It has been busy and challenging

We are doing some interior renovations to increase our accommodations - at the same time trying not to get behind on planting. We did manage to plant some cucumbers, pumpkins, green beans and cantaloupe in the last week or so.

We picked some cabbage this week, our first peas of the season, and have put up broccoli twice. The gardens are looking great, with more to go.

But renovations have to continue to move forward - you can't live easily in a house under construction work. And there are deadlines.

On top of all this, we are still mourning Mom. 

Oremus pro invicem!

Pigs and Confimation ...

 Little Red had a litter on May 2nd. All doing well. 

Doing some cleaning out and found this gem from my father's Confirmation, which happened to occur on this 14th birthday.

Oremus pro invicem!

Requiescat in Pace.

Please pray for the repose of the soul of Mary Teresa (Shaw) Curley who passed from this life in the early morning hours this morning. (1932-2025). She was beloved mother of 12 including myself. Grandmother of 35? and great-grandmother of 6.

Fr. John O'Holohan a former pastor of mine, used to say if a mother had at least 3 boys, she had a straight ticket to Heaven. My Mom had 4 (plus 8 girls.)

May her soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, rest in peace.

Oremus pro invicem!

Almost ready for next winter!

 

Oremus pro invicem!

Patch has another litter!

 A week ago, Patch had her 4th litter with us. Here are some pics.

Also, we got our meat birds in. Our freezer is pretty empty. We have some pork, just a little beef and some chicken wings. So getting the meat chicks in is a relief.

Spent Saturday planting: putting in tomatoes, peppers, and planting peas and green beans. (Corn went in last week.) We aren't done, but it is a great start.

Oremus pro invicem!

Horses and Helicopters

Youngest daughter was riding the neighbor's horse on Sunday - the neighbor riding hers. The horse dahughter was riding started freaking out and bucking (perhaps due to jealousy?). Daughter, deciding she wasn't getting bucked off, held on and stayed on the horse's back. The horse, deciding the only way to get rid of her was to rear up and go over backwards, did just that. 

Daughter fell off as the horse continued to fall backwards on top of her. The horse fell on her, rolled over and took off for home. Fortunately daughter didn't hit her head and was lucky to only break 4 bones on the backbone, the transverse process. These are the little hook-like bones coming out of the side of the backbone near the tailbone - if I am describing it correctly. 

She never lost consciousness and directed the neighbor to call me. They were riding close by. I got there, called 911 and they air-lifted her to Columbia, the nearest trauma center. I think they were afraid (as I was) that there may be internal bleeding - which there wasn't.

Certainly scary (for me and her) but all's well. Daughter is in a brace and can walk gingerly and on pain meds. She won't be riding for a few weeks! 

Thanks be to God!

Oremus pro invicem!

The footprint

 A month or so ago the drain in the upstairs bathroom sink became veeeeeeeeery slow. After trying the usual things, I figured that the clog must be in the horizontal galvanized steel pipe in the eves of the attic.

I usually do all my own work, but this was a little bit hard to access, so I decided to call a new plumber in town. 

Well, his diagnosis was the same as mine, so he replaced the horizontal section. Unfortunately, both our diagnoses were wrong. So I paid the bill and still had a clogged drain. He gave me a number of "reasons" why he didn't want to do more and thought he had made it better.

For the 69th time or so, I learned that I shouldn't hire contractors!

So, last weekend I removed another section of pipe - the obvious if the horizontal wasn't the problem and sure enough, that pipe had a solid clog - partially decomposition of the pipe with some hair attached.

It was hard getting in and out of the eves with my tools all day and balancing on the joists going back and forth, be we got it fixed.

On the last trip out of the attic, my foot slipped off the joist and landed through the ceiling in our towel closet below! As seen with my footprint in the picture below.

It could have been worse. This can be patched up in the closet without the care and worries if it had happened through the ceiling of a room.

But all's well that ends well!

Oremus pro invicem!

