It's Easy Being Green

We’ve done it again! We took a trip to the local Rural King yesterday and it was an adventure as always. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Rural King, it’s like the everything farm and ranch store but in classic old K-Mart style (at least the K-Mart from my childhood). The buildings and parking lots aren’t inviting or attractive. Trails of dropped popcorn (a fresh popped freebie you get as you walk in the door and a true treat while shopping) on the rough, uneven concrete floor shows you where your fellow shoppers have been.

Our mission was to pick up some Shoreklear to get rid of all the reeds choking our pond at the Half-Acre Homestead. Dodging corn kernels all the way, we found what we came for and a little bit more (of course). That’s the fun part about the Rural King: you never know what odds and ends you’re going to find that you can’t imagine living without. Pushing toward the back of the store we heard the seasonal cheeps of baby chickens coming from the stock tanks turned brooding pens.

We already have three ladies who inhabit our Backyard Bodega: Bertha, Bernice and Blue-Red. We picked up the three Auracanas last year with a friend and they’ve been happily laying their quintessential pastel-colored eggs ever since. Realizing chickens aren’t that difficult to care for, we couldn’t help ourselves when we saw the price of baby chicks was dropped down to just a buck each (minimum of 6 to buy). So we bought six more little pullets. Three are Rhode Island Reds and the other three are Silver Laced Wyandottes. We quickly divided a place for them in the Triple-B Bodega and these spring chicks seem to be interested in getting to know their bigger counterparts! With time ladies…with time.

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It’s been a wild spring around the Half-Acre Homestead. The weather has been nothing but weird with our lack of winter and early warm-up. Following the tornadoes we had to dodge in March, we’ve been struck by two hail storms recently. The hail pelted our plants that emerged from their winter slumber early but luckily didn’t leave too much damage behind.

Panic set in again at the Half-Acre Homestead this week as we got a late season Frost Warning issued for southwestern Indiana. Just a week before, our normally conservative agricultural extension agent had given the all-clear signal that people could go ahead and plant their precious seedlings and begin the gardening season.

Mother Nature had a different idea though when she ushered in some colder air from our good friends up north. We literally had just replanted a wave of rogue tomato seedlings and some rogue pumpkins that have sprouted up around the yard. To make it even worse, we planted them on the hillside out by our little pond which gets a considerable amount of frost compared to the protected confines of our square foot garden.

Luckily, with a 7 month old in the house, we have a stockpile of baby food jars in the garage. We never know when these might come in handy so we always keep a basket or two of them around. We were able to turn a basket full of baby food jars into an easy, DIY cloche that would protect our seedlings from two nights of frosty temps.

If an early season frost sneaks up on newly planted seedlings, turn a baby food jar into an easy DIY cloche to protect them.

After two nights of frost, we were able to lift the jars on Friday and found all the seedlings had survived. Safely tucked away in their jar, warmth and condensation helped them through the night. Well, most of them. Our Darling Daughter Everly thought the already dead raspberry cane out by the pond needed some extra help so she loaded it up with baby food jars.

While it wasn’t useful in protecting the long-departed raspberry cane, it made for a nice rustic art installation on the Half-Acre Homestead. We shall call it “Bottle Bush”. In the meantime, try to track down a friend, neighbor or relative who has a little one and get your hands on a basket of your own, easy, do-it-yourself garden cloches. Enjoy!

Everly's art installation out by the pond was created using a dead raspberry cane and several baby food jars. I think the effect is rather rustic, almost primitive.

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You are what you eat. We’ve all heard the phrase before but have you ever wondered if there is actually any truth to it? Believe it or not, your diet is the key to your overall health and well-being. Good, healthy foods can promote the growth of healthy cells throughout your body, repairing damage. Bad foods, mainly those that are processed and far from what you’d pluck out of your garden, can actually injure your body’s cells, causing damage and disease.

As you pull out of that fast food drive through or pull the frozen dinner from your oven, have you ever stopped to wonder how your grandparents ate? Over the course of the past 100 years our diet has rapidly changed to include processed food, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and a host of additives and preservatives not known until recently. Eating has become less about keeping us happy and healthy and more about the pleasure of quick and tasty foods. Take a look at this scary comparison:

Here is what the average person ate over the course of the year in 1900:
- 131 pounds of homegrown vegetables
- 5 pounds of sugar
- Consumed small amounts of oil
- Didn’t drink soda

Now compare that to the average diet of a person in the year 2000:
- 11 pounds of homegrown vegetables
- 200 pounds of sugar
- 30 pounds of refined oils
- 53 gallons of soda

Evansville was recently named the "Fattest City in America" and its no wonder why. This town loves its fried food and even hosts a week-long festival based on two city blocks of fried food booths.

