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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 17, 2021 8:03:38 GMT -6
Bon,
I was reading through some old posts this morning, just to pass the time of day, while it's so cold outside. I came across some old photos that you posted on August 28th, of 2020. They pair well with today's snow and cold, making one realize there really is a 'balance' after all.
Since I could not figure out how to copy/paste any of the photos to this page, I suppose I'll just have to reference the August 28, 2020 page here, so folks can flip over to that thread to see your photos. They are the 3rd entry from the bottom of that page, so you'll have to scroll down quite a long way to view them.
seedsavingnetwork.proboards.com/thread/308/heavy-hitter-photo-thread-present?page=1&scrollTo=4388
Thanks, for posting those photos, Bon. They really put the heat of summer into perspective.
Ron
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2021 9:28:30 GMT -6
Ron, your experience is the perfect example of why main stream or big ag seeds are not likely to be the best type of vegetable to grow. It encourages me to find and grow and sustain rare heirloom seeds. Thank you for sharing them with me and sharing the experience of the evolution of HH Okra with us.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 17, 2021 9:38:42 GMT -6
Here are a few photos that were taken out in the garden this morning. It's currently 19-degrees. We have 7" inches of snow on the ground and it has warmed up considerably from yesterday's low of 15 below zero. So, it's actually quite tolerable out there while doing chores. The Cotton Patch Geese enjoying the snow.Lots of dead okra stalks left to pull out.Stanley, sniffing my coat pockets, looking for cranberries and Jolly Rancher candy.Quite a contrast between February and June!I'm ready for June again!Tomatoes. And more tomatoes.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2021 10:17:22 GMT -6
I don't mind snow. It insulates the crawlspace of the house from cold winds and helps us stay warm.
Yesterday I thot I might be sick as I couldn't keep my eyes open. Turns out, I was just warmer, more comfortable and I was in need of a good rest. The rabbits had to wait about six hours for water. Cuz I slept.
Above zero temps and my rabbits are very happy. They handle cold well, but those negative degrees were pretty hard on all of us.
I imagine George is super duper tired right about now. I he gets some rest in somewhere.
I'm very excited about all this weather. Excited because it is so blissfully wonderful for the garden soil. After putting down all that rabbit manure, its blessed with somee extreme temps and abundance of slow soaking precipitation. Garden soil heaven.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 15, 2021 12:23:17 GMT -6
I finally finished pulling out all of my rows of Plasticulture this morning. I laid about 1,500' feet of plastic last year, so it is no small task to pull it out by hand. A quarter-mile is 1,320' feet, so a little over a quarter mile of hand-pulling okra stalks and the plasticulture that it grows in.
Every year, I end up wishing I had not buried the edges of my Plasticulture quite so deeply. They always end up balled solid with grass roots, making it very difficult to uproot the edges without tearing the plastic. Of course, if you don't bury the edges deeply enough, the high winds of Spring will catch it while it's covered by loose soil and rip an entire row of seedlings right out of the ground, so it's always a trade-off. Pay for it during planting time if it's not buried deep enough, or pay for it during Spring rip-out if it's buried too deep ...
It has been a beautiful day to be doing work in the garden; bright and cheerful sunlight, about 64-degrees, with a tolerable, 15 to 20 mph South wind blowing, birds singing Springtime songs ... I just wish I had taken a camera with me.
My wife's little pet deer, "Stanley" followed me out to the garden this morning to work. She likes to walk along the edge of the rows of Plasticulture as I rip them out. I don't know if you are familiar with the sound that two heavy pieces of plastic make as you drag them across one another, but that sound makes her very curious about what is going on down there. It sounds similar to the needle of a record player raking along the grooves if you were not careful enough while lifting the needle from the vinyl surface. She'll walk along beside each row as I pull it, pointing her ears intently at the sound and pawing her front hooves at it, as if it were alive!
The sound that it makes, gets her stirred up to the point that when the wind whips the edges up in her face; she starts butting at it with her head. Directly, she'll jump right in the middle of it with all four feet and let me try to pull her along like a little kid riding a sled, until the plastic rips in half. This makes my job 10 times harder to accomplish, but it's so entertaining that I don't even attempt to run her off. Her facial expressions, and hyper-alert reactions, remind me of a half-grown kitten playing with a mouse and a two-year-old child, all at the same time.
