We've had 2" of much needed rain over the last 48 hours. Beautiful skies, too!
Posted on 08/06/2022 5:56:54 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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We are in the country but we have mostly woods. Maybe I will start some up again someday.
I felt bad bashing it with the shovel. Don't own a firearm. That would have been quick and easy.
I dug a three foot hole, covered the skunk in lime and covered it over. Calling animal control would be the right thing to do but at this point I'm not so sure I want them snooping around my property.
“Do you know your neighbors with the silos?”
Yes. There are four families and we own about 1,000 acres between us; all of our land touches one another at some point. Grazing for dairy and beef cattle...and then all the crop land it takes to grow food for them all!
Our land (in that direction) ends where the dark green field corn starts.
No, you did the right thing. If it was stumbling around like that in daylight hours, it wasn’t long for this world anyway, and could’ve bit a kid or house pet or another critter.
I had to do something similar to a groundhog, once. It wasn’t fun, but it had to be done. :(
If you see any more with those symptoms, you might want to call in Animal Control or your local wildlife shelter. If it’s a rabies outbreak, that’s A Bad Thing and needs to be stopped by the local professionals.
(Yum! Check out at Diana's post! :)
But, If you want with glossy pictures mailed to you then:
Pre-Order The Whole Seed Catalog!
Their Email to me states:
"We are putting the finishing touches on the splendid 2023 edition of The Whole Seed Catalog, and we are excited to share it with you. The 500-plus page catalog offers our full collection of heirloom varieties from around the world, as well as gorgeous new photographs, recipes, stories, and a behind-the-scenes look at the people who make Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company so special. Until September 18th, 2022, pre-order copies for the special price of $12.95 (a $2.00 savings on the regular price). Don’t wait – there is a limited supply, and these catalogs go quickly!"
Be aware that they do not send it in a brown paper wrapper! And there are lots of other seed catalogues....Jung's, Territorial, Thompson and Morgan (this is for people with a taste for exotic British isles offerings! Wow! 3 or 4 pages of large round cabbage varieties for your "Allotment"! :)
Honestly, I do not need the catalogue, I just go on line!
Another hot and humid week has passed us by here in Central Missouri. No rainfall, just heat and humidity. ugh.
Friday evening I cleaned up the summer kitchen so I could get the boat out. Saturday I played hookie from doing chores and took Mrs. Augie and a couple of our friends out for a boat ride on the Gasconade River. It was good to get away for a bit.
Yesterday I paid for my slothful Saturday. I started with the weed whacker in the victory garden at 7:00am. Buzzed off the grass between rows and the fallow space where the garlic and cabbage came out. Then I picked pole beans. It had been three days since I last picked and I came out with half a bushel. Then I picked winter squash. Then I picked the row of roma tomatoes so Mrs. Augie could make a batch of spaghetti sauce.
After all of that fun I sat down in front of the fan and commenced to popping beans. That took quite awhile to get through. I had the half bushel I picked earlier in the day, and another two gallons from the refrigerator that were picked last week. I separated out a gallon or so of smallish pods to make a batch of dilly beans, and popped the rest for canning. I’ll start on that after work today.
Mrs. Augie talked me into doing a late planting of sweet corn so I’ve ordered a sack of Peaches-N-Cream seed from Jung’s. I’m pushing my luck a bit going with a full-season variety this late in the summer, but barring an early freeze it ought to produce a good crop that’s not plagued by ear worms.
One of the baby chestnut trees I planted back in the spring croaked a few days ago. It went from looking green and nice one day to dead dead dead in one day. I’ve been keeping them watered so not really sure why it folded up. I’ll replace it next spring when I plant the next batch of them
We've had 2" of much needed rain over the last 48 hours. Beautiful skies, too!
Chestnut trees seem to be very hard to get started. I think they have a very long tap root, and that makes it difficult. They are such a beautiful and useful tree all around, and what an amazing bloom come Spring!
https://modernfarmer.com/2021/12/the-great-american-chestnut-tree-revival/
Boat ride sounds wonderful!
I’m having a spectacular bean season, too! Dilly Beans for us, too; they’re my new passion! I’m also making Three Bean Salad, today.
Also up to my butt in Peaches, so I’m slicing and freezing them for later use.
I'm smack in the middle of Misery, and let me tell you, the weather here is batshit crazy.
