they're all rather well behaved now that they've settled their pecking order issues among themselves.

So in spite of being a somewhat rocky year we have a lot to be thankful for, most of all we are thankful that the children are growing well, we're all healthy, employed and living in our own home. There are a lot of folks who can't say that.

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving too.

.....Alan.

Before the Fall

Last Friday Fall finally arrived here in Florida. The night time lows dipped into the fifties for a few nights and the day time highs have been staying at 90 or below mostly. It was time to get with it if I was going to get any cool season stuff planted.

The first photo is going to be the cool season garden. If you can make out the little orange flags they mark off the area (click the photo for a larger version as usual). I never plant as large a cool season garden as I do the warm season stuff and this year will be still smaller as I hope to be busy with some home repairs and improvements so won't have time to fool with a bigger one. Still should get at least five good rows in. The chicken manure laced shredded paper I forked out of the hen house last weekend largely disappears once it's tilled in though you can still see bits and pieces just yet. This coming weekend I hope to finish the second chicken tractor so I can split the new flock between the two then move them both out into the pasture where I want them until the winter forage is ready sometime in December or whenever we finally get our first frost.

The second photo is the corn patch. It hasn't been tilled in over two years and the chickens being in there for months had really caused the grass growth to take off so getting that sod well tilled turned into a real grudge match. The new knee brace worked well so my knee isn't bothering me at all tonight. It's my forearms that feel like I went best two out of three arm wrestling a gorilla! I did eventually get the whole thing done front to back then side to side to bust the sod up. There wasn't a trace of moisture in the dirt.

Weekend after next I'll spread the lime on it that I forgot to put down before I started today then till it one more time then broadcast the winter forage mix I'm planting for the chickens. It's a deer feed plot mix of rye, oats, and wheat, all varieties known to do well in Florida. I wanted to add some winter legumes, but when I wrote my extension agent for suggestions he laughed. The perils of living on the sand ridge it seems. I'm sure they'll be happy with the green feed they get.

I'll keep the birds in there until after our average last frost date by which time we should have some green stuff growing out in the orchard and pasture. Once that passes I'll move them out, turn up the corn patch then plant it to... corn! I'm hoping that a winter of 45 birds worth of chicken flickin's will be sufficient that I won't have to do much fertilizing. Of course I'll have to battle the squirrels and coons like last time, but I intend to launch a few preemptive strikes over the winter towards that end.

Vegetable gardenwise I'm thinking mustards, turnips, Vidalia type onions, and I'm going to try carrots again. Our winter weather last year was so non-typical that I don't think they really got a fair chance to perform.

.....Alan.

A-pear-ances can be deceiving

It's trying hard to be fall out there, it really is. It's just that the weather is not cooperating. The days are growing shorter. I have to do the morning chores in the dark now before I go to work. There is a different feel to the air. But it's still hitting 90 about every day, it's still humid, and (thankfully) it's raining fairly often now. Fall has been temporarily postponed until a date to be announced.

Warm weather or not life goes on. Arboreal thieves made off with my pears this year, but my brother's wife gifted me with three bags of sand pears that a friend had given her. They were dead ripe and going soft so I elected to make pear butter. I quartered the fruit then cooked them soft Friday night. Saturday before heading out to the Kinder Major's soccer game I ran them through the Victorio strainer to remove the seeds, skins, and grit cells and this morning I started cooking them down.

There was about a pint shy of two gallons of juice and pulp when I started and when I finished there was fourteen half-pints (3.5 quarts) of what tastes like the best pear butter I've made to date. I believe between the muscadine grape, strawberry, and peachs jams and this pear butter we're set for the year for biscuit and toast spread and some for Christmas gifts to boot.

If I'm lucky I'll receive another bag or three of pears this coming weekend too that I'll turn into plain old sauce. We're nearly out of the last batch.

The old hen flock have finally decided to get around to molting. They've been needing to for two months. Feathers all over the place as their new suits grow in. Hopefully egg production will back up again as well. The new flock are pretty well into their first laying cycle. Still about half of them laying pullet eggs but they're getting bigger by the day.

Didn't get the hen house cleaned out today like I wanted. Just as I was finishing up with the pear butter I looked out to see that it was raining so I started making the bread for the week. Naturally once I was committed the rain stopped, but that's Florida weather for you.

Fall and Winter will surely come one day and I'm growing more impatient by the day...

.....Alan.

Three new Florida gardening related blogs added

I added three new Florida related gardening blogs to the links on the right hand side of the page this evening. They're all fairly new so not a lot to them just yet, but like a Florida garden they are sure to grow!

What? Which ones are they? I'm not going to tell you!

If you're not familiar enough with the current Florida gardening blogs to know which ones are new and which are not then you need to become familiar with them all! {laughing}

.....Alan (Two posts in one day!)

The Low Down on Grass Raised Eggs

The folks over to The Mother Earth News have been compiling some interesting data on the nutritional differences between grass-raised (for real free range) eggs and the standard factory eggs.

Meet Real Free-Range Eggs (Link to the article on the TMEN site.)

October/November 2007
Meet Real Free-Range Eggs
By Cheryl Long and Tabitha Alterman

The new results are in: Eggs from hens allowed to peck on pasture are a heck of a lot better than those from chickens raised in cages!

Most of the eggs currently sold in supermarkets are nutritionally inferior to eggs produced by hens raised on pasture. That’s the conclusion we have reached following completion of the 2007 Mother Earth News egg testing project. Our testing has found that, compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may contain:

• 1⁄3 less cholesterol
• 1⁄4 less saturated fat
• 2⁄3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

These amazing results come from 14 flocks around the country that range freely on pasture or are housed in moveable pens that are rotated frequently to maximize access to fresh pasture and protect the birds from predators. We had six eggs from each of the 14 pastured flocks tested by an accredited laboratory in Portland, Ore. The chart at the end of this article shows the average nutrient content of the samples, compared with the official egg nutrient data from the USDA for “conventional” (i.e. from confined hens) eggs. The chart lists the individual results from each flock.

The 2007 results are similar to those from 2005, when we tested eggs from four flocks all managed as truly free range. But our tests are not the first to show that pastured eggs are more nutritious — see “Mounting Evidence” below for a summary of six studies that all indicated that pastured eggs are richer in nutrients than typical supermarket eggs.

We think these dramatically differing nutrient levels are most likely the result of the different diets of birds that produce these two types of eggs. True free-range birds eat a chicken’s natural diet — all kinds of seeds, green plants, insects and worms, usually along with grain or laying mash. Factory farm birds never even see the outdoors, let alone get to forage for their natural diet. Instead they are fed the cheapest possible mixture of corn, soy and/or cottonseed meals, with all kinds of additives — see “The Caged Hen’s Diet” below.

The conventional egg industry wants very much to deny that free-range/pastured eggs are better than eggs from birds kept in crowded, inhumane indoor conditions. A statement on the American Egg Board’s Web site says “True free-range eggs are those produced by hens raised outdoors or that have daily access to the outdoors.”

Baloney. They’re trying to duck the issue by incorrectly defining “true free-range.” And the USDA isn’t helping consumers learn the truth, either: “Allowed access to the outside” is how the USDA defines “free-range.” This inadequate definition means that producers can, and do, label their eggs as “free-range” even if all they do is leave little doors open on their giant sheds, regardless of whether the birds ever learn to go outside, and regardless of whether there is good pasture or just bare dirt or concrete outside those doors!

Both organizations need to come clean. True free-range eggs are those from hens that range outdoors on pasture, which means they can do what’s natural — forage for all manner of green plants and insects.

The Egg Board statement goes on to say: “The nutrient content of eggs is not affected by whether hens are raised free-range or in floor or cage operations.”

Again, that is hogwash. They think they can simply ignore the growing body of evidence that clearly shows that eggs are superior when the hens are allowed to eat their natural diet. Or maybe they think it’s OK to mislead the public to protect egg producers’ bottom line.

After we published our first report about the high nutrient levels in pastured eggs, the Egg Nutrition Council questioned our “suggestion” that pastured eggs were better in their Aug. 8, 2005, newsletter:

“Barring special diets or breeds, egg nutrients are most likely similar for egg-laying hens, no matter how they are raised.” There’s that double-speak, again: “Barring special diets ...” Since when are diets not a part of how chickens are raised? Come on, people, we’ve cited six studies (see "Mounting Evidence", below) showing that pastured eggs are better. The best you can say is “most likely” this evidence is wrong? Cite some science to support your assertions! The U.S. Poultry and Egg Association offers the same misleading statement on its Web site:

“What are free-range eggs? Free-range eggs are from hens that live outdoors or have access to the outdoors. The nutrient content of eggs from free-range hens is the same as those from hens housed in production facilities with cages.”

It’s amazing what a group can do with a $20 million annual budget. That’s what factory-farm egg producers pay to fund the AEB each year to convince the public to keep buying their eggs, which we now believe are substandard.