If that comparison doesn’t just make your stomach reel I don’t think there is much hope for you or your future health. The Western diet is out of control. We see it on our once a month trips to Sam’s Club where the fattest of the fat are lined up at each sample cart, stuffing their faces. Then they waddle down the aisle and throw in the most processed box of junk they can lay their pudgy little fingers on. With each bite, Americans are killing their families more and more.

Evansville, the city closest to our Half-Acre Homestead, just received the most glamorous title of the “Fattest City in America” in 2011. That’s right, we have more overweight citizens per capita than any other city in the United States. No wonder its so hard to find good, wholesome food in this town. With a McDonald’s on every corner (and literally I’ve never seen so many fast food joints in my life), the food conglomerates just keep raking in the dough while they make people fatter and sicker.

If you haven’t watched the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, you should. During our recent trip to visit family in Arizona, we sat down to watch this with my in-laws. It was shocking but inspiring all at the same time. If you’re worried it might be dry, don’t worry. The creators made sure to punctuate their points with entertaining snippets of animation. It proves that you can make changes to your diet and see almost immediate improvements in your health and well-being.

We need to make some serious changes in this country. Food needs to be more than just a passing thought better left to big agribusiness and corporate conglomerates that devise ways to generate the most amount of “food” for the least amount of money. We don’t have a lot of land on which to grow real food here at the Half-Acre Homestead. The little bit that we do have is productive and this year the goal is to make it even more so. Homestead Hottie and I are at a loss with our winter diet right now.

We introduced Everly to fresh fruits and vegetables from the moment she started on solid foods. She has grown to appreciate fresh, homegrown foods even more, often acting revolted with processed foods.

We can’t wait for the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables that will soon be bursting at the seams out back and spilling onto the dinner table in our kitchen. Our life and our health depends on it and yours should too.

Will you be growing some of your own food this year? What do you plan to grow?

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Proof positive that raised bed gardening has its perks: I unearthed these gems this cold late December afternoon out in the garden here at the Half-Acre Homestead. These were planted in late spring and there are many more in line to mature behind them. For anybody who doubts you can grow your own food in the winter this should tell you otherwise!

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Frosty windows, glinting grass and foggy ponds overtly demonstrated the seasonal change this morning. Tri-Staters, if you didn’t catch the word yet, tonight we’re getting our first freeze warning of the year. That means you gardeners will have some work to do if you haven’t planned ahead.

We did and last night marked one of my favorite nights when it comes to the kitchen garden. It’s what I have affectionately dubbed the Hustle Harvest. This hurried effort is brought on once a year, every fall, when the forecast calls for the first frost of the season. When the call for frost is finally made by the National Weather Service, we bundle up and hustle through the garden harvesting every bit of tender produce that will be ruined by frost. Tomatoes, peppers, basil and other tender herbs that are still hanging on need to be picked.  Even all those green tomatoes will ripen over the next few weeks inside your home. You might even have delicious, bright red homegrown tomatoes to share at your Thanksgiving feast.

Last night was no exception. Talina and Everly had picked most of the tomato plants clean by the time I got home and had quite the wagon load waiting for me to haul in. I bundled up and with the fall nip descending as quickly as the sunset, hustled around picking a load of late season peppers and trimming down the basil plants. We ended up with abouts 30lbs. of green tomatoes that will ripen inside over the next couple of months, 2lbs. of bell and banana peppers and several bushels of fresh basil. The kitchen smells wonderful…that heady spicy scent of basil filling the air.

True, the Hustle Harvest means the end to another gardening season. This one was not quite so productive but it means the beginning to a new gardening year is just around the corner. The anticipation will last all winter.

Hustle Harvest 2011 netted about 30lbs. of green tomatoes, another large bushel of basil for drying and a handful of bell and banana peppers.

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We’re getting a crisp taste of fall here at the Half-Acre Homestead. We swung from the century mark down to about 60-degrees and all within a few hours this past weekend. We’re now donning light jackets to sneak out and take our evening stroll through the garden and I definitely am having to zip up when I go out and make the nightly rounds with our crazy menagerie of animals outside.

Despite feeling extremely sick to her stomach for reasons we'd later understand, my Homestead Hottie climbed right in to apple picking.

Looking for a break from the daily routine with our toddler and newborn, Homestead Hottie and I decided we wanted to get out and enjoy one of the fall activities we’ve come to really enjoy: picking apples. The first year we moved here we went to a u-pick apple orchard located in the middle of town. It was the staple of many family traditions in the area. We pulled up into the dusty parking pad to find three children and a horse hanging out in a small plywood shelter. After paying our money we were handed our two picking bags and off we went.