We get late freezes that wipe out the blossoms on our orchard crops. We get cold, wet springs that last until late May then it pops off 95° and stays there for weeks on end. Some years the first freeze in the fall comes in September. Some years it doesn't freeze until next year. Some years it rains all summer long. Some years we'll go 4-6 weeks without any rainfall during the summer.
Diana’s Three Bean Salad
2# Green & Yellow Wax Beans, cleaned and cut, boiled just until tender, not mushy. Drained and rinsed in cold water.
1 Can Kidney Beans, drained and rinsed.
Use the Red Beans or White (called, ‘Cannelli’)
1 small red onion, sliced thin
Toss all of those together.
Dressing:
1/2 C white sugar
2/3 C white vinegar
1/3 C Olive Oil
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
Mix those all together, and add to beans.
Cover and refrigerate for 12 hours to blend flavors. Mix it a few times if you think of it.
Makes enough for a crowd. (Or one large serving for Beau and a small serving for me.) ;)
But I'm not anxious to have the animal control people come around and have to dig the thing up.
You're 100% correct however, a possible rabies outbreak is extremely serious. I will definitely contact the authorities if I see another animal in that condition.
Farmers’ Battle Against, and Now For, Milkweed
How agriculture and conservation are coming together for the survival of the endangered Monarch Butterfly.
From: Modern Farmer, 8/8/22
From behind the driving wheel of his pickup truck, Don Guinnip turned the ignition key, flipped on the A/C and immediately rolled down the windows. The sticky, midsummer air barely budged even as cool air from the dashboard vents mixed with the breeze flooding the cab. A few miles down the narrow road from his Marshall, Illinois family farm, founded in 1837, he stopped and pointed. There, at the base of a utility pole under a tethered wire, was a clump of thriving common milkweed, reaching three or four feet toward a partly cloudy sky. “It’s protected there,” the 70-year-old farmer says.
By now, the milkweed has matured. Under the power lines, milkweed has been left untouched by a farmer’s last mowing pass. The stems are sturdy and the deep, green leaves, arranged in opposite pairs, are broad and thick. At the top, clusters of small, pink flowers nearly form a sphere—a beacon for monarch butterflies along a crucial, yet disappearing, migration path.
All around, for hundreds of acres, soybean fields blanket the black soil in this southeastern Illinois farming region. It is one of the staple crops the Guinnips have grown for five generations. Alongside the milkweed, soybeans, too, are thriving.
Scenes like this—clumps of milkweed dotting grasslands that encase crops—are now the norm. But up until the mid-1940s, before herbicides were introduced to commercial agriculture, milkweed grew relentlessly in croplands. It was invasive. It impacted crop yields to the point where farmers like Guinnip recall the labor-intensive chore of pulling milkweed from the fields as a child.
https://modernfarmer.com/2022/08/farmers-milkweed-monarch-butterflies/
Diana here: I LOVE THIS! We have tried hard to add more Milkweed to our property and have done a good job of it. There’s a huge one growing in one of my garden beds, and I just leave it. Beau does a lot of pasture mowing for the locals around here, and he never mows it down, even if some complain. So, now we’ve got the food source back up, but still we only see a few Monarchs each season. More Swallowtail, so that’s good! Hoping us keeping a food source here for Monarchs will up their chances of survival. :)
I knew we could count on you to do the right thing. ;)
Well thank you so much dear. I’m humbled by your kindness :-)
Sounds too much like E. Oklahoma.
Lilacs, cows, dogs, and resting man!
(Taken in Spring since the lilac is blooming!) (I hope that "Freezer Burn" is enjoying his time On the green pastures of the Driftless!)
The Basset and the Yellow Lab were mine. This pix is from 7 years ago, or so, when we were just dating. Sadly, both of my doggies passed (Rufus, Basset and Lucy, Lab) away before I moved out here, but they got to visit most weekends.
‘Freezer Burn.’ LOL! ‘Weber’ is the one in the freezer for now. That one was called ‘Dinner.’ He ate all the Hosta on the north side of the house. All. Of. Them! (But they came back with a vengeance...)
The house yard looks a LOT better now. Not sure why it is, but there are 160 acres out here for him to play on, and yet he, a steer or dogs and/or puppies are always in my way and impeding my progress, LOL!
Back to slicing Peaches! Ugh! What a messy job.
Dessert! dessert ! (Don't worry! Be happy!)
My neighbor puts 6' tall welded wire fence around the apple tree in his front yard.
He says it keeps the deer out of the tree but it doesn't deter the trash pandas or the tweety birds.
A good dog would probably be your best bet.
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