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Jack's been clearing brush and some stumps where the fence will go; marking off fence post spacing with orange spray paint.  We really don't know what we're doing!  Jack is doing most of the labor and I'm the go-fer and tool caddy.  We can't bring the generator on the same day as the mowers since they won't all fit into the truck bed, so he worked on this on different days depending on what tools were needed.  He's used everything we have on hand to clear it...from a brush cutter, small mower, electric weed eater and hand power saw.  Oh and a sling blade and machete.

You may be tired of seeing just a few fence posts, but this is Jack's first attempt at using barb wire.  He wanted to put some around this for added support, even though all the posts are notched and screwed in, caulked and tarred.

Here's the road view of the center posts we put up the last couple days.  They are caulked but as yet not tarred.  Posts are not perfectly straight when we put a level on them, they have natural curves.  Jack is digging all the holes by hand with a shovel and post hole digger.  He is also drilling and screwing in the screws that connect the poles by hand on this particular set of poles.  Getting the holes dug by hand is lot of work, but much easier in Florida sand than I remember it being in Mississippi growing up, when there was just really thick clay.  The upright poles are 8 foot poles and are being put in about 3 feet deep.  It takes a while to position the poles as level as possible both horizontally and vertically.  One of the horizontal poles had to be put a little higher than the other in order to have a place to put in the connecting screw.  We want enough "up top" for a 4 foot woven wire fence with an additional strand or two of  barb wire on top.  We think.  See?  We really don't know what we're doing!   Any advice is welcome!

This line of view above is where we are preparing to put the first fence section.  We marked off spaces ten feet apart, and Jack will reinforce this center brace with more barb wire.  If we had ever fenced anything before, this may all be as easy as bam, bam, bam.  But we haven't, it's all new, and some days when we're out here Jack hasn't yet become fully un-jetlagged from his night shifts.  And with my gimpy knee, I'm not much help in the manual labor department, though I do backfill holes and pack down around the posts with a metal pole, do the caulking, tarring...some holding this and that.  So it's reallyyy slow, but it's all good.  It seems like if we ever can get this property completely fenced, that will be a MAJOR feat and some of the other things will seem really easy in comparison.

Above, one of Jack's experiments with the barb wire.  It's his first time working with it, ever, and with no one to show him what to do.  So he's watched a lot of youtube videos and read as much as he could beforehand.  He's enjoying figuring things out.  Sometimes it takes a while just to get the hang of what a new and unfamiliar tool actually does.  It was fun watching him use the wire stretcher, if that's what it's called.  And he has a hand tool that does several things...cutting, clamping, etc.  He's got the wire diagonally here for support.  We have no idea if it really needs that support, but he figures the more support for the upcoming fencing, the better.  Jack is like a kid in a candy store when he has a tool he's figuring out how to use, so this has actually been fun for him, and I'm glad!

So far, we have put in partial days at the farm this past week.  Most days it was overcast with a slight chance of rain.  The temps were in the mid 80s, up from the mid 70s of last week.  We really felt the heat the first day out because there was sun with no wind and boy, that was tough.  I know we sound like wimps, but we're pretty hardy when it comes to weather.  It just starts cooking when it's sun and you and nothing in between.  Thankfully as the week progressed, there was a lot of cloud coverage, and with that came a steady breeze, which was great!  PERFECT weather :-)

There were a few splashes of raindrops but no rain till Wednesday night, when it poured.  Boy, did that make a difference in the road...ugh.  Even with just an overnight rain, the road went from pretty passable to rough.  Any more rain and it would be a mud pit again, just like it was for about four months this summer.

We have to weigh our limited resources and the timing of it all...put down shell for the road holes, or fence the property?  This is the dry season (comparatively) here, so we decided after a lot of back and forth conversation  to try to get the fence done, or as much of it as we can, during what dry season we hope we have.  Let's see...

Not only is that a handsome man, I think the black tar paint looks kind of sharp on those posts, woo!

