Reply to my niece's comment

First, I feel I must address a comment made by my niece today. She said she did not respect spiders and therefore they were all killed.

Let me tell you why I say I respect spiders and I'm not just referring to the fact they kill bugs. When I was bit last summer by a Hobo spider while working in my garden, I did some research when months later after being bitten, I was still having some problems with a weeping wound, nausea, and body aches.

In the past, I'd had my house sprayed a few times against spiders and I was wondering if I should hire the exerminator to come once more. Around here, in the fall is when the spiders move indoors looking for a warmer hang out. The occasional spraying had occurred after I'd been bitten by a black widow - twice. I still feel spraying for those spiders was the correct decision at the time. Our oldest daughter had moved in with us after college and her belongings took up every available space making our garage and basement a spider's haven and I saw more and more spiders crossing the floor upstairs. This was also after a tornado when many spiders have been displaced and they are on the move looking for a new home. The spraying helped eliminate our problem at that time.

What I learned last summer though made me rethink my death to all spiders leaning. Killing off all the spider in your yard encourages the invasion of Hobo spiders. That's a scary thought isn't it? You see no human method or technology can effectively compete or destroy and keep a hobo spider away from your home in comparison to the activities of competitive predatory spiders. In other words, other spiders compete for the bugs to eat and for places to build spider webs. Less food, and home locations means fewer hobo spiders. Spraying encourages them to move in. Thankfully they like to move about a lot, hence, the name Hobo spider. Now as I mentioned I'm seeing lots of Daddy Long Legs and in comparison to Hobo spiders and Black Widows, they are a welcome sight.

I've learned once more about the delicate balance in nature and so for the past couple years not spraying is the wisest decision. So if a spider is in my home, he or she is dead; outside and I'll let them live. All except black widows and hobo spiders that is. I've yet to see a recluse and I'm hoping they don't exist in my yard. Kirk may jokingly say I haven't a complete set yet of Wyoming poisonous spider bites but neither one of us really wants for me to see what happens if I'm bit by a recluse spider. First hand knowledge isn't always what one desires.

Little Miss Muffet

There is this spider just outside our front door and I've been watching her. The first time I tried to take photographs, she heard the click and ran away. So yesterday, I saw she was eating one of her catch and decided to try photographing once more since my camera was already out. My oldest grand daughter was the only one awake and she followed me. This was a huge move forward for her because a couple years ago she was staying over night at her grandparents in Washington and her mother was dressing her. She reached for her daughter's shirt on the bed and a large wolf spider crawled out of the neck of it. Our daughter screamed, our grand daughter followed suite, and until this summer screams or at least, "Grandma kill it, Grandma kill it", would ensue at the sight of every spider in sight.

Luckily, Daddy Long Legs have been prevalent around the yard right now. And since NO they are not poisonous unlike what many people would try to tell you, I figured they were a good spider to introduce our grand children to the arachnid world.

This would not have been the case last summer, unfortunately, Hobo spiders were everywhere. Like their name implies, they do wander and I'm thrilled to announce they apparently have wandered off because I haven't seen but a few web this summer. The years before that it was wolf spiders that pervaded the yard and some made their way inside. Once I picked up a dish rag and a big one dropped out of it into our stainless steel kitchen sink. Between the loud plunk and the unexpected sight of it, I admit I squealed a little. No, not screamed though Kirk would say otherwise, but a squeal. I don't think I can scream. I don't know how. Then our daughters friend, a male, tried to stick her in the kitchen sink and hence, she now fears spiders.

If your familiar with wolf spiders, you know they look too much like a tarantula for comfort and they do bite. That moves them to my not nice list. That and I've seen some pretty good bruises from their pinching bite when neighborhood kids start playing with them and they take a dislike to the whole affair. So I was happy to see lots of Daddy Long Legs around. And now that our grand daughter has grown more comfortable with them, I'm shifting her to watching other spiders. Not that I want her to handle them but watching can be a fascinating pass time. I've spent many hours as a youth observing them and I still like to steal moments to observe. Though I don't advocate actually picking them up, except Daddy Long Legs, I do want our grand children not to fear them. Respect, yes, for I've experienced the nasty side to some spiders personalities. I was bit by a Hobo spider last summer and I've been bit twice at one time by a Black Widow. So I know some of the miseries they can inflict. Kirk jokes that I've only one poisonous spider in Wyoming to go, the Recluse, and then I'll have a complete set. I could do without that experience as I definitely didn't ask for the first two and would not wish the experience on anyone.