Broccoli or not

I put in 32 broccoli plants last Friday. Unfortunately, one of my chickens didn't want to wait until it was ready for me to harvest before going after almost every leaf ....

The chickens are picking up a little in their laying. In the peak we were getting 20 eggs a day. This went down to 4-5 a day in the midst of mid-January. Now we are getting a dozen a day +/- 1 or 2. I am hopeful these 2nd year chickens get back up to 15-18 a day. I will be more than happy with that.

Still cutting wood for next winter. I had a couple chainsaw problems which has slowed me down. There is plenty of wood out there to take - much more than I can get this year, but I will do my best. I like to finish cutting by March 1st as this is when planting starts in earnest. Once again I didn't make this deadline.

Oremus pro invicem!

Kale and Spinach

We still have kale from the fall garden, and spinach. Funny because of all the spinach I planted, only 2 plants came up. But then a couple weeks ago I found my original spinach coming up all over the place. Maybe I planted it too deep. 

In any event, I won't have to plant any this spring. I should be putting broccoli in the ground tomorrow with any luck.

The chickens are making a slow comeback on the egg-laying front. We were getting 20+ eggs a day before the cold weather hit. With the cold and shortened days, the chickens were down to 4 or 5 a day. Now it appears they are coming back. 10 - 12 a day. 

I like to keep chickens at least 2 seasons, so if they can rebound to close to 20 a day I will be really happy.

Oremus pro invicem!

Wendell Berry on the 10 Commandments

I have been slowly reading Wendell Berry's The Need to be Whole of the past couple months. It is slow because I usually read it in doctor office waiting rooms. The introduction is excellent, and I meant to write some comments on it a few months ago.

This morning I read a new take (for me) on the tenth commandment (9 & 10 are combined here: Thou shalt not covet.) Here goes:

"Thou shalt not covet .... any thing that is thy neighbor's." By contrast the industrial famers of our time are economically constrained, and by the industrial orthodoxy are encouraged to regard their neighbors as competitors, and to overcome them (and possess their farms) by means of newer technologies and bigger machines. Thus a fundamental relationship and obligation is broken by the now generally accepted "realism" and "necessity" of economic competitions, which necessarily brings us to our present condition: a public consisting of dismembered families and communities and the virtually deserted economic landscapes of our country, where, as the parents grow old and die without successors, the children are distributed from sea to sea.

I never really thought of capitalist systems as violating the commandments against coveting, but I should have. I have looked at industrial farming and other capitalist endeavors from a moral view to be sure, but never really connected them to a specific commandment.

Oremus pro invicem!

This is crazy!!!!!

Tuesday night (starting around 4-5 PM) our area got .25 to 1 inch of snow. The snow ended by midnight if not before. It did not turn to rain or sleet. Wednesday morning the roads were clear - but never were icy. The snow was powdery, so it just blew around the roads.

Tuesday one of the colleges I teach closed their campus at 6PM on Tuesday shifted to remote learning for evening classes.

Wednesday morning (note the roads are very clear) both colleges closed their campuses ("due to an abundance of caution) and had a "remote learning day". 

Everything in our town (bank, dr office) except the Dollar General and the Hardware store were closed on Wednesday.

Here it is on Thursday, the colleges are open, but the local bank is delayed opening and the pharmacy and doctor offices also have delayed openings.

It is CRAZY! Less than an inch of powdery snow with no ice and the whole area shuts down for 2.5 - 3 days. 

I understand in Conway they had 6 inches of snow. For South Carolina, this is pretty major. But come on - let than an inch of powdery snow during the evening and night and we shut down everything?

Oremus pro invicem!

It is always about money!

 From Fox News article (Does the Color of Eggs Mean Anything?; 11 January 2025):

"Foods that are high in xanthophyll and carotene, which are basically pigments called carotenoids, will make nice dark orange egg yolks," she said. 

Carotene is found in orange-colored foods, she said, such as carrots, mangoes, cantaloupe and pumpkins. 

