Farm Fresh Goodness

Fresh sweet potatoes, beef ribs and onion rings.How much better can it get?

Sweet potato harvest is under way

The trees in the orchard down back are absolutely loaded with peaches.

We actually went through and thinned a bunch of them out because the branches were on the verge of breaking :P

Don't they look delicious?

And don't forget about plums!

Oodles and oodles of plums.

these are just a few of them.

I think

Gabriel pitted more plums than he ever wanted to see :P

And we made lots of jam.

Lots of very pretty jam :)

Milk: it does a garden good

At the beginning of this spring, Gabriel and I were in a frenzy trying to plant enough vegetables to satisfy the appetite of a multitude of bugs and still have some left over for ourselves. This is the third year that this land has been farmed and while the soil health has increased, so has the bug population. Soil health is what many organic proponents claim will keep bug depredations at bay, while I don't dispute that, our soil apparently isn't to that point yet. We couldn't keep up. Diatomaceious earth-no good. Concentrated garlic spray helped a little but just couldn't keep up due to rains washing it off. I've never seen anything like it. All of our crops were being decimated by bugs. We were beginning to despair of being able to grow anything naturally.

One day we were visiting our friend Stewart and he asked Gabriel if he'd seen the latest Acres USA magazine. Gabriel of course replied that he hadn't (we're way too cheap to subscribe to a magazine),

turns out there was a very interesting article that month and here's the bottom line:

Insects can't digest the sugars in milk.

When milk is sprayed on a plant, the plant is inedible to the insect. It either must go away or else eat and die.

It sounded incredible but hey, we've got plenty of milk, might as well try it.

If nothing else the microbes in the raw milk will enrich the soil. After all, it's not just minerals that plants "eat", it's the dead soil microbes that ate the organic matter we added.

So Gabriel began dowsing the garden with diluted milk. Amazingly enough, the plants immediately perked up and the bugs seemed to almost disappear. Coincidence? After all, it's just milk for crying out loud! He applies it about twice a week when it's dry and every time after it rains. It probably is beneficial as a foliar feeding as well as bug repellent.

We're not the only ones having success with this though. A lady who had really bad cabbage worms sprayed her plants and the worms went away.

Recently my sister was having trouble with squash bugs in her garden and sprayed hers with milk and voila! problem solved!

This is not to say that we don't have any bugs whatsoever anymore. Gabriel says he found two squash bugs yesterday ;)

i would like to note though, that everyone (that I know of) who has done this, has used raw milk. (we use goat milk and the others have used cow). Not being a scientist or anything, I don't know how much difference (if any) the milk being pasteurized would make, but still, I encourage everybody who has a garden to try this method of bug control and I'd love to hear your feedback on how it works for you.

Sheep

A while back we traded a pig for 3 lambs. They're Dorper, (they're the two on the left, the larger ones are Tunis) which have hair instead of wool. They shed when it gets hot enough, saving us alot of effort. Shearing would only be worth while if we had a good way to utilize the wool, which we don't. Because I'm not very fond of lamb, we'll wait until these are Hogget. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_and_mutton If you're in central Texas and would like a Dorper lamb, give Deb' a call at 254-879-4686.

Soybeans

They're everywhere aren't they? Soy is used in an incredible amount of foods, in various forms. It's almost impossible to avoid soy in animal feeds and I was only able to do so in our pig feed because the addition of milk and whey makes up for the lysine that would otherwise be lacking. According to Wikipedia, raw soybeans, including edamame, are toxic to all mono-gastric animals. While I have known of the dangers of soy for some time, I'm posting on it now because it was brought to my attention today by an employee at a local feed mill commenting that he's extremely allergic to soy. Even the roasted beans bother him, but handling the raw ones make him really sick.

So if you didn't know that soy can be dangerous, consider this your warning.

Plums, plums everywhere

The plums are ripening and boy are we covered up! We've been making plum jam and jelly like crazy....... and we only have half a dozen trees!

Some of the bounty out on the porch

(along with a basket of onions)

Gabriel pitting plums for jam

Getting closer to the pot ;)

The finished product

And we'll do it all again tomorrow :)