Eventually, she'll get so wound up with running at it, pawing at it, and jumping on top of it with all four feet that I can't get anything accomplished and will have to lay the plastic down and walk off for a few minutes, until she loses interest in it and starts playing with something else.
This is not a bad trade-off actually, as by that time I usually need a break from pulling it anyhow and will sit in a lawn chair to rest a little.
As I sit there resting, I like to watch her grazing clover or chasing the cat. (Stanley loves cats!) If she had hands to hold them down, our cats would probably be bald-headed from her constantly licking them. She licks our cats more than Oddie licks Garfield.This was my garden, 26-days ago. This photo was taken February 17th, 2021. This is the lawn chair where I take my breaks. Another photo taken on February 17th. It was 19 degrees the day I took this photo; up from 15 below zero the day before. Believe it or not, my Winter cover crop is right below this blanket of snow, unscathed by the cold weather, happily biding its time, waiting for a sunny day.This is Stanley, my wife's pet deer, searching my pockets for cranberries and a piece of Jolly Rancher Cinnamon candy. She can smell Jolly Ranchers a mile away. The partially bare spot beneath her feet is where she had been scraping snow off with her hooves, munching on the green clover, just beneath the snow pack.The garden today, after all the dead okra and Plasticulture was removed ... This is the same spot where Stanley was standing on February 17th, looking for Jolly Rancher candy and munching green clover under the snow pack. What a difference 26-days can make!Look at the size of this Winter-killed, Heavy Hitter Okra stalk. (No wonder my poor back aches so badly right now!) This photo was taken last Saturday, to illustrate the density and depth of the winter cover crop I have planted. I sowed this cover-crop late last Summer, around the end of August. It's Red Clover, Winter Rye, Austrian Winter Peas, and Hairy Vetch. The low we had of -15 had little effect on it; probably, because we had a 7" inch covering of snow that fell just before the temperatures dropped so rapidly. It will be a shame the day I have to plow this under to make way for my 2021 garden.
It sure is a joy to see all the greenery this time of year when everything else is still dead. Thank you God, for Springtime, sunshine, and warmer days!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 31, 2021 20:17:06 GMT -6
Spring has sprung!
Even though this morning we woke up to frost, and 27-degrees, next week is supposed to be in the low 80s.
I spent all day yesterday spreading chicken litter, in preparation to plow my winter cover crop under, and start laying new Plasticulture, and new irrigation lines. I've got less than a month to get everything done. This is a busy time in the garden.This was about 3,500 pounds of chicken litter. My fenders were rubbing, so I had to take them off. My tires look like they are about to pop! Good thing there are miles of dirt roads around here, so I didn't have to drive this down the highway.I started out with a wheelbarrow and a shovel, but the handle on the wheelbarrow broke on the second load and I ended up using an old pail to spread all this chicken litter instead.Almost halfway done!The Cotton Patch Geese enjoying our cover crop.About 3/4 done. The sun was setting and so was I. Whew! That was a lot of walking back and forth, carrying a bucket load of chicken litter!At about 3/4ths done, I ended up calling it quits for the evening and will have to finish this project later in the week. That was plenty enough exercise for one day!
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Post by chrysanthemum on Apr 2, 2021 16:30:42 GMT -6
I think if you took all the square footage in my whole garden and spread it out in a straight line, it wouldn’t even be as long as a single one of your rows. I watered and redid some ollas (my buried clay pots for irrigation) and spread some compost in preparation for planting tomato transplants tomorrow, Lord willing. I’m tired just from that. I can only imagine how your back and shoulders must ache. I do think that your okra will love your for it, though.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 6, 2021 11:32:46 GMT -6
It's a lot of hard work, but it's the kind of work that makes a person feel good while out there doing it.
My favorite time of day in the garden is right before sunset, when all the birds begin to gather for the evening. You can look up and see the setting sun, and hear the birds singing all around that place. I like watching them as they stop by my sunflowers for a quick bite to eat before the sun goes down. Everything out there just seems at peace whenever they do that.The rows in my garden are set almost 10' feet apart, so that I can drive a tractor between them while tilling or else I can drive a pickup truck between the rows while harvesting. I used to plant on 5' foot centers and cart all the produce by hand, down the length of each row to my truck, but by the time I had carried 20 or 30 lugs of tomatoes that far, I found I was too tired to take them to market.By sunset, I am really ready for some peace and quiet.Somehow, quiet times like this one seem to make all the hard work worth while.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 6, 2021 20:00:52 GMT -6
Whew!
