I am ready for planting except for decent soil and getting row cover set up. I want cabbage for sure.

I don't know what to do, neighbor came over and pulled the last of my beets yesterday. He told me that we have gone 34 days without rain, a lot of days over 100*, and we are on water rationing. I have an artesian well, but I would have to haul water over 1/2 mile, it would be pretty expensive water by the time I got it here.

I pulled a bunch of weeds this morning, and watered. At this time I can water every other day with a hand held device, but with this heat it does not do a lot of good. I think, for now, I will try to keep the okra, sweet potatoes, peppers and Arabat going, but everything is late, so production is low and cost is high. I may put some squash in close to the peppers, water, and hope the squash will offer some shade for the ground. I still have some mulch I can use also. I will be planting turnips and other greens later.

I'm just riding out this heat wave, a day at a time. Natl Weather Service says nothing but the same for the " foreseeable future " .............. wow

" .................................The prolong stretch of hot conditions will continue for the foreseeable future. The daily average temperature of Oklahoma City has already been exceeded 25 of the last 30 days. Given the forecast, that will likely become 40 out of 45 days by the last week of July.,....................... "

I hauled 7 or 8 small buckets of mulch over to the south garden. Those buckets of mulch should have been compost by now, but it has been so dry the pile has not been working very well. The pile is out in the pasture and it is hard to get water to it.

I was invaded by deer, rabbits, and coons last night. This dry hot weather must be hard on the critters also. I even had a hummingbird trying to drink water from the garden hose this morning. It looked like it was trying to fly into the spray, but I think it was landing on the okra and drinking drops off the leaves. I was sitting on a stool while spraying the stream and could not see what the hummingbird was doing, but it act thirsty.

Madge wanted to take some water melon rinds to the donkeys, so we piled into the rtv and headed for the old barn on the back side of the property ( where the donkeys like to hang out ). We jumped what looked like a young buck coming out of the cattail marsh down below the artesian well. The deer may be coming off the mountain to drink at the artesian well. When it is this dry, there are not many water holes on the mountain. I also noticed the pastures are getting dry.

Looks so good, Lynn!

And thanks for sharing your pics at the other thread, Larry.

I'm finally sitting down for the day and it's already time for bed. How does this happen?

Tom fixed a pulled beef type of thing for dinner tonight for him and E, so I just now sat down with a tomato sandwich for dinner.

I did several garden things tonight and started fall flower seed.

It's after 10, so I'm gonna eat and rest for a bit.

Take care in this heat, Friends.

The temp was pretty nice this morning. I weeded and watered in the north garden, will try to spread out some mulch later.

I will move to the south garden and do some weeding and watering also. I put the hot wire back around the south garden after dumping 8 buckets of mulch/compost around different areas, no new deer damage this morning. I also will spray herbicide to kill the grass and weeds under the electric fence. I want to get some area ready for some fall plants, which means I need to do some tilling. I will use my small rear tine tiller for this project, it only tills a 17" path, but I will have to wet the area first to keep down the dust, and soften the ground.

I have rested long enough and the temp is going up fast.

Very happy with the flavor of my bread and butter pickles. We've been buying Vlasic B&B's at the store. These I've made are not as sweet with a better flavor. I've got a book by Tuffy Stone with his barbecue recipes and he's yet to steer me wrong. This one is winner.

But he doesn't have a recipe for dills and my next batch are gonna be dills.

Kim, if you will send me your address, I will send your grasshoppers back home. I know you don't wont to lose any of them. You can tell by looking at them that they prime breeding stock. They are faster than a speeding bullet, and can leap tall building in a single bound, plus, they are eating me out of house and home.

Madge and I have nearly a 5 gal bucket of purple hull peas to shell.

I am still making a little head way on weeding the gardens by working a little early mornings and late evenings.

Larry your ahead of me with the peas. I just planted my Knuckles Hulls a couple of weeks ago. Had to water down the whole patch to even get them to come up.

Rick

Rick, these are not very good peas, many not filled out well, we just cant get enough water on them in this hot weather. We have had to cut back on watering. I may plant some peas here at the house where I have some water.

I have a couple of spots where I can plant a 20 foot row of something. The conditions here are not good for planting anything. The two spots I mentioned I have been watering to soften them and settle the dust. On top of being dry, the pastures have been baled, which causes the insects and wildlife to head for the gardens.

We had a large fire northeast of us, but, no one was hurt.

HJ, your comment got me thinking. If the hoppers all head for gardens once the fieldes are baled, I wonder if leaving our field to grow might keep them out? Our laziness (it took me & Cliff 2 hours to figure out how to disconnect the brush hog & we really don't want to reconnect it until we have to lol) will pay off for a change.