And see all those palmettos?  As beautiful as they are, they can't all stay.  We will leave "islands" of them, but much of the rest will have to be cleared, as it's impassable and full of rattlesnakes.  It's not just talk, either.  We've already seen two snakes up close and personal, and this week I got on the computer and positively identified them both as pygmy rattlers.  Supposedly they do make a warning rattle, but it's too quiet a sound to usually ever be noticed by a human.

I do not look forward to the part of this all where we have to clear this brush by hand.  I'm praying for God to help us with any equipment we need, when we need it.  At this point, a tractor or a bobcat seem to be what most folks out this way use.  I have no idea how we'll manage that, since renting and hauling those to the property are truly cost prohibitive, as are the quotes we've gotten from private individuals who hire out to do clearing and leveling.  But either of those are tools I know we'll need at various times in the future, so I'm being bold enough to put it on the prayer list :)

Here's how overcast with rain clouds it was yesterday.  Do not be fooled by the apparent clouds...there WAS sun, somewhere --- enough to give me a sunburn to last me the weekend.  I was a tomato!  (still am, but am glowing in the dark a little less by now)    More to report later, but since this blog is our journey, this is where we are at this point.

What can't be seen in the pictures is how HAPPY we are...to be able to get to the land, to have schedules that most times this past couple weeks have  meant days together to head to the farm, to have finished something, even if it's the gate, a few posts, some clearing, some further prep with plans laid out for weeks ahead.

It is FUN being with my beloved/hubby/best friend, and even just the ride out there makes me HAPPY.  We stare at the gate as if it's a talisman...something of actuality after so much waiting.  It makes me HAPPY to see Jack learning about new tools, for us to dig in the dirt, to sit on breaks listening to the whispering pines and the rattling palmettos and the sighing of the swampland on the other side of the street when there's wind.

We've met a few other folks who have land near here.  Everyone, the few who are ever out here, stops when passing by and chats for a few minutes, catching up on any news or making first introductions.  I really really like that.  So far we haven't met anyone we think of as sinister.  It seems like the folks who venture out this far are ones with some overlapping similarities in what they intend to do with their land, too, or just the enjoyment of being out here with the huge huge sky and the slower pace, the nature and the lack of interference from outsiders.  The sky here seems HUGE because there are few or no power lines and mostly sunny days, with skies often as blue as a robin's egg and dotted with beautiful white cloud cover.

We love to sweat and work towards something outdoors.  Somehow it feels more actual.  It helps me get through long, dragging days when we can't be out there, until we can again.  Whatever "it" is about being out there, it makes us both so happy.  I know part of it is our being together and doing something we love together.  We also believe God gave us this land and will help us use it for good things.  I love and appreciate my husband more every day, and especially on those days in the sun and at the farm.  We thank God, a lot...lot...lot.  And then some more.

Shabbat shalom, and I hope you'll share what's going on in your world :-)

We Have A Gate!

We get so excited about every step!  This is Jack's latest handiwork...I'm his gopher and post-holder.

It took two days because we schlep everything in the truck bed (no trailer) in small loads.  And because Jack does all the heavy labor and paces himself.

The gate had to be strapped to the top of my Jeep (thanks, Donna, for the DIY "Cliff's Notes" !)  Remind me to get Jack some ratchet straps for whatever special occasion is next...he tied that thing up there with bungee cords and what looked to me like boot laces, hmmm.

The weather was in the low 70s and surprisingly there was quite a wind blowing both days.  The swamp was singing again, as it does when there's any wind.  It makes the sound empty bottles make when you blow across the openings.  Some might thing it's eerie, but I think it's lovely.  The second day, as Jack had just gotten the equipment unloaded, I heard a decided squeal from up the road.  The wind was loud enough to obscure the sound near the running generator, but at my Jeep there was no mistaking it what it was...wild pigs!   Sure enough, just up the road, time and again, I kept hearing it and it was getting closer.  Of ALL those hundreds of undeveloped acres beyond our small property, they were headed straight down the road to us, ha!  So we came up with a "pig plan," which was just basically "get into the truck and stay out of the way till the herd passes," if need be.

