What have you picked/planted today?

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george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Hi Rob, good to see you are around. Back in my day we appeared in a couple magazine articles all called a variation of "Guns Money and Mushrooms" or "Mushrooms, Guns, and Money". It was pretty wild back then too.

Groan... Work. I just hired on - to a job starting October till Sept next year. An easy enough job but the paperwork I have to do is boggling as it is due tomorrow. I got the packet delivered this weekend (there is no local office so have to do it on-line and in hard post) I have to get the police to fingerprint me (something they do for a fee, then give it to you in a sealed envelope) do a couple affidavits and have them witnessed by a notary, and do a big hiring on thing on paper and on-line. Also a photograph, notarized. Training to be in early October at Atlanta, so it will begin then.

Wednesday I get my surgery (outpatient) and then need to run off to London to see my parents as I will be tied up from then on. (Anyone here live in London?) It all makes me tired just looking at the stack of paperwork - but must tackle it. Will be fishing at 9 p.m. tonight, likely my last for a wile.

My BC Rancher cousin will be visiting my parents the same time - he is getting the oats in and selling off most of his cattle and working 20 hours a day as they do out there. Makes my slothful efforts seem petty.
 

milius2

Maker
Jun 8, 2009
989
7
Lithuania
Not exactly picking, but it came from my garden a whole 8 kilos of fantastic beaver :DDD He decided to chew on my trees and now I'll munch on him! Very pleased as it took me a while to get things right with the traps and now it's my 3'd beaver this spring/autumn season.

12027230_10207373740172014_8264915087914180086_o.jpg




11953480_10207373739331993_5817730163744038309_o.jpg
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Milius, well done, the meat looks great. This winter we plan to reduce the raccoons and opossums as they are just too plentiful.

That is a lot of meat from one beaver! 8 kg. tell us what you will make with it. I plan on chillies and curries for my animals - their flavor is best done in that sort of thing from my experience.

I planted some more beans and they are already up. At the Dollar Store summer seed closeout packets were two cents each - not many good ones left but one packet of wax beans, which I love. I planted the green beans (bush) a wile ago, one staggers them out as they do not produce for long. The 5/$1 seep packs (the ones reduced to two cents) do not have many seeds in them, I got 6 yax bean plants sprout of the 12 seeds in the pack - which is a good amount to go with other stuff to make a variety, at two cents.

I have 3 bags of okra from a friends garden now to deal with so bought 6 @ 3/$1 ears of corn, 6 @ 2/$1 green peppers and will cut up in soup sizes, blanch, and then freeze in small sip-lock bags for soups during the winter and spring. These would be the traditional local gumbo veg - and we eat gumbo soup all the time, with stock and smoked sausage, the veg mix, and shrimp.

Fishing last night and a nice bag. Need to shrimp tonight if the high winds have not run them off. Shrimping is poor, but they will be bigger in a month. Shrimp only live a year max but most are only three months old they grow so fast - another month and they could be big.
 

milius2

Maker
Jun 8, 2009
989
7
Lithuania
We also prep up a lot of soup stock from vegetables, frozen and canned too.... Chillies are one of my favourite foods but the rest of the family has got a problem with them, so the smallest bits will make one large or maybe two pots of a beaver stew. I think fresh potatoes, carrots, green peas and spices. :) the better bits I will spice up and then make a steak on a grill. It is the best outdoor meal with some salad. And then I left the whole back of the beaver, maybe a half of the animal to be boiled and then seasoned and SMOKED :) it makes for an insane fingerlicking good dish that I really look forward to. Now all I need is some moonshine :D
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Milius, pictures please! I have a thread on cooking the garden and collected stuff, if you get the chance to add to it. Do you fish? I fish all the time.

Here are the chickens. I took this video a bit ago, today, when I fed them. 20 or so big chickens, 4 juveniles, 17 small chicks. Too many, but I like keeping chickens. The chicks are from the eggs laid and will be a mix of half a dozen kinds, I do not separate the varieties. But this shows a morning routine. I net fish for the chickens too - grains are not high enough protein for good production - and it takes me minutes to net a bucket full pf pogies, a oily, excellent, feed fish. I look off my porch and when a good school of them is off my shell point I go go down and net them. I freeze bags of them in enough for a week, for the winter when the pogies go off shore.

Tomorrow is the farmers market where my wife sells any eggs our regulars have not bought. They sell fast as the venders there buy them. Our eggs are thought to be highest quality - as they are - I give them the best food (non-GMO) and they spend all day in the forest digging in the duff and leaf litter for bugs - and then grazing on the road side for grass (see where I walk out of my drive - the road I live on, they have lots of grass there, and even go into the bayou marsh grasses and hunt the tiny crabs and periwinkle snails and who knows what.