The Egg Board’s misleading claims about free-range/pastured eggs pervade the Internet, even though the Board has been aware of the evidence about the nutrient differences at least since our 2005 report. We found virtually the same (unsubstantiated) claim denying any difference in nutrient content on Web sites of the American Council on Science and Health (an industry-funded nonprofit), the Iowa Egg Council, the Georgia Egg Commission, the Alberta (Canada) Egg Producers, Hormel Foods, CalMaine Foods and NuCal Foods (“the largest distributor of shell eggs in the Western United States”).

But the most ridiculous online comments turned up at www.supermarketguru.com, a site maintained by a “food trends consultant.” It says:

“FREE RANGE: Probably the most misunderstood of all claims, it’s important to note that hens basically stay near their food, water and nests, and the idea of a happy-go-lucky bird scampering across a field is far from the natural way of life. The claim only means that the hens have access to the outdoors, not that they avail themselves of the opportunity. The hens produce fewer eggs so they are more expensive; higher product costs add to the price of the eggs. The nutrient content is the same as other eggs.”

If you’ve ever been around chickens, you know that whoever wrote that hasn’t. Chickens will spend almost their entire day ranging around a property scratching and searching for food. Even as tiny chicks, they are naturally curious and will begin eating grass and pecking curiously at any insects or even specks on the walls of their brooder box. “Scampering across a field,” looking for food, is precisely their natural way of life.

Supermarket Guru did get one thing right, though. Free-range/pastured eggs are likely to be more expensive because production costs are higher. As usual, you get what you pay for. If you buy the cheapest supermarket eggs, you are not only missing out on the valuable nutrients eggs should and can contain, you are also supporting an industrial production system that treats animals cruelly and makes more sustainable, small-scale egg production difficult.

You can raise pastured chickens easily right in your back yard — see our recent articles about how to do it here. Or you can find pastured eggs at local farmstands and farmers markets, or sometimes at the supermarket. Tell the store manager you want eggs from pastured hens, and encourage the manager to contact local producers. To find pastured producers near you, check out www.eatwild.com or www.localharvest.com

== == ==

Click on the Mother Earth News link at the top of this post to see the breakdown chart of the Free-range EggTest Results, 2007.

Some very suggestive evidence that not only do grass raised eggs look and taste better but they actually are better nutritionally as well.

.....Alan.

There is a new post

Blogger stuck it under the last post because that's when I first began composing it.

Learn something new every day.

.....Alan.

How Dry I Am (Or Maybe Will Be Next Year)

We may get lucky so that it won't be as dry as this indicates but I wouldn't plan on it. For the next six months or so I'd plan on receiving less rainfall than we normally do and plan accordingly.

Mulch is your friend.

-----Original Message-----
From: ***
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 9:13 AM
To: ***
Subject: La Nina Watch Issued - Office of the State Climatologist

The Southeast Climate Consortium has issued a "La Niña watch" for the next one to three months. La Niña conditions usually bring a warmer and drier cool season (October through March) to Florida. Please see the release below, we will keep you posted on any developments.

Clyde W. Fraisse, PhD
Assistant Professor & Climate Specialist Agricultural & Biological Engineering University of Florida P.O. Box 110570 Gainesville, FL 32611-0570 U.S.A.
352-392-1864 ext 271
http://www.agclimate.org


-----Original Message-----
From: David Emory Stooksbury [mailto:stooks@engr.uga.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 1:07 PM
To: David Emory Stooksbury
Subject: La Nina Watch Issued - Office of the State Climatologist

Sept. 11, 2007

Sources/Writers: David Emory Stooksbury (706) 583-0156 stooks@engr.uga.edu (Georgia)
John Christy: (256) 961-7752, john.christy@nsstc.uah.edu (Alabama)
David Zierden: (850) 644-3417, zierden@coaps.fsu.edu (Florida)
Jim O'Brien: (850) 459-1938, jim.obrien@coaps.fsu.edu (Florida)


LA NIÑA WATCH ISSUED FOR ALABAMA, FLORIDA AND GEORGIA

Athens, Ga. --- A La Niña watch has been issued by the Southeast Climate Consortium and the state climatologists of Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

A watch means that conditions are likely for the development of a full-fledged La Niña event.

The watch will be followed by an official La Niña declaration if development continues in the next one to three months.

The tropical Pacific Ocean is now poised to slip into a full-fledged La Niña. Chances are very good that La Niña conditions will develop, strengthen and persist through the fall and winter months. This follows months of cooler than normal water temperatures near the coast of South America.

La Niña is commonly thought of as the opposite of El Niño. Under La Niña conditions, sea surface temperatures along the equator in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean are a few degrees colder than normal for a minimum of five months. La Niña typically returns every two to seven years.

La Niña conditions usually bring a warmer and drier cool season (October through March) to Florida, central and lower Alabama, and central and south Georgia.

With the arrival of La Niña, there is a good chance that drought conditions, currently ranging from exceptional across much of Alabama and Georgia to moderate in south Florida, will continue and possibly worsen throughout the winter and into next spring.

If below normal rainfall occurs during the cool season, moisture recharge of groundwater, soils, ponds and reservoirs will be limited. Southeastern states depend on water recharge during the cool season.

Farmers who plan to plant winter forage and do not have irrigation capability have a high risk of being seriously impacted by the winter drought.

In addition the risk of increased wildfires should be expected during the winter and spring wildfire season in Florida, south Georgia, and lower Alabama.

The Southeast Climate Consortium has estimated the impacts on climate based on past La Niña events. For central Florida, the probability of normal or above rainfall for January 2008 is only 8 percent. The chance of moderately dry (rainfall amounts from just below normal to half of normal) is 20 percent, and for very dry conditions (less than half of normal rainfall) is 72 percent. For the Panhandle of Florida, south Georgia, and lower Alabama the probability of normal or above rainfall in January 2008 is 20 percent, for moderately dry 50 percent, and for very dry 30 percent.

More information on the developing La Niña and its potential impacts can be found at www.AgClimate.org and www.CoastalClimate.org.

The Southeast Climate Consortium is a research group aimed at aiding the use of climate forecasts in agriculture, forestry, and water resources. The consortium is a partnership of six universities, The Florida State University, University of Florida, University of Miami, The University of Georgia, Auburn University, and University of Alabama Huntsville.

(David Emory Stooksbury is the state climatologist of Georgia, John Christy is the state climatologist of Alabama, David Zierden is the state climatologist of Florida and Jim O'Brien is professor emeritus at Florida State University.)
--

*******************************************
David Emory Stooksbury, Ph.D.
State Climatologist and Associate Professor Engineering and Atmospheric Sciences

Driftmier Engineering Center
The University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia 30602

706-583-0156 (Voice)
706-542-8806 (FAX)
*******************************************

The Payoff

It's been a long summer, but fall is finally on the far horizon. I note the five day forecast is predicting highs only in the eighties which is hopefully the beginning of a seasonal trend.

If it's too hot to want to work outside there's always something to do inside. Such as making the family jam supply for the year. So far there is muscadine grape, strawberry, and peach jams and maybe some persimmon to come if the recipe I came across the other day pans out. I messed up the shots of the jars so I'll try to reshoot them this coming weekend for the next post.

This is the last batch of peach jam processing. The nice 16qt Tramontina pot that Diana got me for Christmas last year (only cost $200 for a $40 pot! {laughing}) works well as a water bath canner. The Key limes are off of our trees. I always end up having to buy some additional fruit but those limes were grown by us. I much prefer fresh squeezed juice to bottled lemon juice which doesn't have a very good flavor to me.

This is a bit of summer's bounty from earlier in the season - yellow summer squash relish. We have a particular fondness for this relish, in fact there's nothing I like more on a burger or dog so we always make a lot to get us through the year and some for gifts. Had to go and buy a couple of red sweet peppers this time around as I didn't have any ready when I wanted to make the relish. Usually except for the vinegar, sugar, and spices we produce everything else. This is a great way to use all those squash that have grown too large but that aren't yet woody.

Just now it's the persimmons that are coming ripe. We inherited a mature tree when we bought the place. I have no idea of its specific variety but it is a Hachaiya type astringent that tends to alternate bearing. This is one of its big crop years and it is heavy with fruit. Ordinarily I just run them through the Victorio and freeze the pulp but this year I'm woefully short on freezer space so I'm determined to dry or can as much as I am able.

The problem is that astringent type persimmons have a peculiar chemistry. Even when allowed to become soft-ripe which makes them sweet and non-astringent extended cooking can cause the pulp to revert back to mouth puckering. I have a recipe that claims to eliminate that but I haven't tried it yet. This coming weekend I hope.


What I've been doing lately is drying them. This is a photo of the first batch. They were pretty in the dryer but the finished product was disappointing. I've since learned to wait until they are fully colored but still firm (and thus astringent) then peel them, cut into rounds, then dry. The dehydration process takes the pucker out and the cross sections reveal a pretty eight petaled design that looks nice when finished. Dried persimmons are new to me so I'm still experimenting with what I'll do with them.

