Walk on the wild side and evolution of an organic garden

So I'm walking out to the pasture a couple days ago and I see mushrooms growing on the ground and naturally I think "Wow, free food!" I'm shocked when I bring in my harvest and my family acts like I'm trying to kill them....Puleeeeze!!! These can't possibly be poisonous right???? Well to allay their fears, I look up poisonous mushrooms on the internet and darn...I find the exact same mushroom listed as a killer...I hate when my family is right, I'll never live this down... BUT wait...it says the definitive test is that the spores of the deadly mushroom are white! I do the little prescribed spore test and....

HA! Clearly this has black spores. They still are not convinced so I take a couple bites (Actually the internet said worst case is that I end up in the hospital with severe stomach cramps and the internet is never wrong - so there) I told the little doubting Thomases (and the one big one) that if I make it 6 hours with no ill effects, the mushrooms are just fine. I did get a little nervous when they all set their watch timers :( BUT HA! again 'cause here I am days later, still alive with no ill effects whatsoever! It's sauteed' mushrooms tonight baby! And lest you wonder...they taste FABULOUS - like what the store bought mushrooms taste like in their dreams.

So now that I have survived Domestic Mushroom Experiment 101, I am on to putting in the fall garden. Step 1 - till the ground (we are strip tilling this year and hoping to go to a no-till next season - more on that later) Step 2 - put up a fence when I realize that Bessie is just waiting to munch all my tasty new plants. She stolls over daily to check out what is going on.

These are super wide rows, I know! But I have lots of room and efficiency is not my main goal here. I left plenty of room to mow between the rows since I am leaving the grass to hold the soil in place and help the moisture content. I am also doing organic wheat in a huge tilled area to the right of this picture. I bought it from a local grower so I'm pretty proud about the whole thing. Fresh bread soon to come....well...not soon really, but one of these days. Don't start salivating yet - I'll let you know when.

Step 3 - put in hoops to support the netting. This is the most important part of the organic garden because it will keep insects and birds away from my crops without having to use any chemicals. That's the theory at least. I'll let you know how it goes.

Yes, the gigantic hat is required attire for working in the garden. Just so you know.

More about the new fall garden in the next blog - stay tuned.

So much going on!!!

I just realized that I haven't blogged in over a week and now I have so many things to try to remember... ugh. OK, let's start with the rain situation - the grass was beginning to get a bit a crispy and then...hallelujah! Rain, rain and more rain! We had a FULL rainbow TWO days in a row - it was spectacular and awe inspiring and just really really.... um, hmmm... nope, can't think of any words that will do it any justice - you had to be there.

Newest animal on the farm.... PIGS!!! We found a show breeder that was willing to sell us some rare Glouchestershire (Gloustesheer if you're a Texan) Spot Pigs. These wonderful pigs are on the critically endangered list because they make really bad confinement housed pigs and will really only thrive on pasture. Gotta love an animal that demands fresh air, grass and sunlight to grow. They are hilarious and we have really enjoyed watching them root around in the dirt and swim in their watering trough. The best thing about having pigs though is that I no longer throw out even one scrap of food. Of course the kids have caught on and now anything they don't want to eat is "I'm saving this for the pigs" It's not really complimentary for my cooking but so far the pigs haven't complained - bless their little pink noses!

And then we nearly went a whole week without adding any more animals to this ark - gasp! But luckily we drove up on Saturday and picked out 6 new cattle. Let me explain... two bred (read pregnant) cows and their most recent calves, technically six head of cattle - sort of. They are a breed called the Murray Grey which - can you guess??? Are known for their excellent pasturing skills and meat quality. I also think they are really pretty - hee hee, I'll bet it really irritates all the old, rough and tough cattle guys when I say that but 'cmon... they ARE! Pretty. There...I said it again.

I'll add tasty when the two steer calves dress out in January but until then, pretty. The one with the red tag is ours - they are being delivered to the farm (when they get here do we have to call it a ranch?) on September 25th after their vet check. Yes, for anyone paying attention, that is the same day as the FRESH screening here so needless to say, much coffee will be consumed.

Whoa... this is one of the steer (educational note - a castrated male) calves - he's gonna be a big fella - I think we'll call him T-bone.

Let's see...other exciting news...a reporter from Country World magazine came out to the farm to do an article on us!!! He watched us moving the turkeys and feeding the animals and of course waited until I was completely covered in crud and sweating to take my picture....sigh.... I just can't seem to make this look glamorous - oh well, I guess these days no one would recognize me if I wasn't covered in gunk and sweat.

Everything else is going great - we have new customers every day and I think the Turkeys will be sold out by the end of the month - everyone seems excited by the chicken program and the new fangled processing shed is being built this week. Chickens are laying more eggs every day and if Ella can stop making eggs and bacon every day for breakfast we may actually have some to sell. The Lord is raining his blessings down on our little farm in a million different ways. Praise!

Lets see....where was I?

