Peaches, peaches, everywhere!

Peaches, peaches, everywhere!

My peaches are ripe. Last year was the first year I had any peaches from my tree and this year it just exploded. We literally have peaches everywhere –on the counters, the table, in baskets, in the cast iron skillets. The first ones were of course eaten properly. That is, we ate them underneath the tree with the juice running down our chins. The only bad thing we’ve discovered is that these peaches don’t keep well off the tree, so we’re rushing to preserve them.

Georgia peaches or Chilton county peaches? Neither, thank you, good sir –I prefer the ones from my own backyard!

Some more about my peach tree: it’s a Belle of Georgia peach, planted four years ago when it was about a year old. It is a semi-dwarf tree, which means it’s “only” about 15 feet tall. Currently it has a roughly 12-foot spread. It has never been affected by serious disease or pests, but some of our peaches developed a harmless fungus. These were mostly lower on the tree, and we’ve learned how to prevent that next year.

Happy peach season, everyone!

Of Farmer's Markets and Corruption

We have a farmer’s market in our community, like many others. This market is open year-round. It has two anchor stores at either end and then other farmers come in three seasons out of four and sell their wares in the middle section. The anchor stores used to be held by two large local farmers who supplemented what they grew with bananas, extra produce, and the like so that they could stay open year-round.
‘Used to be’ being the operative term. All that changed this spring. The contracts were up for renewal this spring. There were competitors, for the first time ever, and so the commission had a bidding process. A secret bidding process, mind. That alone caused outrage among much of the community. When the results were revealed it turned out the old stores had lost –big time. The new tenants had bid DOUBLE the old rent. Furthermore, they had signed the leases before the results were made public.
That might have been the end of it, if the old stores hadn’t appealed and certain other details hadn’t leaked out. Like how the bidding process was rigged –the new bidders were told what the old tenants bids were and how much over that they’d have to be to get the commission to accept their bids. Then it turned out that the new tenants were actually part of a corporate chain who was trying to take over farmer’s markets using franchises. And then it came out that the county commission had not vetted this chain –no background or credit checks even, which are required by state law. And this chain has filed for bankruptcy twice. Oh, and the final straw: the two franchise owners are….the husband and brother-in-law of the head of the county commission. Nepotism, anyone?
There was outrage. There were hearing. The local news and the mayor got involved. And in the end…nothing happened. It was all allowed to go forward. Now the main place in town for poor people to get fresh vegetables has been co-opted by corporate interests who have driven up all the prices, and ran out a lot of the small farmers as well.
Even farmer’s markets aren’t immune to corruption these days, it would seem.

Pickles!

I made pickles on Monday. Sweet and sour pickle chips. It was fun, and incredibly easy. The pickles look so pretty in the jars. Just seeing them makes me smile. I used the recipe in the Ball Blue Book. It will take six weeks for them to fully cure, but then I will have pickles to last for a year.

I spent an afternoon making pickles and I have enough to last a year. Take that, Monsanto.

One more skill I've learned. I've now canned jam, tomatoes, and pickles. I've also dehydrated and frozen lots of fruits and vegetables. Every thing I do and learn to do is one more step on the path to self-sufficiency and food security. And pickles look might pretty, too, especially when you've made them yourself. :)

I'm Back

My life has been totally crazy, hence the silence. Things finally seem to be calming down. What has been happening? Here's a short list:
The house -the sell fell through at the last minute. Three days before closing. How's that for ironic? I was more than half moved out. What happened next is a little complicated, but the house is off the market and is going to stay that way for a while. I was having some trouble paying the mortgage on my reduced income but not anymore. My girlfriend moved in with me. That's good for a whole lot of reasons. We're doing really well.

The farm -some of the plans had to be scaled back because of the craziness. My greens have slowly petered out. The tomatoes, peppers, and squash are taking off. We're growing a trial patch of sweet potatoes. I've also planted the garden patch at the house, of course.