[video=youtube;g2Ba4Utq1pE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Ba4Utq1pE&feature=youtu.be[/video]
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Fall garden planting continues with lots of brassicas in pots - just emerging. I have some fast cabbages, kale, chard, and odds and ends. In the ground I have two kinds of turnips, 3 kinds of beans, some peas, onions, lettuce, radish, cucumbers. The sweet potatoes are still in the ground waiting till the leaves brown, also the pepper plants and okra plants from summer. They do a fall crop.

Hopefully the garden should like this picture in a month - this is a couple years ago

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Chickend soing very well
 

milius2

Maker
Jun 8, 2009
989
7
Lithuania
Fishing! It's a whole story about us fishing... You see we have dug our own private spring lake, not big, but it provides a lot of fish and this weekend we landed 2 pike fish, 3 and 3.5kg. One was eaten on sunday and another one will be specially prepared for Christmas :) You might think that pike is one of the rubbish fish kind. But for us living far from open waters it is a great one! :) We do eat a lot of fish that we manage to catch and rarely ever buy the cod from shop. Will show some recipies when they come up. Aaaaaand I caught my 4'th beaver today! This weekend is beaver eating big time! :) will make some shots if I don't forget. ;)
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
We harvested our Dutch Brown beans this week - an unusual crop and one worthy of their own post, so I will do one if people are interested?

Anyway, the harvest of the beans leaves a vacant bed at just the right time for the alliums (onions and garlic) to go in. We grow some overwintering onions from sets (only 100 or so, but they harvest early and bridge the gap until we harvest the seed grown onions) and at least a hundred bulbs of garlic. When you cook and store a lot of soups, curries, chillis etc. you use a LOT of onions and garlic. Next year we will also grow a hundred shallot plants (yielding 700 large shallots) and around two hundred main crop onions.

To lay up I generally plant alliums in "short rows". The joy of wooden raised beds is that you can leave saw cuts in to mark 1' and 6" intervals.

I tend to plant garlic at 6" intervals and 6" between rows. Conventional wisdom says 4" between plants and 12" between rows, but we find that wastes space and leads to more weeding.

Garlic Rows by British Red, on Flickr



A few months ago I harvested and strung our garlic.

Here is the important point. When storing produce that is bulbs or seeds we keep the very best for replanting


If we replanted "middling" cloves of garlic, we would get "middling" bulbs. We replant the biggest and harvest big bulbs!


Saved Garlic Bulbs by British Red, on Flickr

So here they are big, fat , healthy garlic bulbs. Conventional wisdom says plant for next year in October, but we go a little earlier and it works well. Our garlic has suffered -17C and the lush green growth it had put on took no damage


Garlic Cloves by British Red, on Flickr

Each bulb gets broken up into individual cloves of garlic. These are planted 6" apart (a palm width) along the rows marked out with string. They are planted blunt (root) end down (I know, but I've seen it done wrong!), an inch deep so that the pointy end is just under the surface of the soil. We find if you leave any showing, pigeons pull them up. Then I have to replant them (and pluck a couple of pigeons).

Other than occasional weeding, thats about it for garlic. Plant in the Autumn, harvest in the Summer, keep the best back for re-planting. No seed to buy. Simple.
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
Interesting stuff as ever Sir. Garlic and onions are satisfying things to plant and harvest. I think it's the size and smell that tickles me. Also I used to like plaiting them together. They reckon that onions were among the first real mass grown veg when farming proper took off in the middle east. Was the staple diet for them. We had a wee tradition as a family that when pulling the first onions we'd get a treat of a chicken for Sunday lunch. Stuff the cavity with an onion stuffing and I'd get to make the bread sauce. :p was oneof the first sauces I learned to make and I thought it was epicurean alchemy as I studded that first onion of the season with cloves and lowered it into it's bath of milk. Hmmm.
Be interested to hear of the Dutch beans. Can't quite place what they are and I'm a big bean/pulse fan these days. A real hankering for beans and all you can do with them.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
Be interested to hear of the Dutch beans. Can't quite place what they are and I'm a big bean/pulse fan these days. A real hankering for beans and all you can do with them.

I suspect you haven't heard of them because they aren't grown in the UK Colin. I had to import seed stock!

This years beans by British Red, on Flickr

Last Years Dutch Brown Beans by British Red, on Flickr

I've no idea why they are unknown to us.They cook well, look great and taste superb.
 

MartiniDave

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Aug 29, 2003
2,355
130
62
Cambridgeshire
Well, on Monday I picked 3 1/2 lbs of bullaces in a torrential downpour.

On Tuesday I had bullace jam on toast for breakfast. Yum!

Dave
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Red, amazing garden, as always. My stunted garden is shameful in comparison. The picture of greens posted just previous was a good crop - and the greens are easy. The hot weather crops are tough without lots of chemicals - hot climates and pests. Also I have viral wilt in my soils so tomatoes mostly get big and gorgeous with nice green fruit and then over two days wilt and die. Then the chickens will exploit any fence weakness and clean out the seedlings to the ground - happened twice, 100% laid waste.