So... lets see... following our bad day on the farm post.... we went out the next morning and found two more headless turkeys. I'm really beginning to hate racoons - furry little head eating bandits that they are.
The next night John and I decided to stay up all night and try to catch him in the act. So there I was...in the dark...by myself. My wingman was snoring away in our comfortable bed while I sat in a lawn chair all night getting eaten by mosquitos. (Clearly I'm suffering from a little crybabyitis, I'll stop now) I did go wake him up at 4am for his "shift" which lasted two hours and no racoon. darn...sort of.
That morning I called the company that makes the electric fencing and said "What the heck?" or something like that and the nice lady gave me some great pointers - John and I spent several sweaty hours re-working things and voila' 10,000 volts comin off that sucker. I'm pretty sure we rubbed our hands together and made an evil laughing noise just thinking about that racoon trying to get through THAT! Mwaaahaaaahaaa. Sleepless nights will do that to fairly sane people. So far, so good on the anti-racoon measures.

Why do I have a picture of a gate? I can't even begin to describe how excited I am about this silly gate - up to this point, to get to the left pasture, you would have to go out the fence to the right of our house and walk ALLLLLLL the way around the outer fencing which is like 5 miles (OK, that's an exaggeration but when it's 105, it sure feels like it) so this fence will lead directly out to the fantastic organic vegetable garden that is going in as soon as it less hot than the surface of the sun. Maybe a little rain would be good too. See how our sweet little laying hens are fertilizing for me? Nice.

A few of our rabbits relaxing in the shade of the willow tree during the day. They are all theoretically bred so we'll find out in about 20 or so more days if they actually do breed like...well, rabbits.

My first little fig tree - we gorged on figs in Italy and I have high hopes for this guy. Mmmmm I'm already planning figs and honey...fig jam...pork stuffed with figs... grow already!!!

Our little Cou-Nu chicks - Ian says they all look like they are wearing fur caps. Enjoy some pics of these wonderful little guys.

That's it for today - more adventures tomorrow.

Bad Day on the Farm

We are back and trying to get everything up and running. Everything seems hard the first time you do it and this is the first time we are doing everything so it all seems so hard sometimes.

Couple days ago Bessie (our Jersey heifer who is due to calve soon) began to act differently and her udders seemed more swollen than usual. This is her first calf and also our first calf so really no one knows what to expect. I kept her in the corral for the night and was up every hour checking on her but by morning she seemed normal again so she's back on pasture and I lost a night of sleep. Seems like this first time mom is going to keep us guessing right up till the end.

Two days ago, John and I had moved the turkeys out onto pasture but because of how the portable electric fencing was placed, part of it was right next to our wood fence - no big deal right? Well, this morning I went out and found a headless turkey in the pen. The horrific calling card of a racoon. I know how the sucker got in, but how did he get out? We moved the fence out into the pasture and were just out there gun, and spotlight in hand tonight. Looks like another semi-sleepless night.

We also moved the 25 laying hens out onto pasture (two ran off the first night and haven't been seen since) and moved them to a new spot for the first time today. Seems they really liked the old spot and kept running through the fence and hiding in the bushes where they used to be. We spent literally hours chasing them down and trying to get them into their new fence area. We managed to get most of them (18) after gallons of sweat and a few curses (on John's part :) One ran into a mesquite bush and was stung repeatedly by a nest of wasps and died soon after. After that we stopped chasing them and we figured the rest would find their way back to the flock. The ones we had captured settled down into the shade of their hoophouse.
As we were getting the turkeys more water, a freak wind came like a freight train across the ridge of our hill and pushed their hoophouse several feet sideways. It was a bizarre deal but it crushed two of our remaining hens. We are now down to 15 but when we went out tonight to check for the racoon, all five escapees were huddled next to the fence. We rounded up 4 of them and put them in but one got away. We'll have to see if it comes back tomorrow. In one day we went from 23 to 19 hens. Not good.

On a lighter note, we got in our Cou-nu chickens (52) and they are doing just great - I'll post some pics of them soon because they are so unusual looking. We also got 21 more Guineas and they are doing very well also. We have been researching beef cattle breeds and have contacted a breeder in East Texas that raises Murray Grey cattle. He has several to sell and I think we are going to go up in early September to buy some. I'll post more info in the future about this wonderful breed but for now, it's time to once again collapse into bed.

Some days are hard and some days are harder but it's all pretty wonderful and I'm having the time of my life.

We'll be home in two days but this is my last day with internet connection so this will be the last blog before I'm home again. We have taken two great tours, visited Rome twice, explored several little towns and then decided to spend a couple days at an organic farm in the Umbria region. We found this old restored monastary on a huge place with hiking trails, livestock and a fantastic restaurant. Of course since we booked two days before we got here, the only room left was the small attic room at the top - what I like to call the "bad monk's" room. Still, the beds were pretty soft and we had our own bathroom. What more could we ask for?

The monks may have lived simply but they had a great view - and lots of grapes...hmmmm.....