I saw two boars in plain sight, and the others were in the thick palmetto scrub.  They were using the overgrown ditch on the other side of the street as their personal turnpike.  The first was a fine sized male, all black, trotting down the dirt road about a hundred feet away, towards us.  The second was even bigger, black with a ring of dirty gray hairs around his neck, really big boy, squealing and going back into the ditch.  They are so noisy and the squeals are so distinctively pig-like, there's no mistaking it.  Didn't manage to get any pics of them, though.  The squeals traveled gradually across from us, then down from us, then back into the swamp.   Didn't see any snakes this time.

It's so exciting when things align so that we have enough time together to get some work done!  Even though I can't  do nearly the labor Jack can (my knee still is our liability) I'm so far a decent gal Friday, and most of the tasks require two people. It was absolutely lovely the past two days, the skies overcast, the sun still strong enough to be warmish, the wind constant enough to warrant long sleeves.  My face is sunburnt tomato red...oops! 

The unseen players in the equation lately, and just as important to the farm endeavor, are the tools we've had to purchase.  Some of them are critical, others are Jack's choice for the long term.  We looked for a used generator, but Jack ended up buying a new one under warranty.  He could do a lot of the things by hand, but he has electric equipment for much of it, and so on.  The generator certainly came in handy this week, and operated right in the truck bed.  He used it for some drilling and for the saw that notched out spaces for the side posts to be attached.  The plug on the extension cord has a habit of falling out of the socket so he'll replace this hopefully before we're back out there again.

The road is still really un-level.  Thankfully it's still dry right now.  If we get neighbors down the street at the house that's for sale, I hope they can help maintain the road.  However, if there is no new neighbor, there will be hardly anyone using it besides us, so less wear and tear.  I guess we'll have to see how things work out.

Having the gate up feels like we're a farm now...funny, eh?  It's kind of an official threshold, and it's pretty hilarious seeing it there, locked up, with no fence attached yet, heh :)

Next up is to begin fencing the road frontage, or "the front."  We'll probably put middle support posts first and then all the regular ones.  Since we can't store any supplies out there yet without risking theft, we'll just do loads of posts in the truck, whatever it can hold each trip.  With no other laborers or means to hire them at this point, it will be just our speed anyway.

I'm so excited!!  Little steps that we can SEE...feel like big steps!
...

Cooking With Green Papaya: Round Two

Our papaya tree this year was laden with fruit.  We ate a couple that had ripened right on the tree, and they were sweet and delicious, better than what we get at the store.  Hooray!  There were 14 or so more papayas clustered on that same tree, and they are the big oblong ones, for the most part (a few are more roundish).

One day last weekend I went outside to put some banana peels underneath one of them (lazy composter, I) and was dismayed to find it leaning all the way to the ground, downward on a slope.  A really ripe fruit was smashed and had been nibbled on by some animal, but the others were still attached to the stem and were intact.

It was impossible to raise the trunk back up with the fruit on it..they are heavy.  So I had to trim a couple leaves off and cut the rest of the fruit off.  I had nothing on hand with which to prop the trunk back up, so I went to The Elephant Graveyard (currently our back porch, usually the storage room) and found something to repurpose...an over-the-toilet standing metal storage rack.  I angled it in the slope to anchor against the trunk and it's holding pretty well.  (Keeping it classyyy...lol)

And now I have 14 green papayas to contend with.  I have no idea they'll keep without spoiling, so I'm surfing around for internet ideas (have any, anyone??)  I know from last year they'll cook up like a bland squash, but I'm hoping to go beyond bland squash this year. 

Round One Experiment was last night...I went  Southern (veggie+cornmeal+skillet with hot oil = soul food).  I peeled it, rinsed it really well, sliced into apple wedge-sized slices and did the dip-and-dunk with beaten egg/milk plus cornmeal (actually leftover cornmeal mix) plus a little plain flour and then fried in a little oil in a skillet.  It was actually good, and I think next time I'll run a little squeeze of lemon over the slices beforehand to add some acid and tartness.  At any rate, there were none left from the experiment.

