A bit of politics

A bit of help if you would like to. Thanks!

Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance

Action Alert |  2/2/2010

Stop Genetically Engineered Alfalfa! Now is your chance to demand that USDA protect food from contamination by genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa!  USDA just released its draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on GE alfalfa and comments are due February 16, 2010. Tell the USDA Not to Approve Monsanto’s GE Alfalfa! In the EIS, USDA claims that there is no evidence that consumers care about GE contamination of organic alfalfa. But it’s not just alfalfa that is at risk.  Since alfalfa is fed to dairy cows and other livestock, the dairy and meat products that you eat could be affected too! Howard Vlieger, a FARFA Board member and president of Verity Farms, has witnessed first-hand the negative effects of GE crops on livestock. In a recent conversation with Dr. Don Huber, Emeritus Professor at Purdue University, Dr. Huber stated that if GE “Roundup Ready” alfalfa gets approved, the glyphosate herbicide (the active ingredient in Roundup) could stay in alfalfa plants for up to ten years. And it’s possible that traces of glyphosate could end up in the milk supply when dairy cows are fed GE alfalfa that has been sprayed with glyphosate. Do you want to expose yourself and your children and grandchildren to contaminated milk? Below are some recommended talking points. COMMENTS ARE DUE FEBRUARY 16, 2010 HOW TO SUBMIT COMMENTS 1) Submit comments online through the government website:  Go to http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=0900006480a6b7a1 Click on “submit comment” (look at the upper right-hand corner of the box) 2) You can also submit comments through the Center for Food Safety’s website, http://ga3.org/campaign/alfalfaEIS 3) For written, mailed comments, send two copies to: Docket No. APHIS-2007-0044, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River Road Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238. Please state that your comment refers to Docket No. APHIS-2007-0044. TALKING POINTS * As a consumer, you do not want to buy GE-alfalfa-derived meat and dairy products.  USDA claims that consumers will not be harmed by the approval of GE alfalfa, but has not conducted studies of the effects of feeding GE alfalfa to livestock, or their meat or dairy. * It is wrong to leave farmers, whether organic or conventional, vulnerable to contamination of their crops.  Alfalfa is open-pollinated by bees. With bees traveling 4 to 6 miles, they can potentially spread the patented, foreign DNA to distant conventional and organic crops. The potential for biological contamination from a neighbor’s field, even miles away, threatens the livelihood of organic farmers, dairies, and other livestock producers. The farmers may also be subject to harassment by Monsanto if Monsanto’s investigators find DNA from GE alfalfa mixed in with the farmer’s crops. * GE alfalfa would be the first perennial crop to be approved for genetic modification and release.  GE-contaminated plants could be scattered along the roadsides and in fields, living and producing more GE-contaminated pollen for years. * Monsanto’s business practices do NOT protect farmers from contamination.  USDA claims that Monsanto’s seed contracts require measures sufficient to prevent GE contamination.  But USDA is ignoring the evidence of widespread GE contamination of canola, soy, and corn. * GE alfalfa would significantly increase pesticide use, harming both human health and the environment. USDA admits (correctly) that introduction of Roundup Ready alfalfa will increase Roundup use. However, USDA’s claims that the increase is not significant and that Roundup will replace other, more toxic herbicides are wrong and unsupported by any evidence. * USDA should NOT approve genetically engineered crops that benefit one large company at the expense of family farms.  USDA concludes that GE alfalfa will cause production to shift to larger farms (that can afford built-in isolation distances) and conventional growers who are not threatened by GE contamination, but that these economic shifts are not significant.  This is a continuation of the “get big or get out” policy that has caused myriad problems over the last several decades, and it needs to stop! MORE INFORMATION You can purchase copies of Howard Vlieger’s presentation on the health effects of GE’s on livestock by downloading the form here Check out the Center for Food Safety’s fact sheet on GE alfalfa here

Support Our Work Please consider joining or giving an additional donation at  http://farmandranchfreedom.org/content/join-farfa We need your financial support and, just as importantly, the strength of our voice depends on our membership!  We are frequently asked, by both legislators and staffers, how many members we have.  The more members, the more they will listen. Please help us be a strong voice.