Xanthophyll can be found in leafy green vegetables, like spinach and kale. 

But while a darker egg yolk does not mean a chicken is eating a nutritious, organic or fresh diet, "it likely will correlate, since the foods with the pigment are also packed with other nutrients," she said. 

Which is why many folks want to buy pasture-raised eggs, especially from small farmers. 

But Big-AG can't lose a single dollar. So what do they do?

Even so, feed companies and commercial egg farms have discovered workarounds to create a darker egg yolk without these nutrient-dense foods, Steele said. 

These companies "have gotten smart and realized that consumers want to see that bright orange yolk, so they'll add things like marigold, paprika, sea kelp, corn [and] alfalfa to 'artificially' boost the yolk color," she said. 

Anything to make money; deception be praised and damn the consumer.

Oremus pro invicem!

 

 May the joy the Christ-child brings fill you this season and throughout the coming year!

Oremus pro invicem!

Root has another litter

 Sows often pick the stormiest or coldest night to give birth. This was the case last night. The low was around 21 F, and we woke up to Root's 3rd litter for us. Praise God!!

Pigs and gardens and voting

I have been wanting to vent my thoughts about voting, but just haven't had time to write a coherent piece.

I will say that this piece makes a lot of sense to me; at Front Porch Republic.

In the meantime, I am about to go off and vote myself, but here are some peaceful pictures: one of part of the fall garden and one of some pigs we are raising up.

Oremus pro invicem!

First frost; first fire in the stove

Posts are certainly sporadic, although I have much I want to write about. We finally had our first fire in the wood stove Friday morning. It should have been Thursday morning, but things happened to prevent it. We had to move all those pumpkins, plus a whole lot more that can be seen in the picture a few posts below. 

I did do a pre-season chimney sweep. I used to have to climb all the way in the chimney to do this, but last year or so, one of my sons bought a chimney brush that connects to a hand drill; and while I still get pretty dirty, I don't have to do body contortions to get the chimney clean.

I love getting that fire going in the wood stove early in the morning when the house is in the fifties and then putting the coffee on - I am glad fall has finally arrived (although it was in the 80's today.) and we had no fire this morning.

Pigs are still doing well. 

The first frost has left some of my pumpkins not yet ripe. Some will ripen off the vine if they are well along in color. Others will not. I had about 30 or so pumpkins not yet picked or fully ripe when we got the first frost on Thursday morning.

Oremus pro invicem!

Another litter

 We had another litter on October 3. 10 live births with all still doing well.

Oremus pro invicem!

Even more pumpkins!

 Still many more not ready to pick yet. 

Except the okra and green beans, the summer garden is gone, replaced by the fall garden of lettuce, cabbage, kale, spinach, broccoli, carrots, radishes, and turnips (so far.)

It has been a great garden year. 

Oremus pro invicem!

Liturgy of the Land Conference

In April my friends Jason Craig and Tommy Van Horn had their book Liturgy of the Land published (TAN books). The book explains the reason and history of the 'back to the land' movement - many of these reasons are why Lori and I moved to our homestead over 20 years ago.

It is worth the read, detailing how our country has purposely and actively removed support from those who want to be a center of production as a family. We should all be consumers and not producers. 

But a few of us have tried to at least partially bucked this trend for both practical and spiritual reasons and become homesteaders in one form or another.

Part of the book details the different levels of homesteading. Not all of us can homestead full-time (if any of us can.) From backyard urban gardener to rural full time homesteader, and every step in-between, the book discusses what is possible with entry level information.

As I said, worth reading, even if you are not thinking of making a move.

In December, TAN books is hosting the Liturgy of the Land Conference at the Catholic Conference center in Hickory, NC. You can meet the authors and learn from some real experts in the rural life and homesteading. 

See you there!

Oremus pro invicem!

My Marine

 He graduates from boot camp today.

Oremus pro invicem!