I will be devoting a little freezer space for some puree though. The stuff is great in pancakes, muffins, and mixed with some cornmeal and buttermilk for a baked pudding.

The citrus are starting to color up. My trees are all young so this will be the first year that we've gotten more than a couple of fruit. Still won't be buckets full but hopefully we at least have some for fresh eating for a while.

I picked up the winter forage seed last weekend. Looks like I'll have to get out and start getting the ground prepped soon. The garden has been patiently waiting as well.

Looking forward to cooler weather!

.....Alan.

The Torpid Season

Every year when June rolls around our annual North Florida dry spell draws to a close as our rainy season (usually) begins and we enter what I have come to call the Torpid Season. The work needing to be done goes on as it always does, but my get up and go gets up and goes to some place cooler and drier. My desire to work outside slowly declines until more pleasant weather returns typically sometime in October. This year has been no different other than the erratic rainfall we've been experiencing.

But life goes on whether it's hotter than blue blazes and sticky humid or not. I haven't put a blog update up since June so I cannot any longer put it off. Maybe by the time I've run through the accumulated photos the weather will have abated enough that I'll feel like doing something outside so I can take some new ones!

When last we met I had just papered the henyard with bags and bags of shredded office paper. Three months later and you'd have to search hard to find any trace of it. A few rains, copious quantities of chicken flickin's and that paper composts right away to nothing. In another couple of weeks I'll shovel out the henyard and the roost house then spread it all on the fall garden. The new flock has been hard at work debugging the area for me so it's ready to turn up now.

Speaking of the new flock they started laying about a month or so ago. Here's a photo of the nest boxes with three of the hens doing what comes natural so that we now collect about a dozen or so eggs a day. I expect that number will rise for a while yet until we're gathering about a dozen and a half a day. Most of the hen fruit are still pullet sized (small), but they're gradually growing larger. I expect they will eventually come in around size large.


Here's an outside shot of the original Mk. I Poultry Schooner. Thus far I'm pretty happy with the design but for the excessive weight the tin contributes and the cross-members of the frame being a trifle low to the ground so that they sometimes catch high spots. Both problems I am rectifying in the Mk. II schooner which is now about three quarters complete in the workshop.


I have plans to build a total of five schooners - three for laying hens, one for turkeys (and maybe geese) with the last being for my daughter's 4H birds that we'll probably start researching this Fall. At the moment she's thinking Silkies. They're a silly looking bird but I have to admit after a while they do grow on one. I want to keep them separated from our other birds for biosecurity reasons. The permanent hen yard will become the permanent bachelor pad allowing me to eliminate the temporary one I put up last month which I'll discuss below.

Here's a shot of the new flock out scratching for their breakfast. They're in the corn patch side of the garden. Along about the beginning of October I'll move them into the orchard and pasture so I can till the corn patch preparatory to seeding it to winter rye. Some time in December when the other forage has been frost killed I'll move them back in so they'll have green feed for the cool season. Along about the end of March I'll move them out again so I can prep the ground for the year's corn crop after they've fertilized as well as cleaning up a fair part of the insects and weed seed to be found.


There are two new birds in that flock that I haven't mentioned before as they came on the scene since the last time I updated the blog. One of my egg customers asked me if I could take in a couple of birds that belonged to a friend. To my surprise she lives in one of the oldest subdivisions in Gainesville very nearly a stone's throw from the University president's house. She's kept hens for years but finally ended up with a neighbor who complained so felt compelled to find them a new home. I am now become the repository for unwanted chickens it seems.

So, this is Stella the Speckled Sussex. She's the first Sussex I've ever had and now that I've seen her I wish I'd gotten some years ago as she's right pretty. A good big bird too.


And this is her companion Buffy the Buff Orpington who is a still bigger bird. In fact I think she'd give Cogburn a run for his money in the weight department. She's the biggest bird in the new flock, but gentle soul that she is she's near the bottom of the pecking order I'm afraid. It took a day or so for that to get hashed out so they now pretty much coexist peacefully though she doesn't cotton too much to the boss bird getting fresh with her!


Speaking of the Boss Bird here he is. He's not full grown yet but is showing signs that he's going to develop into a pretty boy. He's as randy as you'd expect of a young rooster, but isn't too hard on the hens so I left him with the flock. I haven't decided on a name for him yet, but being the Boss Bird he should have one. I'm sure something will suggest itself presently.


And what became of the other boys in the flock? Well, when you have a bunch of teenage boys with too much time on their hands and nothing much to do with it they quickly made themselves a nuisance to all concerned. Matters got to the point that half the hens didn't want to come off the roost during the day which is no way to run a poultry operation so the time came for them to get a place of their own. They're now all in the Bachelor Pad.


It's a dumpy looking place, but that's because I was about to take it apart for salvageable materials when I decided I needed to move the boys out so it was pressed into service again this one last time. They're not too happy with the situation, but most have resigned themselves to it. When I first moved them one of them would fly over the fence each day trying to get back to the ladies. They had enough smarts to fly over one fence, but not enough smarts to figure out they had to fly over the second fence to get back to their old flock so they'd spend all day getting no love and no water until sundown when I'd chase them back to where they belonged. Except for the Maran from the old flock the rest elected not to give it a second go.

I moved the extra roosters from the old flock into the Bachelor Pad as well as they were running the hens there ragged just like the young ones were doing. There's just Cogburn and the little Silkie cock Shadow in there now and the hens seem happier for it. I tried to move the Cuckoo Maran birds one night only to have a misadventure which ended up with me losing both of them in the dark. Their barred feather pattern blends in very well with the brush at night! I was able to recover one the next morning, but his brother got himself eaten, probably by a coon judging from the feathers I found strewn all over the orchard. I have developed a strong dislike for coons over the years. The one remaining Maran still tries to get back to his old flock from time to time (those Frenchies!), but being a chicken he's pretty easy to catch by simply waiting for the sun to go down. He'll get the message one of these days I suppose. Or finally annoy me enough to receive a dinner invite!

In the next couple of days I'll try to get something up about the fruits of the harvest this year.

.....Alan.

Snowfall at Dun Hagan

We're starting to see some semi-regular rain now. It's still not what we normally get, but it's a sight more than what we've been getting so I'm happy with it.

One of the reasons I'm happy to see it is that I can finally get all of the bags of shredded paper off my back porch and in the hen yard where they belong! I haven't been spreading any because with everything being so dry it would simply end up blowing all over the place making a big mess. If it gets rained on once in a while it'll mostly stay put as I want it. There's about twenty bags of paper out there now looking brilliant against the dull background.

I like the shredded paper because it's a major "brown" in that it's a big carbon source with virtually no nitrogen in it so it can soak up a good deal of the nitrogen in the copious manure the chickens put down. Along about the end of August or beginning of September I'll rake it all up to spread on the incipient fall garden much as I did last winter for the spring garden that is bearing now.

Initially I had some concerns about toxins in either the paper or printer toner, but after spending a few hours reading MSDS sheets for the toner and reading up on the paper I decided it would be OK. The toner is mostly comprised of carbon black and some polyester resins, none of which seemed to be a reason for concern. There's a major poultry outfit in Australia that's doing what I'm doing with their shredded office paper.

The paper I forked out of the hen house for the spring garden pretty well disappeared completely in about two to three weeks after I tilled it and the manure in then watered it a time or two. I still haven't fertilized the garden yet and it's all new ground never before planted so it's just the paper/manure that's powering it.

I like the sustainability of this. The paper is a waste by-product that would eventually end up at a recycler and the hens are going to produce manure no matter what so if I wanted to conserve it as much as I can I'd have to come up with the browns from somewhere to mix it with. That's 12-15 wheelbarrow loads of litter that I didn't have to rake up and helps to replenish the nutrients that are lost out of the cycle. A win-win situation so far as I can see it.

I'll be loading the dryer this weekend with a couple more batches of squash to dry for the winter. We'll be eating the first okra as well now that I've cut enough. Naturally I forgot to put my gloves on before cutting the pods and it ate me up as it always does. I may even pay the exorbitant price the market wants for wild caught Florida shrimp to make some gumbo this weekend.

.....Alan.

School's Out

Summertime and the living is easy. The new birds have been in the chicken tractor for several weeks now so I thought it safe to let them out to stretch their legs a bit so today was the day. They didn't venture very far from the safety of the tractor, but they did take a small taste of the relative freedom of the corn patch after having never known anything but the inside of the tractor and the brooder before that.

The corn patch is inside the garden fence so they can't go far, but forty by eighty is a lot more than eight by ten so I think it'll keep them occupied for a while.

The garden continues to do well though the first signs of powdery mildew in the squash is beginning to be seen. This weekend I'll start the milk sprays to see if I can slow it down. The Success variety of summer squash is supposed to be powdery mildew resistant, but I suspect that's resistant in the more northern states, not the high disease pressure we have here in Florida. Still, if it will slow it down a bit the milk sprays may be enough to keep us in squash for longer than we usually manage. No sign of pickleworms yet nor mosaic virus.