Round Two Experiment was tonight.  I sacrificed 1/2 of a second papaya to the cause.  Since the green papaya has a texture similar to that of certain apples, I went for the Mock Apple Pie Filling experiment.  I sliced it up, squeezed 2 lemons over, added white sugar, pinch of salt and cinnamon and baked it with a few pats of butter.  The baking time takes longer, about 1 1/2 hrs, I set the temp at 350F.  It came out with NO appley taste, but with a pleasant mildly tart and cinnamony taste...like apple pie filling but missing some depth of flavor, not insipid, though.  But definitely good enough to eat!  And it even LOOKS like apples when cooked.  Good texture!  Next go-round I think I'll opt for the addition of some brown sugar, maybe a little vanilla (??), some nutmeg, and maybe either some finely chopped raisins or something.  I'm still thinking.  I'd definitely cook the filling first and then top it later with crust...the longer baking time would probably wreak havoc on the crust otherwise.  Let's see!  I bet without any crust and maybe with a few cinnamon red hot candies it would make a nice "candied apples" type side dish.

Oh, and I'd thicken it for sure.  It did well for a first stab.

The experiments continue, but this has promise!

...a little blue, Florida style 

Looking Into Purple Loosestrife

Lythrum salicaria, Purple Loosestrife.  It's my homework of the day.  I'm putting together a notebook of useful local herbs based on what I see blooming or growing right around me or at the farm to have a hard copy of respected sources, many of which I can find on the internet, especially from my favorite herbalists.  Because of the really wet season this year, the ditches along the farm road were full of loosestrife, even though during last year's drier year I never saw any rear their beautiful spires.

I understand that in many places this plant is considered invasive.  I've changed my opinion of many invasives after several thorough forays through the book Invasive Plant Medicine by Timothy Scott. At any rate, our own purple loosestrife does not appear en masse as it does in other areas of the country where it proliferates.  When I see a thriving wildflower or "weed" rear its head these days, I scurry to Google it and see if there is any mention of medicinal or edible uses.  It appears this plant has a long history of medicinal use, though it's fallen from use in the past century. Respected herbalist Jim McDonald has a good page on it, if you click for the link.

It appears to have uses for potentially treating blood sugar imbalances, inflammation, diarrhea, and as an eye restorative.  It also appears to me at this point to be what I'd consider a safe herb rather than a low dose herb, which means I will feel free to test it myself in various ways and combinations.

So I harvested a bunch!  I harvested the flowering tops and leaves and allowed them to dry the only way I presently know how to in this climate, which is indoors on a big beach towel under a constantly-turning ceiling fan, turning them often to insure even drying.  When the leaves were crispy-dry and the stems were dry enough to snap smartly when bent, I considered them dry enough.  A good handful of the flowers were put into 100% alcohol to tincture, and I'll check back with that batch in about 6 weeks to see if it's ready to bottle up.  The tincture is something I'll try myself, starting with a few drops at a time, for its potential blood sugar regulation assistance.

You really start to fall in love with plants so beautiful as well as clearly beneficial in so many ways!  The safe ones are a joy to play with, the fun of "herbal alchemy"!  :-)

I go now to do my homework.  I've just noticed the crownbeard is putting out blooms, too.  I "discovered" it last year when not sure what those really tall dusty-whitish flowering weeds were that were so prolific.  At the time, they were at the end of their season, so I'm determined I'll try my hand at seeing what can be done with them this year.  They, too, are a plant with past uses that have fallen out of practice in modern American times.  They, too, offer promising explorations!

Ponce de Leon Park

One misty day stopping by tiny Ponce de Leon Park to stretch our legs before doing rental equipment recon.  It was yet another day my leg was not working well, but well enough to at least walk, and a beautiful walk it was.  There are a lot of pics I didn't include here, but the lovely part was hearing the lapping of the gulf waters against the tangled mangrove roots.  October, and some plants are still blooming...

Mockingbird

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy... but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Harper Lee  To Kill a Mockingbird

This is the guy peering at me from above our parked truck on a day when Jack was inside a store getting rental quotes for land-clearing equipment.  My leg decided not to work that day and I was secretly feeling sorry for myself having to sit still so long until this fellow (or gal?) began to fuss, then to serenade.  A music break!