Contact Us: Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance P.O. Box 809 Cameron, Texas 76520 Phone: (512) 243-9404 Toll Free: (866) 687-6452 www.farmandranchfreedom.org info@farmandranchfreedom.org

Jan. 18th

Sorry for all you gardeners, homesteaders and livestock owners but I am posting over at CrazyHouseQuilts today.

Since it is cold or rainy and the weather is really not conducive to gardening or growing right now I don’t have much to say. It will also be about another month before I start indoor seeds. However, keep checking back as I plan on being here at least once a week until things pick up and I have more homesteading things to right about — I just may not have much important to say until then.

Have a great day!

Seeds

Like many of you seed catalogs are flooding my home.
I have been putting most of them into a stack to peruse in the, hopefully, near future.
Really what I need to do first is look in my seed box and double check the seeds I saved from this last year and decide what I want to grow and where will I put it so that I know how many seeds minimum I will need.
I know that I need to purchase some new Emerite Filet climbing bean seeds. My crop was lost to mold because we got rain, rain and more rain while I was trying to allow the last grouping of them to ripen for saving. They went quickly from green stage to icky. I saved a few…but I am not sure of the quality of them and would just rather buy a new package or two. I also need to purchase some corn—I grew a hybrid sweet this past year and need to replace it.
Also, tomatoes. I saved a few but would like to try some new like I do every year.In addition to a few tomato varieties I saved soybeans, snap beans, peas, okra and a number of other food items we eat and grow regularly.

Recently, in addition to all the familiar catalogs I get, I received a manila envelope in the mail. It was a “new” seed place’s catalog and I thought “great…one of the seed houses is selling my information. Bummer”. But I was wrong. The catalog I was from Heavenly Seed LLC and is an offshoot of a seed house that was recently bought out and is changing how it will sell seeds.
O.k. That’s better.
As I was glancing through I got to the last page and in big bold letters the words: Not for human consumption jumped out at me. So of course I had to read the description. Velvet beans it said. Note: not for human consumption this is a legume that was widely grown up until about 1900 (actually the 50’s according to this article) as a summer cover crop. Neat.

Vigorous plants produce a mass of foliage that shades out

and here’s the clincher for me:  bermuda grass within just one summer.
HOT DOG!!
I didn’t have to read more though it does also say it helps in the same way with nutsedge and also breaks the cycle of nematodes, all while adding nitrogen as does all the legume family.
So now? My first seed purchase of the year has been place. Hopefully this first seed purchase is a portent of good growing to come this next year. I of course purchased the “jumbo” pack of these and in spring I will be trying them out in the area where I am still working on bermuda grass eradication.

Will they work? I don’t know. But I hope they will help anyway, because when you have bermuda grass you try lots of things to get rid of this horrible garden weed. In a pasture…it’s fine. In a garden it is the devil in disguise sitting at the same table as nutgrass and a few other bad guys.Their quite the group and I am glad only one seems to grow in any particular area. Must be some territorial code of honor between weeds — at least on my place

We have made progress over the years with our weeds and poor soil health but still have a way to go, and of course need to be careful not to go backwards after heavy feeding crops. This plant may just help us out. Low input is always a time saver and time is not something we have lots of during the growing/canning season. Beyond that anything that can help with soil building and adding nitrogen all while eradicating something we don’t want is a plant welcome in my garden.

Later this year I would love to come back to this subject and see if any one else tried this plant and if they had luck with it.

Mixing Italian Sausage seasoning

We love the taste of a hot Italian Sausage. Grilled in the summer with fresh grilled onions and zucchini and they are delicious on a bun with mustard. Yum.
I also love the flavor of Italian sausage in my spaghetti sauce but I don’t always have sausage made up or even pork to make some with. Beyond that occasionally we want to have friends eat with us that are vegetarian. What to do if I want to have “Italian style” sauce?