Jen, lol!

We were pretty lazy for a while. It's mowed down now.

The thing is, it seems like the grasshoppers have been in the garden since Day 1 this year. But our field is smaller, and it wasn't that overgrown.

They're just so frustrating.

They sure love the pole beans.

I'm pretty sure I did not sit down yesterday.... and felt it as we were walking Josi last night. I barely made it around the neighborhood. My Pilates instructor did work us pretty hard last night too...so maybe it was that. Or a combination or the two.

The second batch of fermented pickles have been moved to jars and are in the fridge now. Second batch of diced tomatoes done. Carrots cleaned up and put in the refrigerator. The massive tomato plants in the "behind the shop" garden were pruned. They're so thick it took some ridiculous contortions to reach the bad spots to prune them off. Pretty sure I was standing on my head at one point. The volunteer melons are growing (and climbing) those tomatoes/cages. So that adds to it. Issue discovered this morning. When a melon fruit grows in the tomato cage, removing the melon also takes some gymnastics. Especially with such overgrown tomato plants. I hope that melon tastes good after all the work to get it out.

It was absolutely lovely this morning.

The garlic is stored away now. I sat outside on the shop porch and worked on that early and enjoyed the coolness and peacefulness.

Other things today include starting another round of fermented pickles. And possibly canning some pickles--sweeter ones. Maybe. Maybe I don't feel like it. We'll see.

I'm sure they'll be watering too.

It's Jean Luc Picard's (my main rooster) BD. He's 4 today. I'm still laughing that it's also Patrick Stewart's BD. I promise I did not know that when I named him. In fact, the original name was Jules because we didn't know if he was a he or she.

In case y'all don't know. Patrick Stewart is the actor who played Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek The Next Generation.

His son's BD (my rooster) was yesterday. He's officially a rooster now at 1 year old. (His name is James T Kirk, btw)

The chickens are doing well. Hoping that continues during the upcoming extreme heat.

I'm so glad we're not doing chicks this this year. However, a friend wants a few of my eggs to put under her broody hen. I'm so weird about stuff like this. I don't mind sharing as long as people take this seriously. Do their homework--these are living things after all.

How's everyone feeling about the upcoming heat streak?

I'm wondering what will survive and how long it will last.

I am not happy about the heat. I don't handle heat well, so it really cuts down on outside time, and I get around so slow that it takes for ever for me to get anything done.

I planted 2 hills of straight neck squash, and one hill of zucchini this morning. My hills are just short rows with seeds planted about 4 to 8 inches apart.

The tilling I did this morning was terrible, even after watering the area for the past few days, the ground was still hard and dusty. I was able to till about 3" deep. I had to think of Moni's remark about not being able to stick her finger down in the dirt to check for moisture. I did not try to stick anything in this dirt, but if I had it would have taken a hammer to drive a screwdriver into it.

I gotta go, I have two dr. appointments in Ft. Smith.

Larry its POBOX no way!!! I was thinking of harnessing mine to pull my car and save gas.

Most of these will go to the chickens. They love them. The smallest two are mine.

Kim, I like your idea, but don't say that too loud, so many people are betting on electric vehicles, which we are not ready for yet, it would kill what economy we have if the solution was so simple.

I harvested a young rabbit, it breaks my heart to do that, they are only trying to stay alive, but they are murder on small garden plants and fruits.

I did not do anything this afternoon. Madge and I went out to eat at Olive Garden after my second Dr. appointment. The thermometer in the car was on 100* when we came home and the temp stayed 100* for a long time, plus I did not want to have to get cleaned up again, that much water might make me melt.

Rick, my purple hull peas were not so great, the very dry conditions caused them to not fill out like they should have, but we have so much stuff that we just cant keep it all watered. I hope to plant some zipper cream peas tomorrow here at the house, in the small gardens I can plant closer together, and mulch and get by with less watering. I have a lot of turnip seeds, I may try to use turnips as a living mulch and eat them also.

Just planted some fall sweet corn at Jennifers just in time for a streak of 100 degree days. The ground was so bone dry and hard the tiller bounced up and down and just barely would take to it but have it powder dry dusty and clotty. Dropped the seed in and watered the furrows down seed and all and covered them up. Hope I'm not just raising fodder for the grasshoppers if it comes up at all. OSU says July 15 to plant it for the fall .Just gun ho to try.