I'm bushed! I just finished spreading 400 pounds of lime with a gallon size green bean can. There's a 70% chance of rain tomorrow, hopefully, it will settle in all the chicken litter and lime I've been spreading the last few days.
My crimson clover is over a foot tall already and is beginning to bloom. It sure will be a pity to have to till it under later, but that's what it takes to get the ground ready for next season.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 7, 2021 22:07:05 GMT -6
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 8, 2021 14:57:48 GMT -6
Readying the Equipment Last year, I got sick with some kind of creeping crud in April and just about didn't get my garden planted in time to harvest any okra seeds. I lost at least half of my okra crop last year to an early frost in October because I wasn't feeling well enough during April to get anything ready. That was disheartening to see that many plants out there with seeds that were no good because they got frosted before the pods were fully mature.This year, I've spent weeks and months getting ready. I still have not plowed anything, but I did finally get the big, 60" inch, Bush Hog tiller hooked back up on the tractor today. That's a heck of a job to do with only one person. I'd back up to the tiller, then have to get off the tractor to see if everything was lined up, then get back on the tractor and move it sideways a few inches, get off, check it, get back on, move forward, get off, check it, move backward, adjust the hydraulics, try it again, beat on the lifting arms with a 4-pound hammer, pry the tiller around with a piece of 2" inch pipe, hammer on the PTO shaft, unscrew the top link. I don't have any level ground around here, so the tractor would roll off every time I let off on the brake, so I'd have to use the emergency brake. Then, I broke the emergency brake cable and had to pry the back tires with a length of heavy pipe to get the tractor in the position I needed, then throw a rock under the tires to get it to stop rolling forward every time I let off the pipe ... On and on, until everything finally lined up. It was a pain in the backside. (It always is). Now, I'm too worn out, hungry, and thirsty to go back and till anything up with it, but at least it's back on the tractor.It's too windy to till today anyhow. All the dust and chicken litter I'd stir up would bury me alive on every return pass. Maybe, tomorrow?Then, after I plow, I'll have to take the tiller off again and hook up the Plasticulture rig. Same story there. That thing is a bugger to hook up by yourself but I do it every year. At least there is no PTO shaft to have to line up on the Plasticulture rig.I'll try to attach a few photos to show how tight of a fit it is to climb down in between the lifting arms, chains, and levers, to even get to the PTO shaft. I'm sure glad that job is done!I'll have to change implements several times during the season to be able to till my winter cover crop under, built up my raised beds, lay Plasticulture, till weeds all summer, rake my three acres of woods to get leaf mold lain in the garden, and do my yearly brush hogging of sprouts and so forth.This old tractor sure has done a lot of hard work over the years.Since 2013, this rig has more than paid for itself in okra and tomatoes. It's really hard to imagine how many tons of produce we've taken out of that small piece of ground out there. I took this photo, just in case anyone out there is trying to make up their mind about buying a particular brand of tiller.. This model has been a really good machine. Last year, I backed over a steel Tee post that was buried in the weeds. I hit it so hard that it killed the engine on the tractor and wrapped the post into an 'S' shape around the tiller tines. It was jammed in there so hard that I had to go back to the shop and cut the post out with a torch, but all it did was break off one tine. As far as I can tell, the drive chains were not harmed ... Now, that's tough! The price was not too bad either, considering what it is. It cost about the same amount as the Big Red Horse, Troy-Bilt, walk behind tillers that they were manufacturing that same year. No way a walk behind Troy-Bilt could do half the amount of work that this thing does!
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Post by macmex on Apr 8, 2021 19:42:52 GMT -6
I just got a tractor in 2020 and reading your post about hooking up the tiller makes me chuckle. Now I KNOW from experience what you're talking about! Sometime when you need to hitch something up, drop me an email and I can swing by after work and help. Between two we could make it easier.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 9, 2021 12:42:33 GMT -6
That's very true, George. Things go a lot better with two people; one to hold the brake, the other to swing lift arms into place.
From the sound of the thunder rumbling out there, I'd better hold off on any plowing to be done right now.
I remember one year, in April, when my walk behind tiller gave up the ghost after about the first 20 feet of tilling. It was the first time I had used it that season after letting it sit all winter. It needed a tune-up really badly, but 'Spring Fever' was getting the better of me and I really wanted to till up some dirt and really wanted it, (Right then)! I was quite upset when the tiller conked out after only 20' feet!