Fake it. And the following recipe is a better fake that soy chicken nuggets ever thought about being and is one of the best recipes I have in my repertoire for tomato based sauce making.
Beyond than that mixing your own also moves you away from those pre packaged season mixes that have non caking agents and sometimes other unpronounceable things in them. Most of these items can also be grown easily in the home garden and then dried or stored to eventually make their way into the mix. Black pepper and coriander (which I sometimes leave out) are the only two I have never grown. Pepper…I can’t. Coriander I am not sure.
So here is the recipe I use:

Italian sausage seasoning mix:

2 TBS sugar
2 TBS ground fennel seeds ( you can toast them if you like)
1 TBS ground coriander seeds (again..toast if you like)
2 TBS paprika. I prefer Hungarian but you can use Spanish sweet or smoky.
Cayenne pepper —none if you like sweet Italian and up to however much you can stand for hot.
4 TBS dried oregano leaves
5 TBS dried basil. ( I use thai basil for my mix. LOVE IT! everything about thai basil says Italian sausage flavor to me)
2 TBS red pepper flakes—again don’t use if you prefer sweet sausage
2 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper

Mix all of this together and store for use every time you make sauce. I double this and it last for a number of pots of sauce depending on how much I am making at one time. Sometimes I make a dinners worth….and sometimes I make enough for 4 dinners and freeze most of it. How far it will go also depends on how seasoned you like your sauce. We like very strongly flavored sauces so we probably use more than some other people might.
After you have it on hand all you have to do is saute a bit of onion, some green pepper if you like (I don’t) and add some tomatoes and you have a great “fake” Italian sausage spaghetti sauce. Cook it in a large pot in the oven on about 325 all day while your gone and you’ll have a crock pot style meal. Or use a crock pot of course.
No matter which way you cook it as I said above: Yum.
All that’s needed then is bread to wipe up the rest of the sauce ;-)

I also wrote over at CrazyHouse Quilts today.

Another one bites the dust

I am writing today over at CrazyHouseQuilts about this newly finished quilt. Come visit me there.

Celeriac : an under appreciated vegetable

As a young adult I had on occasion seen this knobby, bumpy brown vegetable that smelled strongly of celery, but never had I eaten one. Ever. I didn't even know how to properly pronounce the name until a friend corrected me one afternoon when we were speaking of the celariac remoulade I had eaten and loved. Cel AIR ee ack she said, not how I was saying it (celer ICK). Potatoes, poTAtoes right?

My exposure to this somewhat uncommon vegetable didn't even come until I finally grew it myself this past year as a fluke...just to try it as a celery leaf substitute. You see, when I was growing up, my family wasn't really into trying new vegetables. Potatoes, iceberg lettuce salad with an occasional green bean dish or summertime corn on the cob were our main vegetables. No beets, snap peas, regular peas, carrots, broccoli, kale, chard or anything fancy, just the four I mentioned pretty much. Of course we ate beans...but then everyone knows those aren't really a vegetable :-)

I know..plain jane eatin'

So, as I became more comfortable with gardening, I decided that each year I should add one new, uncommon to me, vegetable to try. Just one since I didn't want to over whelm myself with trying to figure out not only how to grow these newbies but also how to eat bunches of unfamiliar produce. Everyone, at one point or another, has had that moment where unfamiliar food items sit staring at you on the counter. Slowly going bad because you really don't know what to do with them. Why waste my time I thought? No need to hassle with lots of new veggies and correspondingly new dishes I was unfamiliar cooking. If the one veggie I picked each year did grow well, but I didn't like it, it was just one small part of my garden and a small investment of my time. If I did like it....all the better.

Yet, even as I write this to encourage others to give celeriac a try, it was many years waiting to become the new guy in my garden. You see, I really don't care for celery that much and so I just couldn't fathom what I would do with a celery flavored root. Eventually though going completely local for Thankgiving spurred me to try growing this wonderful vegetable. I needed celery for my stuffing, my absolute favorite part of the Thanksgiving dinner, and regular stalk celery seemed to need too much watering and pampering for my taste. Since I wasn't about to give up my stuffing....celeriac it was then. Locavores rejoice.