The first blossoms on the okra have been opening. Not a lot of height on the plants yet, but they're stocky and dark green with good leaves so the by now well composted chicken litter seems to have done them some good. The sweet potatoes are beginning to run nicely. Need to get some Epsoms salts to the peppers, they're acting a little sluggish, but we've had enough sweet peppers for our needs thus far.

As of last weekend I've now put up thirty four pints of yellow summer squash relish thanks to my not keeping the squash picked as often as I should so some of them got way big. The relish makes for a good way to use squash that are too big for normal cooking, but not so old that they've turned woody. There's nothing I like better on a hot dog or hamburger.

It appears that I'm going to have a nice fruit set on the muscadines, maybe even enough for some jelly in addition to fresh eating. Next year there'll be jelly for sure.

I've twice now read of folks successfully getting fruit from concord grapes here in Florida so I've about decided to give them a try myself. This far south they're not supposed to survive due to Pierce's Disease, but maybe things are changing?

We haven't gotten a lot of rain since Barry, but we haven't gotten a bit, just over a half-inch so we're not as water stressed as we were a month ago. I for sure have got to start mowing the grass now. This is about my least favorite outdoor chore, but we bought acreage so around and around I go.

.....Alan.

A little relief at last.

When the weather is dry then well water is a good thing when applied in a timely manner, but there just isn't anything like THREE AND A HALF INCHES OF RAIN to make a garden stand at attention.

Tropical storm Barry has come and gone. He was just an all night rain storm for us and a blessed event he was too. I didn't have to water anything at all and the whole place is looking better. Of course he did get the grass to growing so I now have to start picking up deadfall preparatory to mowing again, but it's just as well.

Yesterday I picked a five gallon bucket of yellow squash and a few green sweet and hot peppers. Along with some onions from the winter garden I now have twenty four cups of shredded squash, peppers, and onions in the refrigerator mixed with a bit of salt to draw the juices. Tonight I'll drain them then combine with the vinegar, sugar, and spices to make a big batch of squash relish. I've never seen anything like it in the grocery and I like it better than anything on a burger or hot dog. None of mine have ripened red yet so we did buy two ripe sweet peppers to add some color contrast to the mix, but other than that all of the veggies came out of the Dun Hagan garden.

Noticed yesterday that the first okra blossoms should open today, tomorrow at the latest. Except for the peppers seeming to lag a bit everything in the vegetable garden is doing well. Haven't fertilized at all yet except for the hen house litter that I put down and tilled under a month or so before planting. Considering the planted part of the garden is all new ground never before planted I'm happy with it. This coming weekend I'll feed the peppers a bit. I've found that a taste of Epsom salts perks them up. Magnesium leaches out of my sandy soil pretty quick.

Last night I drove in the T-posts for the garden partition fence and laid out the wire, but haven't had time to secure it yet nor have I figured out how I want to do the gate. This coming weekend I hope to have that done then I can start letting the birds in the chicken tractor out for an hour or two in the evenings when I'm home. Saturday morning I took the eight pullets that I raised for the parents of a friend of mine over to them so I now have only twenty five in the tractor. By the time August roles around and they are ready to start laying I should have the second tractor finished and they'll start their slow procession across the orchard into the pasture. In late November or early December they'll make their way at a stately pace back to the corn patch where there should be a good stand of winter rye awaiting them. They'll over winter in the patch then back across the orchard into the pasture so I can till the corn patch preparatory to the spring planting.

I'm hoping to eventually hammer this out into regular cycles much like spring, summer, winter and fall.

We'll see.

.....Alan.

Repurposing

Humans are far from the first animals to use a thing for other than the purpose it originally came to be. Birds at the least have been doing it probably ever since Archaeopteryx first swiped some dinosaur's nest for her own purposes. It's no different today, they just do it to humans!

This first photo as you can see is my nail pouch. It's hanging in my workshop where I usually keep it. A month or so ago I went into the shop to get the pouch so I could use it to work on the chicken tractor I detailed in the previous post only to have Mrs. Wren fly out in my face! She'd done it to me again. Happens every Spring. The homesteading urge comes upon them and they appropriate whatever space looks good to them. I let her be and put my nails in yogurt cups waiting on her to finish up with her reproductive business. She originally laid four eggs, every nest I've seen has always had four eggs, with two hatching. The chicks have since fledged and flown the nest so now I can reclaim my nail pouch, but I thought I'd get a photo first. I wasn't sure what would happen if I took a photo of the chicks so I waited until now.


This second photo is a much newer nest. It is situated inside of the bleach jug that we keep our clothes pins in for the line in the backyard. What makes this one odd is that the jug is directly outside and next to the back door of the house that we go through at least a dozen times a day! Doesn't seem to bother Mrs. Wren in the least. We all know the nest is there and we don't molest her other than taking a photo and allowing the kids to see (but not touch). We all know she's there but she make us jump every time she bursts out of there at a hundred miles an hour whenever we walk up to the backdoor. We use the dryer a lot more than the clothes line so not being able to get to the pins won't be much of a hardship for a while. At least she didn't make me knock over a stack of material on the workbench the way she did the year she put the nest inside of an open bag of ground oyster shell that I keep for the hens. I bent over to get a scoop full, stuck my hand in and she exploded out into my face startling me so that I fell backwards and cleaned half the workbench in the process.

It's like this every Spring. Never know where I'm going to find the nests...

I got sort of a late start this morning for fixing a real breakfast for the family (french toast) but there were still some nice blossoms in the garden. We've received only two inches of rain in over three months so the garden sprinkler has to meet the need. Seems to be doing the job so far as I can tell with the summer squash (C. pepo). I expect to pick the first of them tomorrow evening or the morning of the day after. Fresh summer squash is one of my favorite vegetables.



The Butternut squash (C. moschata) has really begun to hit its stride as well. The vines are vining as they should though they seem to be reluctant to climb the fence I planted them next to so that I have to tie them on. Hopefully the eight inch long tendrils they're putting out will get the idea soon. The hen house litter I tilled into the garden a month or so before planting seems to be doing right by them. So far it appears I'm going to get a good fruit set.


There's more color than just squash blossoms out there. As I mentioned in an earlier post I like to plant marigolds among the vegetables. I could not honestly tell you if they repel noxious insects or not, but they do seem to attract plenty of pollination insects as you can see with the butterfly. He (she?) led me a chase all over the garden trying to get one decent shot. This one still isn't the best but it'll have to do. There are both yellow and orange marigolds out there and they're all going to town putting out the blossoms. I had intended to put some cosmos in as well but didn't get to it. Maybe the Fall garden.


If you recall from the Dun Hagan Wildflowers post I put up a little while ago there was a nice Pinewoods Milkweed (Asclepias humistrata) in the series. This is that same plant now on the verge of opening its seed pods. Some of the others on the property are already open. I never have seen any caterpillars on them so I suspect the Monarch butterfly doesn't find them toothsome, but while the flowers were open there were plenty of other flutter bugs that helped themselves.



With it being later in the season now we're starting to see some new wild flower species showing themselves. This one is the Eastern Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron annuus). Until I start mowing it's a common late spring/early summer wildflower here. My daughters often pick big boquets of the blossoms.







This one as you can see is the Eastern Prickly Pear (Opuntia humifusa) which is unfortunately common on the property and one of my nemesis plants. It's actually a little past their blossoming season here, but I found this one growing under one of my oak trees where it is partially shaded during the day so I suppose it's a bit behind schedule. They're a real chore to elimate out of the yard, orchard and garden but I have to admit for the brief time of the year they're in blossom they are pretty.


Here's another well adapted sand-ridge species, the Sensitive Briar (Mimosa quadrivalvis). I don't find very many pink flowers around here but this is one of the few. Kids love the things because the leaves really do fold up if you stroke them with your finger. The plant is not without its defenses though as the stems are covered in fine thorns so care must be used when weed pulling.






This one has always puzzled me. It is Spiderwort which if I have identified it properly is Tradescantia ohiensis. There are a couple of species that look very similar to me and there is a degree of variability in the plants themselves, but I believe this one is correct. What puzzles me about the plant is that it grows here at all. Most places were you find it thriving are lower and wetter than here at Dun Hagan which is best characterized as droughty sand. Still, there it is in the pasture, yard, and garden. Not a lot of it and it doesn't make tall standing clumps the way it's often seen elsewhere. Most of the time it stays fairly low to the ground in almost a running fashion and puts out only a few blossoms at a time. If it should happen to be near to something that I irrigate regularly it behaves more like it does in lower places. It can be a nuisiance in areas that it likes, but here it makes a striking blue flower that really stands out when I come upon it.

The next four are unknown to me so perhaps one of you readers can turn me onto what their names are. This one here is past its blossoming prime. The odd cob-shaped blossoms are all milky white when they first open. These are about two days past their best, but you can see the little one in the bottom that is closer to their usual color.




This one tends to sparse running clumps. You have to bend over to really see how pretty the blossoms are. The plants don't usually grow more than six inches tall here.