At some point during this excursion, walking up and down row upon row of this apple orchard, we came to the conclusion Homestead Hottie was pregnant with our first Darling Daughter. She looked greener and greener around the gills with each passing moment and at one point thought she was going to pass out. Needless to say, this apple picking excursion was the beginning of our realization we were headed down the path to parenthood. Memories were made and so was a lot of applesauce.

Instead of climbing, I took aim at the tops of the apple trees with one very handing wooden stick and would catch my results as they fell.

Fast forward three years and we’ve been super stoked to see our friend Joe Engelbrecht working on getting his fourth generation orchard up and running. While we couldn’t u-pick at his orchard last year, we bought plenty and plenty of apples from his farm store and turned them into preserved apple slices and several canning jars full of apple butter. In my opinion, they are some quintessential treats of fall.

This year, Joe’s u-pick orchard is up and running and we didn’t hesitate to jump in the first weekend we could. We know the longer you wait in the season to pick, the harder it is to find some good quality fruit so we didn’t want to drag our feet. After purchasing our picking bags at Joe’s store (he was charging $1 per pound and you got to decide between 5 or 10 pound bags), we were given directions on how to access the gravel trail meandering through adjacent corn fields and to the orchard laid out nicely on the slope above the store.

Pulling up to the rustic red barn marking the entrance to the orchard, you could begin reading the signs marking each row of apple trees. Much to Homestead Hottie’s excitement were a row or two of Jonagold apples. These are her favorite “everyday” eating apples and a variety our family chiropractor turned us onto when he discovered Talina didn’t like the texture or taste of most apples.

The orchard was overloaded with apples when we paid a visit with plenty still in our Darling Daughter's reach.

We quickly filled up a 5-pound bag of Jonagold apples after walking just one or two trees deep down the row. I wanted to get a mixed bag of a few of the other varieties Joe has to offer including Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Braeburn. These three varieties aren’t quite at their peak of ripeness yet but I’m sure several days on the counter will help them get there.

Everly had a blast sprinting from tree to tree and gazing at the trees, overloaded with one of her favorite fruits to snack on. She even had a few apples that were within her short reach that she was able to pick and this made her quite proud. In fact, one of those apples didn’t even make it into the bag but instead landed firmly in her mouth. It was her picking fuel and the ultimate test of the quality of Joe’s apple crop. Everly definitely approved because aside from a shared bite or two, she downed that thing. Baby Adalyn slept the entire time we off-roaded her stroller up and down the orchard rows so she must have been enjoying herself too.

If you’re looking for a fun family activity to do one of these fall weekends, I would definitely recommend heading to Joe Engelbrecth’s Fourth Generation Orchard to pick some fresh apples. Not only are you supporting a local farmer by doing so, you’re supporting a unique local business. Joe and his wife are carving a very unique niche for themselves in the Evansville area and hopefully will find further prosperity here in the future. Happy picking!

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This has certainly been a challenging gardening year, at least for us here at the Half-Acre Homestead. Not only do we have significantly less time to work in the garden (due to the impending arrival of baby girl #2 in the next few weeks) but the weather has just been a bear this year.

All varities of squash have set nicely this year but so far nothing has matured. Every plant has been attacked by squash vine borers and died.

We had an early tease of a warmup early this spring but then the weather turned cold and downright nasty. Cool, rainy weather stuck with us through the end of June but that now infamous 2011 Heat Bubble has built up and doesn’t seem to be looking to leave anytime soon.  Our garden plants were slow to start and are now battling high-heat and humidity.

As a result, this past week marked the arrival of the first ripe tomato. It’s happened significantly later this year than last. Our spring planted squash plants (pumpkins, zucchini, yellow squash) are all dead now, thanks to an outbreak of squash vine borers. The wasp-like insect lays its eggs on squash seedlings. The grub-like infants grow in the stem of the squash plant, boring out the inside of the steams as they eat. Eventually the plant can’t exchange water or nutrients and withers. We’re hoping a second planting will start producing in enough time to save our squash season.

Our popcorn patch has wasted no time shooting up toward the sky and looks to be producing quite a few ears of future popping goodness. Eggplants have also been extremely slow this year both growing and with fruiting. Etna bush beans (used for drying) have been doing very well and produce abundantly. Our pole beans on the other hand have yet to set pods even though they’re covered top to bottom in blooms.

Hopefully things will eventually catch up but if they do, we’ll probably already be gone to The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee to welcome our newest member of the family into the world. How does your garden grow this year?

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