I have been reading some Chesterton fiction of late. My daughter ordered interlibrary loan "The Man Who Knew Too Much", knowing that I like both Chesterton and the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name. Well, the Chesterton title is not the same story as the Hitchcock movie, but enjoyable anyway. It is a series of short stories centered around a man who seems to know everyone and "know too much about everything" which allows him to figure out mysteries which remain mysterious to everyone else.

Having read this one and many of the Fr. Brown mysteries, I was unprepared when my daughter brought home from the library Chesterton's "The Man Called Thursday". It was a page-turner (I liked the others, but in a calm and quiet sort of way) I couldn't put down, at least until the very last when it took a turn which I won't divulge.

Okay, so we are trying out a new boar. Tarzan could have fathered his last litter for us. He has been here over 5 years and thrown us many large litters. Our best sow, Harry, (she of 9 litters for us) was sold this week. We now have 1 remaining sow (Sam) who has had one litter for us. Her pigs are outstanding and she and Red are our future.

Last year I never got a fall garden in because of the quail farm stint I did. This year we are well on our way. The peas have just broken ground. We have broccoli and lettuce, radishes and a field of turnips. I will plant kale and some other greens tomorrow in our remaining garden space. It was great summer for okra for a while, gathering 6 pounds a day, but it just quit a week or so ago. Some okra still is straggling in, but I plan to pull it this week and maybe plant a bunch of carrots? It may be too late, but we'll see. They will harvest in the spring.

We sold a bunch of piglets and few pumpkins this weekend. God has been very good to us=-once again.

Oremus pro invicem!

My latest effort. Too short to put an excerpt here. Just go over and read it at www.catholiclane.com (Attack the Ball). For some reason I can't put links in my post this morning.

Oremus pro invicem!

Here's something I believe in:

“There’s an unlegislatable mandate to communities to be faithful to future generations, which means replacing yourself, or exceeding the replacement rate. When a community’s healthy, it will do that, and it will only do that when people essentially love a community more than they love themselves.” - Caleb Stegall, newly confirmed to seat on the Kansas Court of Appeals quoted in Rod Dreher’s 2006 book “Crunchy Cons”)

Oremus pro invicem!

Cooking Sorghum

So yesterday we pressed the sorghum stocks at a farmer's place about 10 miles down the road. We got home and started cooking the sorghum juice to reduce it to syrup.

We didn't get a whole lot of juice, about 8-10 gallons. This should yield about 1 gallon of syrup. Next year we will space the sorghum better and give it more manure.

We cooked a few gallons yesterday and figured out when to stop cooking. One batch we had to cook again because we took it out too soon.

This morning I am cooking the rest. It is a 3-4 hour process to cook a batch. We don't have an evaporator, so we are cooking it in batches on the stove. If it was a little cooler I might cook it outside.

We had a little sorghum to sweeten our cream of wheat at breakfast. Delicious!

Oremus pro invicem!

harvest time

Eventful week. We harvested the peanuts Saturday and have them drying on posts in the yard. Saturday we also started stripping the leaves off the sorghum. This continued on Monday with some friends. We took the leaves off, cut the stocks, and saved the seeds.

Here's some of the children (ours and friend's) gathering sorghum stocks before the seeds are removed.

Wednesday we will press the stocks to get the sorghum juice and start cooking it. Another busy week especially as we start school.

Oremus pro invicem!