Guava Foraging

Many of the common wild guava trees are dropping fruit. In fact, they've been going off for a couple of weeks now. The sweeter guavas that I'm intentionally growing are just starting to produce on the homestead. I have one with a white interior, and another that's pink, both nice flavored. These are the ones we save for ourselves. The wild ones don't taste too nice and are sour. They go to feed the livestock. 

Some years are better for guavas than others. This year is one of those abundant years. I have 3 tree patches that I visit on my way home from town, plus I have 2 friends that save me the guavas that fall near by their homes. This gives me plenty of fruits for the livestock to enjoy. Right now I'm getting between 6 and 10 gallons of fruits a day. That's a lot, but the animals eagerly consume them all. 

The sheep, goats, and donkey will eat them fresh right out of the bucket. The pigs prefer them mashed or broken up, mixed with cooked cracked corn (oats or barley is acceptable too) or dog kibble, and a few blenderized papayas or pineapple skins mixed in. The chickens eat them mashed and mixed in with their regular slop. I've had other people tell me that their animals won't touch them. I suppose mine have been so accustomed to Mom's Famous Slop & Glop that they are willing to eat all sorts of weird stuff mixed in it. Good thing because those guavas help extend their food supply. 

Recreational Cemetery?

Our town has a small county cemetery. It's not heavily used since most people around here prefer going with cremation. But it does see some use. So most of the cemetery grounds is a swath of lawn. With its green stretch of well mown lawn, it's a nice place to go play ball with your dog, since dogs are not allowed in country parks. Yes, this is technically a county park too, but nobody cares if you play with your dog in the cemetery. 

The sign always gives me a chuckle...........parks & recreation. Somehow the thought of recreation and cemetery don't go together. 

It's just one of those weird little quirks one sees in Hawaii. 

Wet Weather - More Rain

It's yet again been wet recently. How does that affect this homestead? 

... The grass has become too wet to effectively run the lawnmower to collect grass clippings. Thus no more mulching and no clippings to feed to the sheep and chickens. Oh, they won't go hungry, but they do prefer the fresh mown grass. The rain has caused the grass in the pastures to grow, and there's always the fallback to haycubes if necessary for the sheep. The chickens have plenty of other things to eat. 

... The pig pasture is getting sloppy muddy where their feeding station is, making it treacherously slippy for me to go feed them. Not much I can do about it besides shoveling cinder into the area. My plan is to move the feeding trough to a grassy area and sow oats into the muddy parts. And hope for less rain. 

... Mold is showing up inside the garden sheds. I plan to spray a bleach or maybe Lysol solution on the walls to kill the mold. 

... Mold wants to grow on my dormant seed potatoes. I've rinsed the tubers in a 10% bleach solution and laid them out to dry in the house. That should hold them for a couple of weeks. 

... Powdery mildew is starting up on the pumpkin vines. It's a lost cause. 

... Mushrooms are starting to pop up here and there. That's good. I welcome the mushrooms, 

... All my water catchment areas are full. That's good, but it's also frustrating to see the excess water overflowing and running into the ground. During the next drought I'm going to be wishing I had that water. 

... The sheep have had to have chemical fly repellant applied to their fleece so that they don't come down with flystrike. 

... My concrete walkways around the house are growing moss. Looks pretty, but it's slippery to walk on. Tomorrow I plan to use a stiff broom to remove the worst of the moss. 

... Everything metal is rusting. This acidic rain does nasty things to metal, especially tools and fencing. So we go through a lot of sandpaper and os-pho. 

I choose this piece of property to purchase because it stayed green even during droughts. And I've never minded the wet-dry cycle of previous years. But for the past several years we seem to be stuck in a wet period. I wonder if we'll ever see drought again. 

Last year I considered using tunnels in the main garden area, specifically to keep excess rain off the veggies. I though "naw, they're not needed because it will be drying on soon". So here I sit one year later with soggy gardens, not able to grow many of the veggies I want. So I figure the best way to cause a drought will be to build those tunnels. I think that will be my next major outdoor project. 

Red Bananas

So far, we've harvested 3 bunches of red bananas. I don't know which variety we have but we like them as a fresh eating banana. At first I had a hard time figuring out what was the best time to eat them. Initially our taste testing was disappointing because we were trying them when they weren't ripe enough. When too firm, they are bland. Now I've got it down pat. I wait until they get yellow skins beneath that reddish coloring and develop dark spots on the peel. The banana itself feels soft. 

When ripe the way that we like them, the peel easily tears away from the stem........

These red bananas have strongly colored yellow flesh. 

They also have a very banana-ish flavor that we like. 

Fixing the Big Lawnmower

One of the big lawnmowers, the Cub Cadet owned by a friend of mine, stopped in its tracks. The engine was running fine, but it just wouldn't go. Dead. I was quite surprised to learn that my friend managed to push it back to the house. Egads, she'd 76 years old! And not even a farm girl. I'm impressed. 

I was asked to take a look-see to determine what needed to be done. Removing the mower deck and  propping up the tractor in order to look under, it didn't take long to see the partially shredded drive belt. 

 

It was exactly the problem that my friend thought it would be. 

Above, most of the old belt was still in place on the pulleys, but back by the rear transmission, shreds were hanging down. Ok, go buy a replacement belt and get to work. 

I've never replaced the drive belt on a lawn tractor before, so I first read the owner's manual. It was clear as mud. The place where we bought the belt gave us a diagram of how the belt should run. That didn't help either since there were no instructions on how to do it. So what to do? Google it! Thank heavens for YouTube. After watching several YouTube videos, I was ready to tackle the job. It didn't look all that difficult. HA!!! Little did I know! 