Despite painful memories of those encounters, I don't condemn the whole species. I appreciate their ridding my yard of other bugs. Spiders are an accentual part of nature.

From a photographic sense, I was thrilled our grand daughter would watch in the background as it made a much more interesting photo. Though I like the photos, I'd still love a better macro someday so I could capture the details of the small spider.

Just so you know not to breathe a word about this post to my grand daughter, I'm in deep doo doo over these photos. She wasn't in focus in these pictures and she informed me, in a rather disgusted tone, that I messed up big. I tried to explain to her that I had done it on purpose. Wrong move! The no sweetheart, you do not rate below a spider, explanation didn't cut it. There is just no explaining to a grandchild why her beloved grandmother would choose to make a spider in focus and her not. So mumms the word and she'll never know she was presented to the world all fuzzy for artistic reasons.

Harvesting

Froze some peas and thought how I wish I could use glass instead of plastic bags. But there just isn't enough room in our freezers for the added space they take up and not enough jars for canning and freezing too. It is part of a problem where our countryside does not produce food voluntarily, unless your a bison or a beef and eat grass. So that means I buy berries in bulk and anything else I might want to use for the next year. if I chance to be somewhere and I can purchase a need - I do, enough to last me for a while. That means my freezer has corn meal and rice from the Good Foods grocery store I visited while in Fort Collins during the kid's photo shoot. That is our nearest organic groceries and it is four hours away. That puts a burden on our freezers to carry meat, fruits, vegetables, and grains. There is no eat locally except meat and they have a farmer's market but it is a 80 mile trip to attend. Then when you get there, the selection is narrow since our country naturally produces a little hay and nothing more.

Right now, my garden isn't producing well between the weather and the imbalanced soil but it is producing and next year it should produce a bumper crop is the weather cooperates. That means since some of the crops were done, I put the pedal to the metal, so to speak, and since there was a few cool days this past weekend, (70's) I kept the canner going all day. In went a second batch of beets. The grandkids don't like them so I canned in pints.

And, I canned four batches of chickens in their broth. Note the pretty rich yellow color. I've found that if I cook my chicken in the crock pot or the oven, I get a much richer color and a stronger flavor of chicken when I add it to the pot on the stove for making chicken noodle soup. That is where the twenty somewhat scrawny chickens went - into jars for chicken noodle soup this winter. I skinned 6 to eight a day for three days. As the temperatures had been hot, my crockpot was going night and day, rotating out the chicken pieces. Then into the fridge they went into jars in anticipation of the cool weather that was to hit this past weekend.

I made an important discovery while working on this project. If I cook the two year old hens in the crockpot for a long period, over night for example, then the meat comes out tender. Waste not want not they say and I've a few more two year old hens that will find there way into the pot. Not that they won't lay well next year but I've a few replacement hens that need a home in the big coop. The ones that were an experiment in my quest to become more self-sufficient. What I've learned is that unless we could let our chickens roam free, allowing them to scrounge for much of their daily bread, we can't afford the feed to raise dual purpose chickens to a decent size to eat. Cornish crosses is the only way to go in our situation.

Oh I'd done this experiment before but this time I was trying a different feed, a much less expensive feed, but the result was the same.

Then there is the beans, just now coming on but slowly. I hope they aren't producing like wildfire while we are gone to San Antonio. Not sure how our daughter will keep up as it is with our chores and her busy schedule.

We are trying the Dragon's Tongue Wax bean this year. It is the purple and yellow bean and it originated in the Netherlands. Yes, I'm trying lots of nothern type vegetables like the Siberian tomato and the Glacier as our weather is shifting back to being colder again. I had planned to try letting some of my beans go to seed but with the Farmer's Almanac calling for snow by the tenth of September, I'll be lucky to just get beans to can if they are right.

The Dragon's Tongue Wax bean caught my eye in the catalogue because it is dual purpose. You can eat it as a wax bean and as a dried bean like Navy. Have any of you tried it?