Rick

My tiller is a counter rotating type, so when the ground is this dry, I have very few clods, it is more like flour, then after watered and baked in the sun it becomes much like a brick. It I water the soil, till, and water again, and keep this up as needed I can get the soil sort of back to normal, but I need compost and mulch to keep in usable condition.

My soil is very shallow, and the only thing I have to bust it up deep enough to let water penetrate is 9 shank pasture cultivator, but it is 7' wide and I have to pull it with one of the larger tractors, it is not much good for garden work.

This is my day to water, so I need to be out working on the soil to try to get a few seeds planted. I am sort of shooting in the dark, I have no idea of the best way to try to approach my late summer and fall planting. I need a crystal ball, but China wont sell us any, and I think the U.S. has forgotten how to make them.

Rick, you had has ask how my okra was doing, well, under the conditions, I would say OK, but it is late, everything is late, and dry now..

This is my best okra, it is really not this tall, I am sitting on a stool. This area got the least flood damage, so I am repairing it last. You can see where I dumped 3 buckets of unfinished compost to use in the repair job.

This is where I planted the 3 hills of squash yesterday, I am standing in another area where I can plant something later. You can see my best okra on the left, a row of peppers on the right, the 3 brown spots is where I hope to have 2 hills of straight neck, and 1 hill of zucchini.

You can see that the okra is shorter in the center of the row, the deer pruned it for me when the electric fence was down.

I will make another post, hopefully to keep from losing this one.

You can see a young mole in the center close. This is the row of okra that had the most flood damage. I was spreading some of the mulch when I noticed this mole rooting around in it, I hit him on the back with the manure fork, when I did 3 to 4 inch earth worms started crawling in all directions. The mole must have been in the mulch harvesting earth worms.

This is the east end of the worst flood damaged row of okra. You can see that the deer have pruned this okra also. I think that the north and south garden will survive, but only part of the wildlife garden will survive, but nothing will survive if we don't water it.

Looks about like my okra over east.

The okra over at Jennifers' is quite a bit shorter ,more like your deer pruned okra.

I've ran into a few moles with my tiller. Didn't hurt my feelings one bit.

Rick

My computer has gone nuts, it is telling me that Ft. Smith Temp will be 100 to 107 for the next 2 weeks. My min/max has shown 100 or more a bunch of times this summer.

Madge came home from music lessons a while ago, the donkeys saw her and started telling her how hungry they were, so Madge came in wanting to know if we had anything to feed them. The only thing I could think of was some sweet potatoes from last year, and 3 apples on the bar. We fed the 6 cattle left in the pasture last winter, now they think we should do it all the time. Even though the pastures have been baled, there is still enough grass for them to eat, they are just spoiled.

Everything around here ls looking pretty dry, but I wanted to show you the sun flowers that great grand son and I planted. It is such a joy to get the young ones out and roll them in the dirt, and maybe dropping a few seeds at the same time.

Larry I cherish memories of my grands kids in the garden. They are the sweetest times. Going through a mess with my daughter now has me upside down. I am determined to get black eyes planted today. And chickens loose into garden area. I picked up 150’ of Turkey wire. I will line the bottom with chicken wire. Pictures coming soon

Water, water, water. That's what we're doing in the garden. Even so, I'm sure some things won't make it through the next couple of weeks.

Garden things that are not actually gardening include:

Making bread and butter pickles yesterday after work. They are good. I only got 4 jars but really that is plenty. The cukes are slowing down, although I picked 4 this morning.

My friend sent a roasted cherry tomato sauce recipe last night, so I grabbed all the ripe cherry tomatoes this morning and made it. Sort of. The roasted tomatoes with the sautéed onions, garlic, and basil were so good that they were not made into a sauce. I left them chunky. They will make a great bruschetta for dinner once night next week!

Seriously though, do this if you have a lot of cherry tomatoes. We always have too many for fresh eating, so they waste. Not any longer. This is the way to use them up.

Then, I sat out on the shop porch and cleaned up the Highlander onions. Nice onions! They're tidy and in storage now. All the storage advice says to store them at around 60 degrees. lol There's no such things at my property right now. The house is barely hanging at 76.

So....I took 4 eggs to my friend's broody hen. I hope this goes well. There's two more broodies in my coop right now. I'm about to put them in the dog kennel coop/pen for a week. It worked for the other two broodies. I did promise Baby that next year she can have chicks. She's the smallest little hen--a bantam Easter Egger. She goes broody every year, but I've never given her chicks. Next year is her year.

The watering was done this morning....and the SG tomatoes were deep watered last night. Our neighbors invited us to go out tonight.