Celeriac, like all vegetables, is said to need well amended soil with adequate fertility. In other words perfect soil. However, most gardeners who grow celeriac regularly, seem to agree more on the need to avoid sandy or rocky soil rather than worrying about “perfect” soil. Sandy soil seems to be too dry for the bulbs and they stay small. They will still be edible but they may never achieve the nice bulbs needed to grate, slice or cube for dishes. Rocky soil on the other hand is too, well rocky, and like carrots you get misshaped roots. More misshaped than celeriac normally is. And it is annoying to try and peel them when their too mishapen.

I started my celeriac seeds in doors in the early spring. Scattered thickly on top of some nice worm casting/compost mix in a plastic drawer organizer and gently pressed into the soil. I watered well and put an old cookie sheet over it to keep out light and keep moisture in, then set them in a warmer spot in my home. I collect odd seed starting containers and trays to carry and cover them with at yard sales. Rarely do I pay more than 50cents for anything. All is reusable over and over though.
Checking them everyday my notes say they took only a few days to sprout. A bit quicker than I was led to believe. I put them under lights and watered them when they needed it.
Well, time went by and unfortunately, not really caring about them, they got looked after..... but barely. I did aggressively thin them one time----by that I mean I just yanked some random ones out----and kind of forgot about them.
Then the peas began to come up and I decided that maybe I would plant some of the little celeriac plants outside. I installed them in tidy little rows and watered them occasionally. After they started to grow...again I kind of forgot about them. Through the spring the got bigger, not quickly, but they grew. Into the summer when it got droughty occasionally (and I do mean just occasionally) I watered them. Barely.
By mid fall I glanced at them one day and realized that “hey, some of those bulbs are pretty big.” So I pulled one. Chopped off the top and the root and brought it in the house. Peeling off the outside with a nice I finished with a hand scraper then grated what was left of my root. Add some mayonnaise (no miracle whip please), a bit of lemon juice, some grated fresh pepper and salt and voila! Remoulade. And was it fabulous! Really not celery flavored at all. Maybe a tiny smidge. My husband and I were hooked. What a fabulous “slaw” to go along with a leftover steak sandwiche. Yum.
So far we have not gotten to try them cubed, boiled and then mashed either alone or added to potatoes however...we will eventually. It's just that we like the remoulade so well we just haven't.

Lastly...and the reason for this article being so late in coming. I finally tried it with stuffing. Since I ended up out of town for Thanksgiving it was Christmas before I made stuffing. Using the leaves as a substitute for celery in dressing it is fine. Actually better than fine though I will say it does have a slightly...very slightly...different flavor than sauteed celery. I liked it very well though and from now on wont even bother buying celery. I also dried quite a bit of the leaves this summer and have used them in soups/stews. I assume it adds a bit of flavor but since I add so many seasonings it just kind of blends in in those particular dishes. Like it's suppose to though.

So if your trying to decide on your new veggie for this next growing season....put celeriac into the running for a spot. Like me you may find an easy to grow and easy to use veggie that makes, if nothing else, a very interesting slaw substitute.

A remnant score

So the other day while searching for some fabric to make a cell phone holder/cover for my new phone I lucked out and scored a remnant of Heather Ross’s bicycle fabric from her Lightening Bugs and other mysteries line (freespirit fabrics). Almost a full yard of it. Very cute and amazingly it matches the fabric I was looking for originally: Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum by MoMo for Moda. I actually found two color ways of that. I also needed something yellow for an upcoming quilt idea and got the “juicy lemon” print fabric by Alexander Henry too. That is still pretty easily available and I may pick up more. It’s a fabulous yellow color and print. Really like it. I almost purchased some yellow dot fabric Saturday for the yellow I need but then I remembered that this was coming to me. Glad I waited…this is much better than the yellow dot I almost bought.
Overall….I am happy. Now I just need to come up with the perfect plan for the bicycle fabric.

Free Motion Quilting Practice

Potholders are great machine quilting practice. I don’t mean practice for making potholders but practice for actually machine quilting.