This one is somewhat annoying in that at one time I did know what it was because I looked it up, but lately I can't recall anything about what it's called. It's a striking plant though. They'll stand a foot to eighteen inches high and you can see those bright orange blossoms for quite a ways. The butterflys really like them as well. I just missed getting a shot of this blossom when it had two of these flutter bugs on it. I've seen as many as four on at one time before.






This final one never occurs in terribly great numbers here, but it stands out where it does because it is so tall. They're just getting started good here and will blossom across the summer. My eldest daughter likes to ride the mower with me and she is always reminding me "don't run over the flowers, daddy!" My mowing often looks pretty ragged out there in the pasture and it's largely because of these blossoms as I mow around them to keep the child happy.







Because they are so tall I could not get the base of the plant in the same photo as the blossoms while retaining any close up detail so here it is in this one.


The vegetable garden is coming along well. The first blossoms on the okra should open in another week or so and the sweet potatos are starting to run. Still haven't gotten it mulched in yet so I spent a fair part of today hoeing and weeding to get it presentable again. Tomorrow I'll do some fertilizing and a bit of spraying for a very persistent white fly infestation on some of my peppers. I've seen ladybugs on the plants, but they don't seem to be able to keep up so I'm going to have to deal with them soon as they're beginning to stunt the plants.

Sure could use some rain around here, but at least (for today anyway) we're not choking on smoke for days on end like we were earlier.

.....Alan.

The Poultry Schooner

Well, in addition to marauding pigs, spring soccer season, and Girl Scouts, the other thing making me crazy lately is chickens.

Now, I am forced to admit that I do know better than to order chicks before I have their housing squared away.

But I did it anyway.

So naturally it took three times longer to get their post-brooder housing built than I anticipated which turned it into a do-or-die undertaking because sooner or later I was going to run out of management tricks and they were going to start eating each other in the brooder for being overcrowded.

It's done now though so I am back on track. The permanent henyard is good and does its job well, but it doesn't advance the overall soil fertility of the homestead which is one of the major reasons I keep birds (the other reason being the food they produce). It works well if I clean out the henhouse and transport the litter to some place like the vegetable garden, but the rest of the place doesn't benefit. It is also not an easy task to mix grown birds with young birds in a confined space without casualties so if you can it's better to give each group their own space.

Thus the chicken tractor. It's not the first one I've built, more like the third, but it is the first of this particular design.

The original design comes from Robert Plamondon which can be found on his site herehttp://www.plamondon.com/hoop-coop.html. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you'll find a link to a .pdf file which is what I used.

But Robert uses his for turkeys and I wanted to use mine for laying hens so I modified the design as necessary to suit my needs.

Photo_01 shows the basic frame. Only the two runners are in actual ground contact. The two cross pieces are off the ground by about an inch and a half. This makes for less drag when the tractor is being moved. I made a mistake right off in putting it together in that I had the front oriented the wrong way as Robert did in his original plans. He mentioned changing the orientation so that he could see in the door as he was moving the thing which is what I wanted to do only to forget all about it as I was putting it together. I did it anyway but it left a gap between the panels as you'll see later. Future tractors will be correctly oriented.

Photo_02 shows the way I reinforced the corners to keep the frame from racking itself to pieces as it is being moved. Plamondon used cross members, but I chose to experiments with using short 4"x4" blocks on the inside of the corners. I drilled pilot holes then used three inch screws made for use with pressure treated wood. When I can I prefer to use screws like this rather than driving nails. I find they hold better under stress.







In Photo_03 I am bending the cattle panels. They're the standard 52 inch high by sixteen feet long panels available from farm supplies here in the States just about everywhere so far as I know. Tie a rope around one end, stand on the panel and walk towards the other end causing it to bend as you do. Tie the rope to the other end when it is bowed enough to suit you. In the photo I've got the panel situated outside the frame, but when the time came to nail it on I pulled the rope tighter so that I could have both ends on the inside of the frame as you'll see in the following photos. Do be sure you have the knots tight when you have the panel under tension like this as you don't want the thing to do a sudden impression of a spring as you're nailing it to the frame.



In Photo_04 here the front and back ends are being framed. The front end has the door so it is higher than the hoops so I can make the door as tall as possible. The back end is cut lower so as to stay within the hoops. All of the framing is pressure treated 1x4s. The bottom frame is pressure treated 2x4s. If this were a permanent structure I'd have built it heavier, but as this one is to be portable it needed to be kept as light as possible.

Plamondon uses a simple hatch to get inside, but I hung a proper door. To keep it from binding I left about an inch of clearance between the top and bottom of the door. The hardware cloth wire wraps around the top and bottom of the door to discourage anything trying to widen the gap by chewing to get inside.


Photo_05 shows how I tied the lumber to the cattle panels. Properly tightened they make a very secure bond. The wire is fourteen gauge electric fence wire. Any similar gauge galvanized wire should work. Tying the wood to the cattle panel like this gives the panel more rigidity which will come in useful later when it comes time to hang the interior furniture.










Photo_06 shows all of the wood framing front and back and the nest box already hung. With all of the wood in place I'm now ready to mount the hardware cloth wire.

But first I'll elaborate a bit on the nest box.






Photo_07 shows the nest box being hung. I planned on four nests which is actually more than I need, three would have sufficed. Each nest is 14" wide by that much deep by about ten inches deep. The bottom is half-inch hardware cloth. Sides were scrap plywood, the back was scrap 1x10s, framed with 2x2s. The front of the nest box is one 1x4 to make the box rigid which itself sits on top of one of the 1x4s of the framing then the whole thing is screwed together. This gives it a fair degree of rigidity. A hinged lid made of 2x2s and roofing tin will go over the top later.





Photo_08 shows the front of the nest box so you can see how I hung it on the frame. The interior partitions are whatever piece of scrap wood was laying around that would fit. The rope is tied to the hooks screwed into the box then tied to the framing so as to support the box while I was securing it to the frame.

Photo_09 shows the wire secured across the front. It's screwed to the wood using broad headed lath screws. Where it reaches the metal cattle panel I laced it on using seventeen gauge electric fence wire. A good deal of the whole tractor is sewn together like this. It's very secure - so long as old Brer Coon doesn't come up with wire cutters! {laughing}







Photo_10 shows the backside after the nest box lid has been mounted. The wire is laced to the cattle panel the same as with the front. The band of tin across the backside is for a bit of shade and rain protection for the nest box below. All of the tin is very much used. I'm big on salvaging everything I can.





Photo_11 shows the backside again after it's been moved to the corn patch. You can now see the latch holding the nest box lid closed and get a better view of how I laced the tin to the cattle panels and to the hardware cloth along the sides. I just sewed the whole thing together which is a good part of the reason it took so long to finish!

I used tin instead of a tarp such as what Robert Plamondon used because I wanted something raccoon proof and weather proof. He's in Oregon. Down here in Florida I'd have to replace that tarp several times a year (more if we had a lot of storms) for the sun rotting it out. I'd also have to run wire over the top of the cattle panels then put the tarp over it to make it coon proof.

I've suffered a lot with coons over the years so I tend to think of everything in terms of how resistant to the dang things I can make stuff.

The down side is that the tin significantly adds to the weight. Part of this is because it's old tin, from when the thicker gauge stuff was still common. If I had to use new tin of the thinner gauge that they pass off in places like Lowes and other "home improvement centers" now it would weigh somewhat less, but still not as little as a simple tarp would make it.

Photo_12 shows the interior furniture made from saplings cut out of a brushy area on the property. The support limbs holding the roosts up are wired to the panel where they meet. On the other end each line coming down from overhead is a twisted pair of fourteen gauge electric fence wire, one on each end and the one in the middle. I believe it'll hold at least twenty grown birds. The waterer and feeder are hanging from some old pieces of braided nylon rope I had laying around.

I didn't get a good photo of the tin going onto the panels. On the ends and at the bottom where it reaches the hardware cloth on each side I laced it all together with seventeen gauge wire. Where each piece of tin overlaps another I drilled holes then secured the two pieces together using steel pop rivets with pop rivet washers on the inside. So far they've held quite tight. I was concerned about the tin coming loose in a storm.



Photo_13 shows the tractor full of chicks!










Those are purebreds though so much too valuable to risk on an as yet unproven design so I swapped them out for the birds in Photo_14

Now, what isn't shown is how to keep old Brer Coon from coming in under the bottom of the tractor. That design changed in mid-stream so I haven't taken photos yet.

The design I'm trying at the moment is using plastic-coated 2"x4" steel garden fencing that I've laid on the ground around all four sides. The edge touching the tractor frame is stapled in place. The corners will be laced together to keep them from coming part. The wire just lays flat on the ground extending the two feet out from the sides.

The idea is that animals will go to the bottom of the fence or wall to start digging which of course is not possible since they'll be standing on top of the wire when they do.

The question is whether Brer Coon is smart enough to back off the two feet to go under the wire to get to the bottom of the tractor wall? So far, so good.