Health -I have been seriously ill with sinus problems, but they are finally getting better.

Weather -the weather has been completely crazy. After an abnormally cool and wet spring, we sprang right into the middle of summer. It got hot, and fast. Sunday it was 107 degrees with the heat index. The heat index was over a hundred for four days running, and today is going to be slightly under that.

I promise I'll post more later.

When it rains, it pours

In more ways than one. I apologize for my silence; I have been busy getting ready to move. Unfortuanately, the sale of my house got scuttled at the last minute so it appears that I am going nowhere fast.

As far as the other kind of rain, we've been getting LOTS of it. Yesterday we got four inches. No, that is not for the entire week; that is for yesterday alone. We've had about three times that in total for the past week. Today it is mostly dry, but tomorrow it is supposed to rain again. My garden is surviving (barely) but a lot of them have been washed out. Many of the crops -those that were planted -have been as well. We've gone from drought to flooding in the space of a couple of months.

But climate change isn't real. Naw.

A Brief Update

I apologize for the lack of new posts. I have been extremely busy working and getting ready to move. The house has been sold. Well, it’s not official until it passes the termite inspection on Monday. (Mother Goddess are you listening?) The home inspection was a few days ago. I am working on a longer post about the two healthcare systems in this country (did you know that there are two?) and I hope to have it posted on Monday. This is just a brief update.

-The house has been sold. It sold for less than I was hoping, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. Assuming the termite inspection comes out okay, I start moving out next week. “Moving where” is the key question.

-My “farm” is doing well, but it has turned out to be more difficult than I thought to do this on rented land. Instead of wandering out to weed for 15 minutes whenever I feel like it, I have to block out a large chunk of time.

-My book has officially been accepted by Amazon! I got the email last night. Look for it about the middle of June. It will also be in brick-and-mortar stores but I don’t have the date for that yet.

-The weather has gone completely mad. For about two weeks it seemed as if we were in India during the monsoon season. The rain was that bad. And it was fairly cool for April -40s some days. The last three days the temperature has been in the upper 80s. My thermometer says we came close to 90 yesterday. At the end of April. Um, what is July going to be like? Hey Congress WAKE UP!

That’s about it for now. Look for the healthcare post on Monday.

Song of the South

“Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain’t nobody lookin’ back again
…
Well, somebody told us Wall Street fell
We were so poor that we couldn’t tell
The cotton was short and the weeds were tall
But Mr. Roosevelt [Obama] gonna save us all”

-Song of the South, Alabama

That is one of my favorite songs. It is just about as old as I am. (Okay, it’s about seven years younger, but still.) It has long been a favorite here in the south. I have made an interesting observation about this song: as the economy has worsened, it has been played more and more often on radio stations, muzak, and I even hear people humming it more and more often. There is a strong sense of resilience down here. And there are an incredible number of people who are like Fine! Close down the plant! I’ll go home to Mama’s and help her with the corn! It will be interesting to see how this changes as the years go forward, and when the anger will start. (And against whom it will be directed.)

My little rented farm is thriving. The only thing in the ground so far is my salad greens, but most of the rest have been started in little pots in my office. This is what I will be growing this year: assorted salad veggies, tomatoes (Cherokee purple, Yellow pear, and Roma), peppers (Cayenne, sweet bell, and Jimmy Nardello’s frying pepper), Wautoma cucumbers, two kinds of pole beans, edamane beans, yellow crookneck squash, black beauty zucchini, patty pan custard squash, acorn winter squash, and moon and stars watermelons. Hopefully, the torrential rainfall we’ve had this afternoon hasn’t drowned my lettuce.

I’ve got an offer on the house. Assuming it passes inspection, it will be sold. I should get a few thousand dollars out of it, but it looks like I’m still going to be about $2,000-$2,500 short of buying the kind of land I’d like to buy. I’m going all in on this; there’s nothing being held back. If you’re going to shoot, aim for the stars, that way you might at least make the moon. Any ideas how I can raise some cash?