Not only do I think their great for practicing your free motion quilting techniques on (versus a piece of random fabric) but you can choose ANY fabric you want to to make your potholders with because of course pre quilted fabrics are very limited and often printed for baby use. Mom likes flowers? Flowered fabric it is. Sister like contemporary? Well, contemporary it can be. Beyond that, fabric wise you can use leftover pieces from scraps or even old clothing. The choices are limitless.

To start with your own fabric that is not quilted you will need some batting. I personally prefer cotton but you can also use polyester if that is your choice. You will have to play with how much polyester but I use a double layer of cotton. You can buy a small package of batting for something like a baby quilt and start with that. It’s about 8 dollars at most depending on where you shop. Some stores even have batting by the yard—even better if you don’t want the whole quilt worth.

Next you need to lay out your fabrics, taping the bottom fabric if it won’t stay stretched out. Just use some duct tape, or sometimes painters tape will hold well enough, just to keep it pulled without wrinkles until you get the batting and top attached. You should of course iron out any major wrinkles and bends but sometimes the fabric wants to slide around…the tape helps until you pin. Next lay on your batting and then your top fabric. Use straight pins or safety pins to hold the layers together. I use safety pins on my larger projects and straight pins on my smaller. Your choice of course. Everyone likes differing ways—you have to find which you prefer.

Then? quilt it. Do straight lines as I did in these pictures or circles or stipple or random or whatever you want to. Practice makes perfect —and usable practice is the best I think.

Once you finish quilting the fabric cut out your design, bind it and voila! You have a new potholder or a home made gift.

One suggestion I have for when you are cutting out multiple pieces like I did ( you may come up with and idea other than a potholder) is to sew along the very outer edge before moving on. That locks everything into place since you are cutting your quilting stitches when cutting out the pieces. It helps keep everything together until you finish.

Eventually I hope to have a down-loadable PDF for my potholder mitt to share with everyone (still in the proto type phase—working out those kinks don’t you know) but square pot holders are exceptionally quick and easy and you can have lots of practice while still ending up with something functionally usable when you finish. Beyond that not only can you practice your free motion quilting but also your binding and finishing techniques.

So, have fun!

A stab at a new bird —no pun intended

I know this article is being posted after Thanksgiving and Christmas…but that is intentional. My reasoning is that I would like to put  the idea of raising a turkey into your head now when you will have plenty of time to consider it, order some, and raise them for next years meals.

By no means am I a turkey expert. And what I tell you may fly in the face of conventional turkey raising wisdom but I would like to tell you how it has worked for us and then you can study the practice and choose your own way. Of course my family has raised poultry for many many years but never had we done turkeys. There were a number of reasons, but the two major ones were that turkey isn’t my family’s favorite meat and supposedly turkeys are difficult to raise.

Yet as we moved more and more towards the goal of raising as much of our food as we could we realized that the first issue, turkey isn’t our favorite meat, might be because of the WAY turkey is commercially raised. I mean, any one that raises their own chickens, beef, lamb etc knows that the flavor of the meat is by far superior to its store bought equivalent. It is so obvious of a difference that there are some chicken recipes we will no longer make unless we have a flavor filled home raised bird to put into it. And of course even if you have never raised your own meat animals everyone knows that home grown tomatoes taste better than store bought….so why not turkey meat?  And even though for a number of years I considered trying to raise one or two it remained nothing more than a tickle in the back of my brain. This is because  even when eating the “local” Thanksgiving (or Christmas) meal we would often eat something like prime rib or whole roasted chicken (those big caponized birds).

This year though I decided it had been a number of years since we had had turkey for Thanksgiving or Christmas and maybe we needed to try one or two. I didn’t want to start out with an expensive batch from the hatchery (15 birds minimum to ship at about 8 dollars a piece on average depending on breed and shipping) since I had heard they were horribly difficult to raise. Even Gene Logsdon whose books I just love says don’t even bother trying to raise turkeys. Just don’t.

So all summer, after my mind had been made up, we would try and remember to watch craigslist to find people selling turkey poults. Eventually we moved past the point of having about 28 weeks from the birth of the birds to having one ready for Thanksgiving and eventually even Christmas. Most of the heritage breed birds need about 28 weeks. Some a bit less and of course you can go longer but that is the general time frame everyone gives for having about an 17 to 20 pounder. The biggest problem we ran into trying to buy locally was that the birds were sold almost from the moment the ad hit the list. “Sorry….their all gone” was the response to my many many emails.