Not knowing what I was doing, I first reached under and used my impact wrench to remove the clutch guard and clutch, thus freeing the belt from the engine. But I soon realized that unlike some of the YouTube videos, I needed more working space. So I pushed the tractor up onto the ramps. Settling on my back, I proceeded to follow the various steps. That's when I discovered that the belt had shredded into multiple fine strands and braided themselves around the transmission shaft, out of sight and out of reach except by finger tips. ....... Back to google. 

Not finding clear instructions on how to expose the transmission shaft and get everything back together again correctly, I decided not to go that route. So I ended up laying on my back for for close to 3 hours with my arms over head, gradually teasing piece by piece of that dastardly belt out of the rats nest it had made down inside a hole around the shaft. Eeeerrrggg. I think I deserve an "A" for patience and persistence. 

3 1/2 hours from the start, my arms were pau. They trembled and I couldn't hold them over my head anymore, time to call it a day. 

Day #2, arms sore but now functioning, I quickly finished the job. Old belt removed, new belt installed, all the pieces back together. 

The last step was to reinstall the mower deck. Sounds simple, no? Well that didn't go easy either. I followed the owner manual instructions, and I couldn't do it. Again, back to a Google search. Found someone complaining about the exact problem I was having, and lo and behold, the instructions were wrong! Instead of using a ratchet handle and pushing to the right, things only worked if pushed to the left. How about that. Once I learned that, the deck got into place fairly quickly. 

My friend took it for a short test drive and it seemed to work ok. Success, for now. 

Eating Pineapple

Recently I've been planting a lot of pineapple. Most of it will be used for trading, but since we both love pineapple, we also eat a lot of it. If I had to buy it in a supermarket, pineapple would be a rare treat, but on this farm, I grow dozens and dozens for our own consumption.  "E" wondered how we could eat all that pineapple, considering how acidic it was. Well "E", we don't eat it raw. Well.....let's say that we seldom it eat it raw. By far we prefer it cooked. Even when I chop it up in yogurt, sales, and smoothies, I use cooked pineapple slices. 

Our number one favorite way to prepare pineapple is to pan fry it in a little tad of butter. 

Sometimes we will fry it in the same pan with porkchops, thus picking up some garlic and pepper flavoring from the pork. Other times it's just butter, or perhaps bacon grease. I could pan fry it without the butter, but at my age I'm not about to deny myself this bit of pleasure. 

I initially tried grilling it. Yes, it's good that way too. But I seldom grill anymore. The old propane griller burned out several years ago and I never got around to replacing it. So I pan fry. It's quicker and just as yummy. 

By the way "E", pan fried pineapple isn't acidic. It's sweet and mild. It won't burn the lips or make the mouth sore. 

What meals do I serve pineapple with? Any and all. We have had it with yogurt or eggs for breakfast, on sandwiches for lunch, along side porkchops or chicken breasts, or as dessert. 

Pigs, Little Escape Artists

Young pigs are inquisitive. And they like to explore and travel. Add to that mix the instincts and urges of a feral pig, and I end up with piglets that are difficult to confine. My current piglets are mostly feral, with a bit of domestic tossed in somewhere in the background. So they are active and frequently find ways to escape their roomy pen. 

Escape methods--

...though the fence. When they were tiny, some figured out how to jump through the openings in the fence. The lower foot  of fencing wires were too closely spaced for them to push through, but further up the wires were spaced further apart, enough for a small pig to get through. So for the first couple of weeks, I was able to identify which were the clever piglets of the group. But it didn't take long for them to grow too big to make it out. 

...under the fence. These piglets like to root up the ground, and along the fenceline is their favorite place. It didn't take the smart ones long to figure out how to pull up the bottom wires, permanently bending them enough to be able to shimmy under. So I had to strategically place large rocks and logs to keep them from escaping this way. I've considered running a couple strands of barbed wire along the bottom of the fence, but I haven't gotten to it yet. They're not escaping frequently enough to motivate me to do that job, not yet. 

...between the fence and rock wall. I have a t-post fairly close to where the fence meets the rock wall, but there's a couple inches of space.....a gap. Again it was the smartest one who discovered the gap and worked it. When the pigs finally grew larger and heavier, they were able to pull the t-post away from the rock wall enough to squeeze through. So I had to brace the t-post to prevent them from pulling it aside. 

.,.via the gate. Gates are often the weak point of an enclosure. Mine proved to be weak. The gate was fine as long as the piglets were small. Now that they have put on weight, they now have enough heft to challenge the gate. Twice now they've managed to break the hinges, and once they popped the latch. Now I've replaced those with heavier hinges and clasp. 

Since most of my pigs are escapers, I take four steps that I believe are super important and help me control my pigs. 

...don't jet them run out of food and get hungry. A hungry pig will go looking for food. 

...make friends with your piglet. I like my pigs to come to me for rubbing. I brush their backs. I offer them treats. I encourage them to follow me around their enclosure. 

...train them to come. Every time I feed them I call them. Before long they will come running anytime they hear peeeg, peeeg, peeeg. So when they get loose, I can call and they will come running out of the woods. 

...find out their favorite to-die-for food. With every pig I've raised thus far it has been dry dog food kibbles. So once a week I offer them a bucket of dry dog food out of a white bucket. Now anytime they see the white bucket and hear the kibble rattling, they come running. They get rewarded with their favorite treat. 

...train the farm dog to herd. You can't use a hyper excited or running dog around loose pigs. So I trained Crusty to follow loose pigs at a bit of a distance. He walks behind, keeping a quiet presence. But the pigs are very aware that he is there. Although they are use to him hanging around and even playing with him, they some how are aware that he is herding them rather than his usual play. Having Crusty there encourages them not to back track while I am leading them back to their pen.