I've got a total of thirty four to go into the tractor, but for the first week or so I'm only risking a dozen. If nothing manages to breach the defenses to eat them I'll move the rest this coming weekend.

Eight of the birds are for the father of a friend of mine which will leave me twenty six. In a month or two I'll take what I've learned with this prototype to build a second tractor then split the birds thirteen each between them.

So, why do I call it a "Poultry Schooner?"

Because as I was putting the thing together it occurred to me that the tractor looked somewhat like one of the old "Prairie Schooners" of the American westward expansion of the nineteenth century without the running gear underneath. The Poultry Schooner will be pulled across the Dun Hagan prairie by a dumb ox (that would be me) just as the original Prairie Schooners were. Alternatively I've considered calling it the Cracker Schooner, but then Florida Cracker might think I was poking at him or something. {laughing}


Come this winter I hope to start hatching my own chicks.

We'll see.

Wish me luck!

.....Alan.

I'm not dead.

I'm not dead and I haven't stopped getting stuff done. This last month though has been a combination of stressful, frustrating, and frenetic so I haven't had much time to think about the blog.

I'll try to rectify that this weekend with some photos of what I've been doing.

Until then here's a couple that I did take.
Yes, that's a pig. About a three hundred pound boar in my estimation and he's in my henyard. In fact before the situation finally resolved itself I ran him out of there THREE times in two days. The last time with a behind full of birdshot after he wrecked my feeder shelter (you can see the feeder laying on the ground). We've had the place for going on six years now and the first four years or so I'd see a single feral pig two or three times a year and once I'd run it off wouldn't see it again.

Until this year. They started showing up in groups. Then they started showing up in herds. Caught one in my garden which motivated me to fence it in as some of you may recall. I'd run them off and they'd come back. At their peak I counted twelve pigs one morning standing outside the newly installed garden fence. I could tell they weren't feral pigs but looked more like someone's recently escaped domestics. With the lake and all out there I could not determine where they were coming from for me to be able to contact their owner (if they had one). This boar hog was the final straw. A three hundred pound (or thereabouts) boar pig is no joke, especially when my children play outside so this had to be brought to an end. That last time as I was seeing him off the property I finally discovered who they all belonged to as the neighboring property owner happened to be driving by (he doesn't live on that parcel). He and I had quite the shouting match about his free-roaming pigs. Never did see any signs of his hog pens so I have no idea of where he was keeping the things. I suspect he was simply letting them roam and keeping them in the area by feeding them regularly. That ended after our discussion and he rounded them all up.

This is the first time I ran him off:

On foot he wasn't taking me too seriously but in the truck he realized I was much bigger than him so we had us a little race around the property then around the pond. Every time he'd slow down I'd bump him in the butt to encourage him to keep running. Finally lost him in some heavy brush and figured I wouldn't see him again.

Until he came back again that afternoon.

And again the next afternoon when I'd finally had enough of him and sent him off with his behind stinging.

I'd rather have the Mongol Horde ride across the property than a free roaming herd of pigs!

The vegetable garden has been planted. I got it in late thanks to our odd Spring weather this year, but it's in. Haven't had a chance to mulch it yet, but it's growing. Most of it anyway. Lost the entire first planting of sweet potatos and the row of sunflowers. I was blaming the squirrels for that seeing as how they've wiped out my corn and peanut plantings in the past. They may have had something to do with the potatos too but last night I discovered the real culprits.

The garden is fenced in 2"x4" no-climb so they can't go through the fence and they can't go under the fence, but this pair did a Peter Rabbit on me going under the gate which I had not yet put a sill under. They were in the act of eating the second planting of sweet potatos that I'd just planted last weekend when they were themselves harvested. I'd been spraying the plants with a hot pepper garlic spray to discourage the squirrels (which generally works) but apparently it only makes them the more toothsome to the lagamorphic palate!

If Old Mr. McGregor had had a shotgun instead of a rake he'd have been able to put Peter in a pie (Beatrix Potter was NOT a gardener!)

The Kinder Major needed something to cook for her 'prairie meal' to finish her Laura Ingalls Wilder badge for the Scouts and now she has it. In the words of Master Samwise "…there's only one way to eat a brace of conies…" so it'll be stew this Sunday!

Between squirrels, marauding pigs, and clever rabbits it can be hard to get a garden in sometimes.

Stay out of my garden! I'm getting testy...

.....Alan.

Late Spring Wildflowers at Dun Hagan

It was a busy day on the homestead today watering everything on the place it seemed like, but not so busy that I failed to notice the wildflowers around me. I stuck the camera in my pocket to take advantage of whatever targets of opportunity might present themselves as I went about my rounds.

Regardless of what the calendar says late spring is upon us now here in Florida. Our early spring delights of red bud, wild plum, and pears are past their peaks as we make the not so slow slide into the warm season. Just the same though La Florida is still the land of flowers. They never really stop, only the composition of the arrangement changes.

Some of the following flowers I know and there are some that I have not yet taken the time to deduce their identity from my collection of books on the subject. If there are any that you know what they are please feel free to post about them. As always you can click on a photo to be shown a larger version for a better look.



This first flower is one of the most common and long-lasting on the place. It is the Common Green Eyes Berlandiera subacaulis also known as the Florida Green Eyes. With a large, fleshy carrot like tap root it is quite drought hardy and well adapted to life here on the sand ridge. My daughters pick bouquets of these flowers across the spring and summer.








This second flower is also drought hardy and well adapted to the sand ridge though I wish it were not. It is the Spurge Nettle Cnidoscolus stimulosus sometimes known as Tread Softly. As with all nettles it'll make you smart if you're foolish enough to brush against it with bare skin. Older plants produce a potato like underground tuber that is reputed to be edible though I've never tried it myself. The tuber is what makes it so drought hardy and difficult to eradicate. I've taught my kids not to touch anything with white flowers because of this one. They never listen until they actually do touch one. They remember just fine after that. {laughing}




This next one is the Pinewoods Milkweed Asclepias humistrata which I believe is specific to the Southeastern United States. This particular plant comes back in this same spot year after year. I've been trying to recall if the Monarch butterfly lays her eggs on this species but I don't know. I mow around them when I can just in case. The Giant Swallowtail butterfly is much prettier than the Monarch, but the Monarch doesn't eat my citrus trees and the Swallowtail's Orange Dog Caterpillar does. I'll leave the milkweed alone when I can. Stay off my citrus trees!

There are at least three different species of blueberries (Vaccinium) at Dun Hagan. One of which is the Rabbiteye blueberry (Vaccinium ashei) commonly grown for its fruit of which I now have five or six varieties. The other two however are native here. The first is the largest of the blueberry species known as the Sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum). It can make quite a tall woody shrub or small understory tree. Some of mine approach ten feet in height and might go taller still with better soil and more water. Under good conditions they make an edible, tasty berry, but mine are usually too water stressed most years. The birds still seem to like them well enough.

The other native Vaccinium species is what I believe is the smallest in the family which is the Shiny Blueberry Vaccinium myrsinites. They are past their blossom peak in this shot, but there were still some bushes full of flowers. If you look closely you can see a few fruit already set and beginning to grow. They make an edible tasty berry too, even in my poor droughty sand. I seldom get to taste them though as they are highly prized by the local bird life who are more expert than I at judging when they have reached perfect ripeness. I find these interesting as my patch is growing out in full sun in the middle of my pasture and holding their own against the grass. I fertilize them maybe once a year and give them the occasional watering, but I suspect they'd stand their ground just fine without any attention from me. If ever I manage to fence my pasture in I'll need to move the patch as I suspect the livestock would happily graze them into extinction.

Those are the flowers that I have identified. The ones that follow are as yet still unknown to me. Maybe one of you readers will recognize some of them.



This first one is a legume, one of the vetch species I think, but I don't know which one. It's not very numerous here, I think it wants more water than my soil can usually provide, but I find it every spring. Doesn't seem to appeal to the chicken flock as I never see them eating it. They're a bit past their blossom peak now. Two or three weeks ago would have caught them at their best.








And here is another legume species as you can tell by it's pea blossom shaped flower. It's not very common here either and never makes a very big plant, but it is distinctive enough that I never fail to notice it. It seems to tolerate the heat a bit better than the one above as I'll see it further into the early summer. I suspect though it would prefer a somewhat moister, sweeter soil than what I can readily provide or I'd see more of it.













This one I find on the slight slope where my blueberries are planted. A bit of dappled shade and not quite so arid as the full-sun open pasture. I have no idea what it is, but I never fail to notice it. The wind was blowing the flower stalks a bit so the blossoms are not as sharp in detail as they might have been. With the flower stalk fully grown it stands maybe two feet tall though the rest of the plant tends to hug the ground.














This one here is as tiny as other other is tall. I really should have gotten down close to the ground to shoot the photo so that you could see how diminutive the plant is. The blossoms are smaller than a thimble. It grows in the full sun and heat where the soil is quite dry and lasts into the summer though I can't recall now if I see it at mid-summer or not.