But I grow haphazardly, and for the fun of it, growing a good part of our needs. The onions I never managed, although I plant some - never at the right time.

Here in the Deep South 'field peas' are a staple. Growing crops were a necessity for the normal Southerner till quite recently and they would dry different beans - much like your beans. A bean sheller was part of the kitchen tools. Purple hull beans, limas, and field peas........ They are shucked and eaten green, or dried. Field peas are a Soul food, Creole, staple. The biggest base foods are the 'peas', greens (turnip, mustard, collard) all seasonal veg like squash and turnip, cornbread, sweet potatoes - things one can grow or buy cheap as they are easy to grow.

Red, do you use a pressure cooker for dried beans? We use different dried beans and the pressure cooker makes it so quick.

Milius, we would almost live on pike in the Far North. Here is a picture I think I posted on 'fishing' filleting a pike. A fantastic fish, firm, clean tasting in clean water - excellent.
I would love to hear about your pond - I dug a small one for swimming, and ornamental - best thing I ever spent $1500 on. It is full of a small, good to eat, fish but I have not eaten any yet, the pond is tiny.

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Love to hear about your beavers - do they do much damage? Are the beaver dams full of trout like they would be in Canada?

Hi Goat, what were the other crops? I think it was the grains which allowed the first settled villages - in Pakistan and Iraq 10,000 years ago.

The tiny chicks can get through the wire of my garden and spend time there, eating some of my brassica seedlings - always one thing or another.

The 'carpenter' I hired turned out to not be a carpenter, as they mostly do when hiring from agencies. Anyone here can call themselves any trade - no proper certification is needed except for electrician and heat and air. He worked hard but basically was someone who stood there handing me tools - most of the time. I showed him how to install doors and he hung 6 very well as I framed them in, but on laying out, cutting, and installing plywood he was lost - those are proper skills that are not learned quickly. I let him go and am hiring my retired fishing friend as a helper. He also is not a carpenter, but I am paying him less so standing around time is not so expensive.

I just tried to post this and got the not logged in thing which always means your post is lost (I changed IP addresses during writing to do some other thing and this site would not deal with that - but I always copy my posts (control C them) before posting as I lost so many by taking my time - and timing out. Here it is pasted after having to close that window and re-log in. Not a problem, but was very frustrating till I learned to copy before hitting the post button.
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Hi Martin - I would love some bullaces - although I had to google them. I love fruit - and make pies a couple times a week. I read bullace pies were an old English tradition. The pies I have been making lately are pear/blueberry/blackberry as good pears are $1 a pound right now. I have to make one for my wife's friend tonight, she tells everyone how good they are. Bullace/pear - sounds wonderful. I buy heavy whipping cream by the quart, we have it with the pie for our nightly dessert.

And Martin, if at all possible - would love a picture of the fruit and process - even just a picture of your toast with jam.
 
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Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
I suspect you haven't heard of them because they aren't grown in the UK Colin. I had to import seed stock!

This years beans by British Red, on Flickr

Last Years Dutch Brown Beans by British Red, on Flickr

I've no idea why they are unknown to us.They cook well, look great and taste superb.

Cheers for that. They look nice. You ever use them in your world famous baked beans? Could go a plate of them now. :p
Was thinking of making black bean burgers for my tea tomorrow. Don't fry a lot at home but I cam across the recipe again and hadn't had them in a while. Be nice with some good baked beans on the side. Last time I made them it was with a butter bean (instead of tatties) colcannon mash. Pretty much licked the plate clean.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Time to empty the crab traps - after filleting the fish so the bait is ready. I have enough crabs to cook but a friend wants some so am catching her a half bucket of crabs.

The chicks grow fast - they can fly in a week, the flight feathers grow first, hidden in all the down. They are slow growing compared to most because I do not give them the high protein chick food - just regular chicken food - for the first week I run it through a blender, then it is just what the hens get, and what they glean from the forest floor.

The hens get non-GMO cracked corn and mixed grains and some Purina layer pellets thrown in - although that Purina is GM stuff, and not too natural, but just about %15 of their diet. They also get lots of fish. Pogies, a sardine which exists in the millions in my bayou. But you cannot just give them endless fish or the eggs will taste fishy. I bake pogie bread, corn bread. Corn meal cheap, some self rising flour, water, and a quart of pogies; then add in anything else like old jam or olives.

Then they also get lots of veg from the garden - and like this in the video, cheap bought tomatoes, too cheap to be good, and they were woody and tasteless - so given to the chickens.