Finally though, about 8 weeks before Thanksgiving, we found some. The gentleman was up on one of the local mountains and had some left ranging in age from 6 weeks to 12 weeks. I wanted the twelve week birds, slightly more expensive at 15 a piece, because of the fact that one would be close  enough to ready for us by Christmas but…..they sold before I got there. Bummer. So instead I took home 4 six week old birds at the whopping price of eight dollars a piece.

The weather was still very warm so we didn’t have to worry about brooding them in a special cage or lamps or any of that. Just making sure that until they fully feathered they didn’t get soaked in the pouring rain without a place to shelter. Basically these guys were past the baby baby stage—supposedly the hardest part— but they did still need a bit of extra care and some higher protein feed than our chickens. This is because of the fact that turkeys grow quite fast at this stage .

So, for about the next 8 weeks (approximately) I fed them, and my chickens who were with them, a 22 percent protein feed. There was no way to separately feed the two species and so I didn’t really worry about it. I did however offer the feed in the evening, just enough so that there was little or none left the next morning. This kept the chickens foraging instead of filling up on the high protein feed meant more for the turkeys. The turkeys were also quick to catch onto moving out to the pasture every morning with the chickens—eventually foraging farther than the chickens which was good. Our chickens were a bit..well.. chicken about moving all the way across the pasture. They felt safer I think with the bigger birds.

We have since switched to a 16 percent ration with cracked corn as a treat now that they are older. Over all the turkeys did great and the chickens didn’t turn into walking blobs. And one last thing we noticed when feeding the turkeys. Even though we usually feed whole corn for a treat, and you would think the turkeys being slightly larger than the chickens would be able to eat it, they could not. At first they  had trouble swallowing it so we changed to cracked corn instead of whole. Now they could…but not for many many weeks after we got them.

As far as housing the birds we  moved them straight in with our chickens almost from the get go. I understand having them with chickens is a total no no since they can get a disease called blackhead, but our birds are happy and healthy to this day. We did this because we didn’t have another place to house them separately. It was with the chickens or with no turkeys at all. I also figured this would tell me if raising turkeys was going to be difficult or even possible for us since we will probably never have a separate area available just for turkeys. If they immediately fell ill and died…well then they were too hard. If they didn’t then lucky us. We could of course do them in rotational cages like we do pastured poultry ….yet we may never do that with them so we wanted to see if they could fit in with the other birds in an easy manner.  I also don’t know if sanitary conditions or access to pasture helps to keep this dreaded blackhead from developing, but at this point all four of our birds are still fine.  As mentioned they have the same access to pasture as the chickens and get along fine with the birds. One of our roosters does try and woo one of the hens (we lucked out and got two males and two females) but he doesn’t really do much more than chase her. She’s quite a bit faster than he is and bigger now too. As a matter of fact I saw her chasing him this morning and pecking him so maybe she’s had enough. Enough is enough sometimes.

And no, we haven’t yet eaten them since only one of the males looked even kind of sort of big enough by Christmas. We just decided to wait a bit longer. Maybe it may work out that we have an Easter turkey instead of lamb ;-)

Overall we have thoroughly enjoyed raising turkeys. We did have to clip their wings since they worked from flying into the trees to flying up to the top of the chicken coop but other than that they are a dream to care for so far. They are actually quite smart, not at all like I was led to believe, and very friendly. They talk and chat to each other and us all the time, easily come to us, and often follow us around in the pasture or along the fence lines. I am sure we could have tamed them enough to pet and pick them up but we will be eating them and try not to attach too much to the animals we will eat. We swear we have even seen them “playing”. Not sure but it looked like it. One of the funniest things about the turkeys is any odd noise (even one made by us) will cause them to gobble. Gobble gobble gobble. I can loudly say Blah blah blah and they will gobble. So funny! Kids totally get a kick out of it. Sometimes we even get a feather show to go with all the gobbling. Of course they refused to do a tail show while I took pictures for this article —but really they do. Promise.