Last for this post is one of my more common early spring garden weeds. It seems to favor areas of disturbed soil as I don't see it much in the lawn or pasture, but I have a lot of it in the garden. I pull it for green feed for the hens when there is nothing else available. They seem to like it well enough.



There are other wildflowers out there that I was not able to get a good photo of. Just this year I started noticing a few thinly scattered Blue Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium atlanticum) around the yard. I wasn't able to make a good photo of mine, but you can see a good one over to the Central Florida Gardening Blog. It is one of the few Florida gardening related blogs that I've been able to find and I'm sure they'd love to see a comment or two if you are so inclined to encourage them to keep it up.

In another month or so I'll cruise the property again to see what new flowers I can find.

.....Alan.

Ready To Launch

Spring is busting out all over at Dun Hagan these last couple of weeks. Everything on the place that can is growing. I'm going to have a busy weekend getting the fertilizing, watering, and last minute pruning done. The daylillies aren't waiting for me, they're already getting down to work. Two of the three bare root pecan trees I planted several weeks ago have broken bud and are beginning to leaf out. I'm hoping the third will soon as well.

I spent much of this week getting ready for the arrival of our newest batch of chicks. Rebuilding the brooder hover, cleaning up the brooder box, filling it with bedding, cleaning the waterers and the feeders. The hover still is not really the way I want it. The parts that I bought to do the improvements with turned out to be the wrong size and by the time I discovered the error I didn't have time to go get the correct ones so I settled for replacing some of the wood and the one bulb socket that had gone bad. Maybe I'll get the rest finished after the current batch of chicks are outside.

The birds in the established flock originated from Ideal out of Texas. The new chicks are from Privett Hatchery located in New Mexico. They have a good reputation for the type of utility breeds I favor. Between the two flocks I should now have a good genetic base to work with. Not all of the birds in this batch are for me though, eight of the thirty six chicks are for the father of a friend of mine who wants to start keeping hens himself. Between the two of us we ordered Americaunas, Rhode Island Reds, Production Reds, Plymouth Barred Rocks, White Leghorns, Black Sex Links, and New Hampshire Reds so we have quite a variety as you can see from the two photos. I was only able to catch a few of them with the camera though, most of them wouldn't come out from under the hover.

There's a really nice website by the name of Feather Site where you can see photos of what each breed looks like both as chicks and as grown birds. Very handy when you're trying to tell one chick from another.

The established flock has gotten that good Spring energy as well with every hen and her sister laying for all they're worth. The refrigerator is full of eggs and I've taken to giving free samples in an effort to drum up new customers which I'll need come August when the new birds begin to lay.

Now that the chicks are in the brooder I can give some attention to other matters, notably fertilizing everything that needs it and maybe playing chicken with the late frosts by planting the garden a week early.

The bedding plants are ready and waiting. Mostly peppers with a few tomatos and eggplants and the marigolds as you can see. Florida Cracker relates that he plants cosmos in his garden as well as marigolds and I think I may give them a try myself. I've done nasturtiums several times before which did OK until about late July or so if I kept them well mulched and watered. I'll be visiting family the weekend of April first which is when I'd ordinarily be planting the frost tender stuff in the garden so I'm debating with myself about whether to take the chance of planting this weekend and gaining two weeks growth or playing it safe by waiting until the seventh. Come Sunday I'll study the long-range forecast and come to a decision.

The container plants in the greenhouse don't care about late frosts. The weather is warm, the days are growing longer and they are getting down to business. The lemon trees are full of blossoms, green fruit, and the last few ripe fruit that we haven't used yet.

I have two of these Eureka lemons (the common grocery store lemon), the other is blossoming too, but I haven't repotted it yet. That's on my to-do-soon list along with the Buddha's Hand citron that I bought the other day. It's dangerous to walk through a nice selection of plants on a nice spring day. Very dangerous.

I'm sorry about the photos being a bit fuzzy. For some reason the camera and I could not get it together no matter what I did.

The Key Limes are not about to be shown up by a mere lemon. They're all full of blossoms and new growth coming on too. There's a bunch of green fruit in there as well as some remaining ripening fruit that we'll soon pick and use.

You can't see them very clearly for being the same color as the leaves but behind the Key Lime is a Tahiti Lime (the big grocery store lime) that has green fruit and blossoms of its own. The geranium is one that my grandmother gave to the Kinder Major year before last. She has a nice flower collection given to her by my grandmother and aunts all kept that way by her daddy.












Last for this post is mystery for the reader. What is it?

I'll give you a clue. It's a common container plant that is often grown in the ground in frost-free areas.












If I can get something done this weekend maybe I'll get another post up come Sunday or Monday night.

For you folks up there in the Frozen North, we're sending our winter birds back. We've painstakingly tied a bit of spring to each of their legs. Y'all look sharp for them.

.....Alan.

Prep work.

Well, in spite of having to work around the Girl Scout cookie booth schedule of my wife and daughter I was able to get some work down outside today. The hen house has finally been cleaned out and spread on the part of the garden I'm going to do the spring planting in. Spread, tilled in, and given a good watering so it can start working. I'll plant it come the first weekend in April after our average last frost date has passed. Having been tilled well already the rototiller was easier to handle today than last weekend though my right knee is complaining. I'll probably have to go to using a knee brace in the future when I'm doing anything really physical.

The garden squared away for the moment I repotted the peppers and marigolds so they would have more rootspace to grow into while we're waiting out the next three weeks or so. Two kinds of bell peppers, some regular jalapenos and some spicy, but mild anaheims. The marigolds are for color but if they should happen to repel some unwanted insect life that'll be good too. Yesterday I bought a couple of Ichiban eggplants and two Patio tomatoes. The last time I planted the Ichiban they were so productive we ended up giving away most of them so this time around I'm planting only two. I'm not planning on canning tomatoes this year so the Patios will cover the few that we eat fresh. I like them for being stout plants that don't need a lot of support though I'll put them in a basket anyway. Some of our thunderstorm winds can get rather sporty.

While I was buying the eggplant and tomatoes I noticed they had rhubarb plants too. Fortunately in all the years I've gardened in Florida I've never heard of anyone successfully growing rhubarb here otherwise Diana would have me planting it for sure.

No pictures today. I had the camera but got so busy that I forgot to take any photos.

.....Alan.

Tilling the earth

Yesterday (Sunday) was one of those rare, glorious days when it all comes together. The high for the day was in the mid-sixties, it was sunny, breezy, and I didn't have to do anything for anyone so I got down to work.

On Saturday I went to Alachua Feed & Seed in Gainesville to pick up some bedding plants and was snagged by their pecan trees. I've had miserable luck in keeping planted pecans alive so last fall I decided I wasn't going to fool with them at all this winter. Until I came across the three varieties I've been looking for, freshly dug, and with plenty of root system still attached so once more I'm going to try my hand at growing them. I planted them out yesterday, one in the yard, the other two in the pasture with plenty of organic matter amending their sand and some old alfalfa cubes for slow-release nitrogen when they need it.

That done I finally had a chance to do something with the garden. The brush pile has been burned, reluctantly, but I did finally get it going. The pepper cages have been cleaned up and the dead, dry plants burned. Also cleaned up the new ground on the far side of the garden which has never been tilled before. There was a rather large standing dead oak there originally which I felled a couple of years ago. A few thick pieces were still solid enough to pick up to cart to the brush pile, the rest was falling apart rotten. I ran the mower over it and the low brush interspersed among it all after first removing the resident cacti. Once everything had been cut as low as I could I ran the rototiller over it. Five times in fact before I could get it the way I wanted it. Lots of roots in there. I also tilled up some of the previously planted areas to get them ready, but ran out of time before I could get to all of what I wanted to turn up. Hopefully this coming weekend I'll get the rest. Also need to clean out the hen house to spread on the garden and turned under so it can mellow for a few weeks before I put in the first of the spring garden some time after April first. I've learned over the years no matter how sweet the weather in March it's not worth the trouble to plant before April Fools day or I'll end up out there freezing my behind off some frosty night spreading bedsheets over my tender plants when the inevitable late freeze hits.

This morning I'm stiff and sore from wrestling the tiller much of the afternoon, but by the time next weekend comes along I'll be ready to go at it again.

.....Alan.

Later edited to correct numerous spelling errors. Sigh...

Furlongs per fortnight.

There are times it seems that in spite of ones best efforts the entire world conspires to exasperate any forward movement. Thus it has been lately. Oh, they were all needful and necessary things that got in the way, but what I really wanted to be doing was getting the garden in order and getting some stuff that has been impatiently waiting in their pots into the ground. Progress lately would seem best measured in furlongs per fortnight.