Fortunately, for me, the Lord was looking after me that day and wouldn't allow me to carry on. Kind of like Balaam and his talking donkey. That night, we had a particularly severe thunderstorm and when I returned to the garden, I found water coursing through it where the tiller had been the day before. I ended up losing a good 3" or 4" inches of topsoil, but only in the places where I had tilled.
If the tiller would have behaved the way I wanted it to, I would have tilled the entire garden, only to find the entire garden 'missing' the next day!
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Post by mountianj on Apr 12, 2021 19:06:24 GMT -6
can be bugger at times especially if one of the pins is bent on bushhawg like mine is. i also got a tractor last year as well george it def nice to have one
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 15, 2021 9:14:29 GMT -6
Tractor We plowed with a team of mules and a team of Haflinger ponies here until 2013. After getting kicked in the hip and spending a few worrisome minutes partially paralyzed from the waist down, I decided I was getting too old to be messing with mules anymore and took a large draw on my retirement fund to buy myself a used tractor.
That was a huge decision for me. At first, it really bothered me to take that early draw, but then I got to thinking, "What good would it do me to save up until retirement to buy a tractor when by then I'd likely be nearly too old to use it?"
I think it was money well spent. If I treat it good enough, the tractor should last well into my retirement years. That's the plan anyhow. I'll be turning 60 this year. I've already got my money's worth out of the tractor. There is no way I could continue doing what I've been doing over the years without a good tractor.
It used to take two of us, two weeks of steady labor to get the garden plowed, harrowed, and furrowed, in order to raise our seedbeds, using a team of mules and all our horse-drawn equipment. After plowing and furrowing, we'd raise the beds by hand, using 16" inch concrete hoes and leveling them with the back sides of rock rakes. We'd stretch the irrigation lines and lay the Plasticulture by hand. (Two people carrying the heavy roll of plastic with a pipe spindle to roll it off as we went).
The kids would follow along behind us, throwing dirt every few feet along the edges, using shovels. Then, after all the rows were laid, we'd all work together to cover the edges of the plastic for the full length. Fourteen rows, 150' feet long would require a person to shovel dirt along the edges of both sides, amounting to about 4,200 feet of shoveling in total. One mile equals 5,280' feet, so you can quickly see how six of us working together would be a good thing, (Me, my wife, and our 4 children).
As a result, we were able to participate as one of the 5 founding farms that formed the Tahlequah Farmer's Market group, back in 2007-2008. We also grew enough vegetables each season to supply all of our other customers with fresh, certified organic veggies in the summer season; those customers included 3 grocery stores: Reasor's, Save-A-Lot, and Box IGA, (Tahlequah locations only).
Plus 9 restaurants: Iguana Cafe, Southside Drive-in, Town Branch Bar and Grill, Out West Cafe, Del Rancho, K.C. Harris Burgers, Trail's End, Restaurant of the Cherokees, The Villiage Cafe, and occasionally, East Buffet and Sushi, Oh, and Oasis Health Food Store in Tahlequah. In between customers, we'd make tail gate sales to anyone who happened to pass by asking to buy produce off the truck.
Whatever we had left over at the end of each day would go to area nursing homes or to the Oklahoma Production Center as donations. Believe it or not, there were quite a few leftovers.
Eventually, we picked up a few customers who owned weekend cabins along the Illinois River, and a few employees at NSU, the Tahlequah Court House, the Tag Office, and various Banking institutions around town. For that reason, I had to drop out of the Tahlequah Farmer's Market group for about 3 years, just to keep everyone supplied with salad goods and fresh potatoes.
In the years that followed, we picked up a contract at Tahlequah City Hospital to supply all of their certified organic needs, including fresh herbs. They fed an average of almost 1,000 meals per day, including doctors, nurses, patients, and staff. For that reason, we had to stop supplying restaurants, grocery stores, and the farmer's Market and just concentrated on keeping the hospital supplied.
Now, that most of the kids are grown up, married, or moved away, and my wife has her own business to run, I find that I'm not able to keep up by myself and have downshifted to growing okra almost exclusively.
Ain't it funny how life operates? All of those years working with nothing more than a team of mules or two garden ponies, and now that things have slowed down to a near crawl, I get a tractor.
I do have to say, "I miss the Haflinger ponies though."The old mules ... Not so much.
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