So..my take? Turkeys are not nearly as hard as I had heard. Yes, I still need to brood them straight from day old but the man I purchased mine from said it was as easy to him as brooding his chicks. And he lived on an acre right in a subdivision type neighborhood.  And now that we know they are not stupid or too dumb to come in out of the rain we are looking forward to more turkeys in the future. They are actually attractive, interesting, interactive with humans, calmer than most chickens and more than smart enough to put themselves up when it’s cold, rainy, snows or gets dark. Overall? I like them. And I hope that my hens will help me out this next year and either hatch some for me or at least offer up a number of fertilized eggs for me to try and incubate. Even if that doesn’t happen though, we will be more than open to spending the money to buy them from a hatchery if we can not find more locally.

So if you’ve been wondering about whether turkeys would work out for you– try some. I think you may like them a lot. Their only downfall I can see so far is that they don’t lay enough eggs for our breakfast burritos!

Apple tree pruning (and a grilling link)

Happy New Year! And hopefully your weather is a beautiful as ours is today. What a wonderful way to start the New Year…though they did say we would have a milder winter this year. How “they” figure that out I am unsure and since it doesn’t always hold I don’t pay that much attention. However, today is beautiful, and because of that we took the time to work outside a bit this late morning after milking and caring for the cows and chickens.

Our apple trees have needed some serious work on them this year and now is a great time to do it. Winter, when there is no growth, is a fine time to do your serious tree pruning. Some say to wait until closer to spring but I can’t…we’ll just run into the problem of too many things to do and then the trees won’t get done. Our trees are quite old and we have been working on them for a number of years…..not that we’re professional or anything but I know enough to cut out broken limbs or crossing limbs and a few other things.

But beyond the small yearly maintenance pruning that we do one of our best tasting apples had a few branches that broke from the weight of apples this past year. Unfortunately  I decided they might need some propping late one evening and when we went to do it the next day…they were already broke. Quite a misfortune since that tree now had to have a fairly large limb removed to clean up where and how it broke. I will be better about getting directly too it the next time.

Beyond that we also  put our Guernsey bull (who is for sale by the way ;-D ) into that pasture to clean up some grass he will eat and the Jerseys won’t, and he broke branches on a number of the trees. He’s pretty tall and the trees are shorter so it wasn’t really his fault….not entirely anyway. We also needed to top and/or remove new branches that were starting to cross or get too tall in a number of them.

Over the years we have worked on how to figure out exactly what needs pruning and what can be left. I can’t say I am an expert on fruit trees but so far, just by removing interior “suckers”, crossing branches and branches that are not doing well for some reason we have gotten really good harvests. I still need to work on how to more completely care for my trees organically but with time that will come.

This is the time of year we also start to put down our soil amendments under the trees. Each tree gets some kelp meal, manure and/or compost (quite a thick layer) or leaves if we have more of those than the compost/manure and also some greensand and lime. We would love to add some phosphate but have trouble finding that so instead we run the poultry through the orchard and hope they will add enough. Poultry is a great phosphate producer so if you do caged poultry…put them under your trees regularly to help your trees be healthier.

Besides leaves/compost/manure…which can be difficult to get I know…you can subsitute grass clippings and/or buy bagged alfalfa cubes or pellets from the feed store. Alfalfa is a FAB soil enhancer and though it seems expensive in the bag you will see a difference pretty quickly. We used some that had gotten ruined in the garden one year and the difference was very very obvious. Really upped the quality of our soil quickly.

I know this started out as about pruning but soil health is so important that I can never not talk of it. A couple of books I recommend are Gene Logsdons The Gardener’s Guide to Better Soil and Rodale’s book of Small Composting. Both go into good depth on the various soil needs beyond NPK and also tell you differing ways to acquire these needed enhancers. Organically of course.

Also don’t forget to save your tree pruning and clippings for your BBQ this summer. Apple wood is fabulous but so are many many woods beyond hickory and mesquite. Here is a link for you to check out the many woods to smoke and grill with:

All about Smoke Woods