It was a weekend day and I didn't have to ride herd on a two-year old nor go and do anything for anyone else (at least until late afternoon) so I finally planted the Louis Phillippe rose that the father of a friend of my wife's gave to the Kinder Major and the Caldwell Pink (I think that's right) that I bought December before last at the Dudley Farm Days here and here from a vendor. Also planted a blue plumbago that I overlooked putting into the greenhouse so it froze. I'm told it'll grow back from the roots so I'm hoping they didn't freeze too much. Also got in two rabbiteye blueberries. One of them has the curious name of "Savory" which strikes me as an odd name for a sweet fruit. The other is a mystery that I found growing in between my already established plants. I don't know if it's a root sucker or a seedling, but I gave it a space like all the others.

I fertilized all of the container plants in the hoop house and picked a few lemons and limes to go with supper and to give to my brother's family who came to have supper with us tonight.

No pictures today. The Kinder Major has put our camera in a safe place for us and like safe places are often wont to do it cannot be found.

.....Alan.

Home is where the hearth is.

It's been kinda chilly around these parts lately. Chilly for Florida anyway. Yesterday we hit 22deg F which we haven't seen around here for several years. My foolish pomegranate tree that had partially leafed out already was thoroughly zapped for its trouble as well about about two thirds of the citrus trees in the orchard. So far it just looks like some minor leaf loss, but it's too soon to say for sure. The heater in the hoophouse worked fine so the cold sensitive stuff inside passed the night untroubled.

Being a Florida boy I don't much cotton to being cold so this last week or so I've been getting stuff done inside the house. I did manage to finish the garden fence though.
I haven't been able to find a vantage point yet that allows me to encompass the entire garden in one shot so I cut off the same corner as I did in the first photo. I still need to trench around the bottom of the fence but it's pretty well pig proof as it is. And a good thing too as the latest porcine marauder was in my pasture again tonight. He's rather unusually marked as my experiences with pigs go with a gimpy left front leg. Still seems to get around OK just the same as he was able to make good time when I ran him off.

I stretched the fence wire last Saturday, most of it anyway. The wife needed to go into her office so I knocked off in the mid-afternoon to watch the baby while she was gone. It had been chilly and breezy all day so I didn't regret the lost work time too terribly much. I was pretty tired by then as well so naturally I developed a yen to do some baking! For a time there I had been making all of the bread the family ate, but gradually it became a time issue and I stopped. When the weather turns cold though something good hot from the oven is mighty attractive so I made three loaves of the Dun Hagan standard whole-wheat bread.

The loaves could have been shaped better, but for not having made bread in a year I was generally satisfied. They tasted just as they should and all three loaves were soon gone.

Like eating potato chips those first three loaves only made me want to make still more so several days later I made some cinnamon-raisin bread. Those really didn't last long and by Friday we were pretty well out of bread again. Diana had an overnight Girl Scout camping training thing this weekend and the Kinder Major had one of her friends over so Saturday I spent riding herd on three girl children and baking up a storm. No pictures here I'm afraid as Diana had taken the camera with her, but I made three more loaves of whole-wheat bread then three loaves of cinnamon/raisin/butter roasted pecan bread. Used some of the whole-wheat for making French toast for breakfast this morning which the kids went to town on.

Being modern twenty first century homesteaders we use electrical appliances like most everyone else does. A Bosch mixer kneads the dough for me and we have an impact type grain mill to convert wheat berries into flour. Twenty cups of flour takes about thirty minutes or so which is everything from measuring out the wheat to milling to cleaning the equipment and putting it away. Once in a while I do a loaf or two by hand to keep the feel for the thing, but even with the power equipment it's hard to find time to bake when it needs to be done.

There's just something about coming into a warm house redolent with the smell of rising dough and baking bread that really communicates that you're home. I recommend it to everyone.

.....Alan.

The Hydrologic Cycle

Dun Hagan is on the Florida Sand Ridge which is an ancient dune line dating from the Pleistocene era I believe. Many thousands of years ago the sea level was much higher than it is now so if I were living back then the homesite would probably have a wonderful ocean view.

Change is constant though and the centuries passed by as the frozen areas of the Earth gradually took up more and more water so that the levels of the worlds oceans fell and the coast line gradually wandered farther and farther away. Today it is about twenty five miles more or less as the crow flies to reach the Gulf.

But the dunes of that ancient shoreline still remain and have made for one of Florida's more unusual environments. There are no native rocks on the property. I'm sure there are some, but I'd probably have to dig thirty or forty feet to find them and likely would find heavy clay first. Above that it is sand and sandy loam all the way to the surface. As you might expect water drains away fast so that we never have a mud problem. This also means that surface water comes and goes according to the rainfall cycle of the time. If the area is low enough it may keep open water right on, but for the most part on the Sand Ridge you can't really count on having a pond from year to year.

Back in 2001 when I was doing the research prior to the purchase of Dun Hagan I availed myself of the new aerial and satellite photography web sites such as Terra Server that had recently come online to find as many photos of the place over the years as I could. Depending on the year the area behind the house just across the fence line was either dry prairie, a small to decent sized pond, or an arm of a much larger lake. A study in the drought cycle of North Florida.

But 2001 was several years into a drought cycle so when we closed on the place there was nothing out there but dry prairie with a couple of spots where the plant growth was more lush than the surrounding area, but certainly no open water. The maps, particularly the one hundred year flood plain maps we had to have as a part of the purchase, showed a pond, but there was nothing there. That's the way it stayed until the 2004 hurricane season rolled around and Florida found itself on a tropical weather roller coaster the likes of which we had never experienced before when for the first time since record keeping began we suffered the landfall of five named tropical cyclones. Bonnie gave us only a smattering of light rain as she was mostly a problem for the Panhandle. Charley had been predicted to hit us square on with 90mph winds, but he made his famous last minute jog to the east and did his best to blow away Punta Gorda and Arcadia. Missed us clean though without even a thunderstorm to show for it. Ivan gave us a bad time as we were in the cone for him for quite a while. Indeed the Friday before he made landfall he was projected to come ashore just twenty five miles away. But he too deviated from the script as hurricanes are often wont to do blowing northward to tear up the Panhandle again.

Frances and Jeanne though hit us square on. We were fortunate they came ashore first on the Atlantic side so that we only caught them after they'd been ashore for more than a hundred miles and the winds were much less. Jeanne still managed to blow the canopy of the big red oak on top of the house though which had me on the roof at the height of the storm with a chainsaw clearing it away and covering the damaged areas with a tarp.

It wasn't all bad news however because after Frances had passed we found ourselves with a pond where there had once only been dry prairie. Wasn't a lot of pond, but considering that we'd never seen water there before we were impressed. Then Jeanne came through and filled the pond still more so that we had a respectable body of water. We were very pleased to see it. Oh, for a few days we were fighting an onslaught of mosquitoes but about a week after they came the reproductive cycle of the local frog population caught up and we soon had literally tens of thousands of little green rain frogs everywhere. I've been in Florida all of my life and have never seen so many frogs in so small an area. The mosquito problem quickly disappeared. Gradually the predators that eat frogs caught up with the population boom and their numbers dwindled down to more normal levels.

The pond lasted for about two years. In the winter time I'd flush ducks off the water when I'd go outside at dawn to feed the chickens. We saw water birds of every species that calls North Florida home. I once saw a hawk take a coot right on the water. Had I not just happened to be looking in the right spot at the right instant I'd have missed the whole thing it happened so fast. The hawk hit the coot and flew off into a nearby oak tree to eat it. The coot never even flapped having been killed instantly.

But change is constant and 2006 proved to be a dry year as El Nino blew away our hurricane season and with it a good deal of our annual rainfall so the pond gradually dwindled until it finally disappeared altogether about six months ago or so. Back to dry prairie once more. At the end the wading birds cleaned up the trapped and dying amphibians that could not get away and the small population of minnows that had begun to flourish for a time.

Then came the February first winter storm rolling up out of the Gulf on its way to the northeast. We were fortunate that the big winds passed to the south of us. The folks in Lady Lake, Deland, and New Smyrna were not so that the last I heard the death toll was up to nineteen from the F3 (at present) tornado that went through Lady Lake and the other twisters that hit in other areas. What we did get out of it all was more than six inches of rain in one night. The next morning when I went out to feed the hens there was that shine on the ground across the fenceline that we'd come to miss. The pond was back!

It's not much of a pond, but I am impressed what one winter storm was able to do. The pond at present is about as full as it was when hurricane Frances first filled it back in 2004. We'll have to see what the 2007 rainfall cycle brings us to know whether it will once again disappear into the ground, remain the same, or even grow. 2006 was a dry year, I'm ready for a wetter one. How about you?

.....Alan.

We're OK.

I've received several e-mails about us after last night's storm so I want to let everyone know we're OK. The big winds and the tornadoes were to the south of us where they scared some of my family down there but no one injured and no property damage that I am aware of.

We received better than six inches of rain in the night. The pond behind the house which has been dry for months now has water in it again to the level it had when hurricane Frances first filled it back in '04. All of the litter in the henyard washed away so the pasture downhill from the birds will likely be greener this year than usual.

Other than that we took no damage. I saw water standing this morning in places I haven't seen it stand since the '04 hurricanes.

I'll try to get a picture of the pond up this weekend.

.....Alan.