We had a friend who went to the food bank a lot and would give us dried beans and pasta and rice he would not use (not a cook and the food bank gives lots of this stuff, along with boxed foods like macaroni and cheese, bread and peanut butter...) All that would go to the chickens. They love beans and rice, made quick in the pressure cooker.

So feeding the chicks today. I do not handle my chickens, but some are just tame because I never mistreat them - other than whacking with a bamboo pole if they get into the garden - which can be too often.



[video=youtube;dWetZuhXA9E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWetZuhXA9E&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Does anybody keep chickens? (other than red, whose chickens are as good looking as everything he does)
 
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Bowlander

Full Member
Nov 28, 2011
1,353
1
Forest of Bowland
I keep chooks, ducks and turkeys, they aren't laying well at the moment though.
I have speck Sussex and goldtops.

Just a handful of blackberries while running in an obstacle race. Venison steaks from a hind culled in February for tea!

Sent from my SM-A500FU using Tapatalk
 
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British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
Went and peeked into the Buff Orpingtons coop tonight as they are finally getting adult feathers and need their wings clipping soon. We realised that we didn't know how they roosted (on the floor, the perches or what), so thought we would take a peek as picking them up whilst they are roosting is easiest often. Anyway all seven of them are cuddled up in the nest boxes in a big heavy feathered heap. And here's the funny thing....one of them snores :) I've never heard a chicken snore before, but one of these does! Rather a sweet sound is a chicken snoring
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
I have Orphingtons, some chicks I was given 3 years ago. Nice birds - the one who walks in on my chick video is a blue Orphington - a different kind of white Orphington, although now it just looks white. Then there are two gray Orphingtons and a black. I had 14 and am down to 4 from predators in a couple years - about typical, so I have a brood or two every year - but mongrels as I have added a couple kinds of anonymous yard chickens, Amarcanas, sex link, banti fighting cock, anonymous banti, and such and just let them breed at random.

Orphingtons are a dual meat and egg breed and not great layers, I think 165 - 185 a year. Big eggs, and the breed is very docile and attractive. I would like a breed which has been developed for Indian villagers which has great ability to forage and avoid predators - and is tough. I remember the wily, scrawny chickens in the Afghani villages, like feathered lizards on amphetamine. Able to survive in a real hard life. My chickens run free so get hit a lot - 10 or so picked off a year - and they are pretty savvy birds - and the dogs will run to their calls of great panic.

Another thing I feed my chickens is the rib meat cut off, with the rib bones included, when filleting. Then the belly meat left attached to the head is sliced into strips on our 'trout'. The belly met is fatty. How the chickens love it - today they got a couple pounds of fish and they all charge about chasing each other - even the tiny chicks get into the thick of it. The tiny ones then are off running with a chunk of trout rib meat. They eventually choke it down. Chicks have bigger mouths than you would think. I think the fish bones are good for them - lots of calcium.
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Hi Bowlander.

Yesterday was hot rain all day and much of the night. I wish I had gotten more seeds in as the last of the hot nights is about now; with the long rain seeds explode. I fished last night at midnight, in strong wind, perfectly comfortable (in a long break in the rain) in shorts and a light shirt. We have a mild winter, but get a couple hard freezes every year. Enough to hit the bananas badly. Bananas are bi-annual so if covered very well - wrapped in a blanket, then a tarp, all tied with string from the first hard frost till the last, then you will get bananas next autumn. Last winter we had a spell of 3 days and nights when the bird bath stayed solid ice 75 hours with -8C being hit, and then 3-4 other freezes. (17F). Of the 4 bananas I kept covered 1 has a stalk of bananas on it, better than I expected as it was a really cold winter. Also bananas take a very long time to ripen and here they are finally ripe just before the first frost. The stalk of bananas will keep a month in a unheated room. I have a number of good, strong - 14 foot tall, banana trees this year (if killed back by frost the root send up another tree, a couple actually. The leaves always die but the trunk must live to fruit next year.) My plan is to keep 3 covered for the frosts again. The one which is fruiting will die.

Citrys can take a frost, but only some can take a hard freeze. Calamondin, kumquats, satsumas, lemons, and other specific varieties of oranges and grapefruits. Still you have to cover them, and a hard freeze may cause all the leaves. I bought 4, small, clamondin from Walmart this spring when they closed out the citrus trees, $15 each. I have 2 by my pond in the flower terraces and two in pots. Two of them have some fruit, not bad as they are still small, and they make wonderful marmalade. My kumquat tree is fruiting well, 3 years old, but stays small because it is in a pot. The marmalade from both these fruits is fantastic. I was able to make kumquat/lemon/grapefruit marmalade last year and it was soon used up. Calamondin are not popular because they are very sour, like tiny, lemon sour, tangerines. They are used in South Pacific cooking and I want to try them and use for Thai and Philippine cooking. And to preserve for Moroccan. And Ceviche possibly.
 
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