50 cornish cross, three to five people, eight hours, lots of water, a general mess, a roll of plastic bags, and a new freezer.
Month: February 2015
BUZZZZZZ
In our ten year plan for the campo we have written honey. Hoping that by then our fruit trees, wind breaks, vegetables, and ornamental shrubs (someday we will have a landscaped little piece of land around the houses) will supply enough flowers for us to sustain a hive of bees and gather honey. Well, the bees decided to not read the plan and joined us a little earlier. We found a hive in the rafters of Megan’s unfinished house, in the woodpile by the casita, and another out by the green house area. Very exciting. Very frustrating with trying to find someone to come take care of the bees, get them gone. Much to our dismay, we learned that Alejandro is allergic to bees. There are no epi pens in Uruguay, you take a pill! How can you swallow a pill when your throat is closing up? Needless to say, we ended up doing it ourselves in the wee hours of the morning. Megan and Rubin collected the honeycombs, but I only remember to take pictures at the end. Sorry.
Megan and Jon are very pleased with our own “honey”. I don’t really like honey, so more for them.
Another water project
We had such a trial getting the tajamar in the back started and then completed, we were cautious about starting our next water project. We have two channels of spring water that pass through our front triangle of pasture land. After many iterations of what we could do, we settled on the fastest cheapest method that would get our large animals water year round. So here is the beginning of deepening the channels:
Then after a hot morning of work, the hydraulic arm system broke. A few hours after parking the machine in the shade, the front window burst!
So our friend Dario has to fix both the front window and the hydraulic system! I don’t believe he will be making any money on our job. And I don’t know when this job will be finished.
Squash
Remember our Squash Beds? We have several because people in Uruguay like squash. There is not a lot of variety of squash available in the market, and yet squash is something that stores well, so we knew if we did not eat it all fresh, we could store it for later. Needless to say, we have yet to have any extra. We feel special when we get to have squash on our table.
Surprise ! A Tomato Lover
Megan went to the garden to pick ripe produce. We have one tomato plant that is not in a cage, we let it vine on the ground just to see how it would do. Well, it did ok until:
This Iguana was laying in the middle of the plant with a tomato in his mouth. Three more tomato skins surrounded him. He was so full he did not even move when we approached a second time with the camera. We did not think about Iguanas eating our garden. And as the neighbors were astounded that an iguana would eat tomatoes we weren’t being ignorant. Nobody would have thought to guard the tomatoes from the iguana!
Tomato update
Our tomato plants have almost reached their expiration date. We did not manage to finish any green houses so the wind break wall we were counting on was never built. The cages around the plants worked great, so we were able to harvest a lot more tomatoes than if we had left them to vine on the ground. However, when a hot wind blows for weeks everything dries out. No matter how much you water. Particularly when you can only water so much by hand. Because, well, the garden is larger than 15 tomato plants.
So here are more tomato pictures than you might like.I’ll begin with a random day of harvest:
Jon liked the small yellow pear shaped tomatoes and ate them like grapes. I preferred the stripped ones that almost had no inside seeds and we stuffed with tuna fish and ate for lunch one day. The orange tomatoes were soft and were good sliced with olive oil drizzled on top. The red oval tomatoes were delicious for dicing and cooking. The black cherry tomatoes were not anything special to taste, just looked different. Anyway, here are some tomatoes on the vine, mostly green since we had already picked the ripe ones.
Once we had the tomatoes growing and figured out which ones grew well and which ones we liked, Megan began the process of saving seeds for next year.
Evidently tomato seed saving is a little more interesting than saving radish seeds. Tomato seeds ferment to break down the gelatinous sack around the seed, then they are rinsed, then left to dry in a warm, non-sunny location. Megan is planning on planting more tomatoes for the greenhouse that isn’t yet build so that we’ll have tomatoes year round. She’s optimistic. Or stubborn. I’m not sure which.
Mare
Well, I lied, we did add another animal to our farm. We purchased a three year old mare for Oscar to ride. It was sad and inefficient to watch Alejandro ride his horse to round up and move sheep and cattle and Oscar walking along behind or running along beside. Easier for one to open and close gates but the rest of the work, not so much. Now we have two horses for two riders and things should happen a little more efficiently. Remember that Alejandro’s horse is named “Horse”, so Oscar’s horse is named “Mare” according to the guys, so we can differentiate between the two. I think we need a new name.
The new mare is the same breed as Alejandro’s horse, Criolla, which is the local breed. Same coloration as well. Except for size you could think you were seeing double. We let the two horses get to know one another for about a week, then Alejando loaned Oscar his tack and they took their first ride. Both Oscar and Mare did fine. Now we are looking to purchase used tack for Oscar, but despite having to ride bareback both boys have been out working the large animals with both horses.
Plumbing
On our farm, anything that has to do with the animals comes first and everything else takes second place. Or third depending on how the week is going. Therefore the outside sink has been on the list of to-do’s practically since the orange bathroom was built. But since there are two spigots – one with a hose attached – we have made do. Finally the sink reached the top of the list, we started the process, and we learned that our drain pipe went no where. Exactly how the person who installed the drain pipe failed to connect it is a mystery. And we’re trying not to be bitter about it. But for heavens sake, it’s a water pipe. How do you not connect it?!
So Jon spent an afternoon discovering the possible solutions and correcting the issue.
Then we built supports and set a sheep trough atop, for our sink. We wanted something large to wash everything imaginable in. Now, we have the next step of adding the drain pipes and faucet. Poco a poco.
Pickles
None of us eat cucumbers. But, we all like pickles. Pickles of the taste and crunch we are accustomed to are not available. So, we decided to make our own, or rather Megan did. She found a recipe for Bread and Butter pickles that are ready to eat in 24 hours along with a dill recipe that takes a minimum of four weeks to ferment.
The Bread and Butter pickles we have been eating as fast as she makes them. They are delicious. We did share with friends, but did not get any comments, so we think they did not fall in love with them as we did. That’s ok, all the more for us.
Another Garden Plot
We eventually hope to have eight garden plots planted with both people food and supplemental animal food. Slowly we are managing to get the plots roto-tilled and rows made and seeds planted. We have one plot from last year that is again in production this year. Now we have another plot planted and producing!
This plot is eventually (i.e. this coming July) intended to be permanently planted with raspberries. So row spacing, row depth, and walkways were made for that eventuality. As raspberry canes are planted bare root in winter, right now this is the perfect bed for all those heat loving, vining plants. We have acorn squash, tours (a French field pumpkin), three kinds of watermelon, honey dew, musk melon, a few more types of melons, and three more kinds of squash. Since this is the first year Megan will have planted any of these varietals these plants are sort of the ‘trial garden’ so to speak. She’ll make sure that at least one fruit from each have pure seed. And then, depending on success of the plant, yields, taste, etc. we may or may not ever plant these again. But right now they’re all just green.
We are currently working on the next plot, who knows, we may get TWO plots in production this year!
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