We'll be getting pigs just as soon as we get home - here Ian is practicing his pig handling skills.

Ian took this picture of me with this very friendly donkey - at least until he started trying to eat the button on my shorts. um ... the donkey, that is.

We explored the town of Gubbio - the most medieval town in Italy. I don't know what that means exactly but there was lots of old stuff everywhere. I know,... I know... the history buffs are groaning in agony right now - it's the whole throwing pearls at the feet of swine thing. Well... all I have to say is "oink, oink".

Now here is something anyone can appreciate - the view from my evening walk. Unreal.

See you all soon! We'll be jetting back Friday morning - can't wait to get back to the farm!

On to Italy

Under the concept that a picture is worth a thousand words, I will now continue our trip into Italy with lots of photos. The plane ride from Belgrade was just a quick hop over and we stayed one night in Rome then headed to Tivoli to the house our family was staying in. Sort of.



John had printed directions off Google maps but driving through Rome and reading the street signs didn't even remotely resemble what we had on our papers - the names of the roads were different and somehow we ended up driving up the coast of Italy along the Mediterranian. We turned around and after several hours found ourselves in the center of Rome. Completely lost. We stopped in to a street-side cafe that I mentioned in my last post and after a couple cappuccinos, realized that we needed some techno-therapy.

We drove around until we found an electronics store, purchased a GPS with European maps and voila' - all was well with the world again. Funny thing though - the GPS will only speak English with an Italian accent. Turna lefta quindici kilometers thena turna righta. I'm not making this up - we're thinking of keeping it in our car at home - you can hear for yourself. Hilarious.


What can I say? It's Italy - mountains, trees, beautiful weather. I hear it's over 100 every day at home. If we could understand anyone, we'd probabaly want to stay forever but honestly, we can't wait to have people speak to us in English.

The parents picked out a fantastic villa with this pool overlooking the mountains - our kids and the cousins lived in it for days.

We take long walks through the countryside and I love seeing all the things growing - there are countless grape vines and gardens around every corner - I have been inspired to start my garden as soon as we get home.

We drove to Pompeii - very cool. Like walking right back in time. If you are really interested in History, you'll be disappointed by this post - It's not my thing - old buildings, things happened a long time ago, blah blah - still, it was really neat to see old stuff.

OK - this was creepy - the people of Pompeii preserved in their last moments.

Gerano is the town closest to the villa that we are staying in. All the streets run straight up and straight down. Cobblestone, flowers and stone walls all over the place make it very pretty.

I have tons of pics of our two trips to Rome that I will bore you with in a later post but we were just randomly walking around and turned a corner and saw this. This is a common theme in my Rome adventures - same thing happened below when we were walking through the streets and came upon the Pantheon. Huh. You would think it was off on a hill somewhere but no, it's right there in the middle of town - shoved in between some tall buildings.

Apparently Europeans eat Gelato at least 5-6 times a day because there is litterally a Gelateria on every block in every town we have been to. As the saying goes, when in Rome.....

Oh, look, it's the Pantheon.

Hello? Anyone there?

Good News- We have not been kidnapped by Serbian terrorists! Bad News – there is no wifi in Italy so we are going through web withdrawal and haven’t been able to blog or get on the internet since we got here. How weird is that? Serbia has wifi at every cafe and hotel, but in Italy…nothing. We finally drove into Rome and found a small street side café that has the perfect combination of fresh croissants, hot cappuccino and, most importantly, an internet link. And don’t believe when someone tells you Italians speak English – they speak Italian. We have gone from struggling to learn Serbian to struggling to communicate in Italian. Involuntary immersion will wear you out – lucky for us Italian is very similar to Spanish and the letters are “regular” so we can at least read the signs.



To finish our Serbian story – we had an absolutely wonderful time – the people are incredibly friendly and really try to figure out what you are trying to say. The weather is cool, the scenery is breathtaking and the food – OMGoodness!!! It is fabulous! Jo, I'm gonna have to run MILES to lose my Europe weight! Every meal is meat, cheese, meat, bread and more meat. Out of desperation, we finally bought some musli and milk and ate cereal for breakfast instead of meat.

I'll post some pics to catch you up - but they are in reverse order - weird blogger thing that I havent figured out how to quickly correct.

Here we are leaving Zlatibor - we wheeled our luggage to the bus stop for the 5 hr. trip back to Belgrade.
Cute pic that Ella took - we rented scooters for a spectacular ride through the mountains - indescribably beautiful.

The hills are alive!

View from our train ride - Mocra Gora

Rode a narrow gauge railroad through the mountains

Serbian "salad" the only "greens" we ate all week.

rented 4 wheelers and drove around right in the hills behind the resort.

Ian and John on their 4 wheeler.

The most delicious blackberries - 30 cents a cup

paddle boats on the man made lake in the middle of Zlatibor

Our favorite meal - Serbian beans and sausage. This is a national dish that is fantastic.