I guess Covid is bad again, though. Tom has to wear masks at work again. I know several people who have recently had it or have it now. Luckily none of them are very sick.

Well, I've not had my second covid booster, I guess I need to go get that done.

My cucumbers are still producing. They do drink a lot of water. I'm keeping them supplied.

I would highly suggest some research before running off to get a "booster".

Lots of water is right. I worked in the garden yesterday. Threw away over 20 pots. Either grasshoppers took them out or not enough water. The little. Bad words. Even are eating my Iris tubers.

I have had my second shot, but I don't think I would have taken any if it had not been for my wife and daughter. It is a shame to have the feelings that I do about anything our government does, how does a persons trust sink so low?

I need to go out to the garden and find something to do, because I can really get on a soap box when I get to thinking about all the things going on around the world.

I needed something else to do so I picked up 200 pounds of free pork fat. Have y’all ever made lard

I helped when I was a kid, we rendered the fat in a large cast iron pot outside. We would save the cracklins to eat, but I never cared much for them. We butchered our own hogs.

My grandmother also made soap, but I was never in on that.

Man, those guys I watch on the Alone show would LOVE that lard. I would definitely like to know the best way to render and store it. So much stuff like that we probably need to learn or re-learn. I like to always make time for learning useful things, but this modern world we live in doesn't make it very easy sometimes. So much nonsense out there sucking up our time.

Slow, I'm 100% with you on the trust aspect. And believe me, I was ready for Uncle Sam's call anytime and signed on the dotted line. Trust in almost all institutions has completely evaporated, much like our gardens and lawns lately. The way I see it, we don't need them anymore and they don't represent a single value that I have. If we can take care of our business at home and help our neighbors/friends, then that may be the thing worth fighting for. The corruption is astounding and the solution will most asuredly be painful.

Had some hamburgers tonight with fresh tomato, peppers & pickles...and boy was I ready for it. Finally have that summertime salsa to boot. In that way, life is good :)

I have 3 jars of cucumbers fermenting. One has jalapeños for my youngest son. I was gifted gallon of tomatoes, celery bananas and cucumbers. I got those taken care of to make room for fat. Tomorrow I am getting propane to hook up Turkey fryer to start rendering fat. I was told 1 pounds equal 1 pint. In the meantime I found my juicer to begin juicing saved fruits to can juice. I want to get as much as I am able out of my freezers.

We didn't even know what a freezer was when I was a kid. We did not kill hogs till after Thanksgiving, the weather seemed more stable back then, we could cure a hog with sugar cure, and the weather stayed cool enough for the meat to keep. The lard was placed in a lard stand, which was about the size of 5 gal bucket, best I can remember, then placed in a cool room, which was any room in the house. Dad worked in a coal mine and we heated with coal. We grew up like a rotisserie chicken, we would sit around that coal stove and rotate all winter long, one side burning, the other side freezing.

I can remember a can of bacon grease sitting on the stove, seemed like all the time, I used it like butter. We had cows and mom made butter, but I liked bacon grease better. I guess germs had not been invented yet, I expect plastic had not been invented yet either, because our frisbees were the metal lids off of 8 pound metal lard buckets.

I remember my mom making soap out of bacon grease and lye out in the back yard.

Had to wash our mouths out with lye soap back then ( after gettin a whippin).

My dad worked in a dairy barn. He made use of those rubber hoses. ( God dam you boy ,swish , slap .. ) But he'd get done with the milking in time to go to church . oh yeah , even on a Wed night.

There was always a can of bacon grease sitting around on the stove.

Aside, about poke greens , my Dad always said cook them in grease.

Rick

I make beef tallow, Can use it like butter and in fact down south, they call it Texas Butter.

When I smoke a brisket, I take the fat trimmings and put them in a half aluminum pan and put the pan on the smoker. I'm generally running the smoker at 275* and all that fat will render tallow.

I use tallow to wipe down the outside of the smoker, like seasoning a cast iron skillet.

Rick, I am sorry, that seems a little rough. I got a few whippings, probably should have had more. The worst one was the summer after dad died. I slipped off and went swimming in a strip pit, and I could not swim. When mom found out about it she made me bend over the bed and whipped me, it did not hurt me, but mom started crying, and said I have lost your dad, how do you think I can stand losing a child also, that hurt me more than any thing, I decided that I would never hurt mom again. I even took care of mom in her later years, she loved it and I did also. Except for dad dying, I have good childhood memories.

Time to can some of these beefsteaks and cherokee purple. We're down to one jar from last year. Considering the pic below, I highly doubt we'll get a better yield this year. It's pretty pitiful weather-wise.