While I'm talking about beans, does anyone have a trick for keeping your beans more crisp in the canning jar. I'd like a firmer texture in mine. I do have a trick for corn that makes freezer corn taste like you just cut it off the cob but I'll share that later when, I pray, IF we get corn before snowfall. The cobs have quite a ways to go yet. The heat forcasted for this week will help but will dry the garden out while we are gone. Too bad this was the year I planned on letting some corn dry on the cob in the garden and try grinding it for meal. I'd read where you could use sweet corn for corn meal. Sounded yummy to me and with limited space, I'm looking for some dual ways to use my vegetables.

Have you any other tips for me on dual purpose plants for up North where the gardening season is short, this year, really short? I've a feeling we will need to produce all we can in the more difficult days that will come. Can't spend like our government has going deep into the red and not have concequences that impacts us all.

Sunday Spiritual Thought

The Lord will shape the back to fit the burden placed upon it.

Neil L. Andersen

Dirt

It's that time again for Brenda's photo challenge. http://brendaphotochallenge.blogspot.com/

Wish this time of year left room to be more creative as the theme was dirt and my mind whirled with dirty scoundrel, dirt poor, dirty job, dirty face, and just plain dirt. But my body was too busy canning, processing roosters into jars, and the whirl of activity involved with keeping up with a five, four, and nineteen month old. So I searched through my photo archives and decided on a couple pictures you've seen and one you haven't.

Dirt Poor

I'll admit it. I took a picture of a picture but it is one I just had to share. This photo is our favorite of the old family pictures hanging in our livingroom. It was taken during the Depression on a ranch in Montana where Kirk's dad and family lived DIRT POOR. Gene talks about going out in the crisp cold mornings to get the milk cows and stepping in a fresh cow pie to warm his feet. Shoes were for school only. Doesn't he and his older brother look like shrunken little old men. They probably had many responsibilities at an early age, unlike the children of today. I believe they were better for it.

Dirty Face

Then of course there is one of my favorite photos of our youngest grand daughter eating an Oreo cookie.


Plain old Dirt
And last is red dirt. I've always loved country where the dirt is red as it lends such a warm inviting appeal. This photo was taken back in the middle of nowhere, one of my favorite places of all times. If you can't see a house for miles and a busy traffic day is one where you hear a lone Jet fly over head, then your in my favorite place-the middle of nowwhere. Of course I've never been in the middle of nowhere in a desert and that just might narrow my definition of middle of know wheres that I love.

Sad Facts of Self-Sufficiency

Notice the light colored comb on this three and a half month old hen. She is of course not laying.

Those of you who buy your meat wrapped in plastic don't often think of what came before. But, for those of us who try and raise much of what we eat, we have to face some brutal facts. We can't keep all the offspring of our livestock and some of those offspring just don't make the quality cut. Or in other words, some just don't have a better personality, better conformation, or better production than their parents. They just don't have the potential to produce more meat or milk whatever is their purpose and therefore do not move us forward in increasing the quality of our flocks and herds. And I'm using the words flocks and herds loosely since I personally don't have any herds and 12 setting hens is barely a flock but I do try and improve upon what I have. It is due in part because my dad drilled into my head that good stock eat no more than poor stock so why keep the poor ones that produce less and those that are a pain to deal with? He's right. There are good stock with wonderful personalities and you can become just as attached to them as those that would down grade your herd, flock etc.

This rancher's mentality is where the pet owners and the livestock raiser's divide. Just because you have a mare doesn't mean she should have a foal. Just because an animal has a sweet personality, should you keep her. That is what I was faced with this morning. I had a few month old hen that I just loved how she cackled but she was scrawny, stunted in size and was a Buff Orpington.

Now some of you would say what's wrong with having a Buff Orpington and I'd say nothing except they have performed extremely poorly for me. With our weather and our coop situation, they just have not laid during the coldest months of winter nor during the hottest months of summer therefore, I'm feeding a lot of food and getting barely anything in return. If you are a livestock owner, you have to think economics or if you have a budget like ours that doesn't leave you with lots of room to be soft you have to push mooshy feeling aside. So I'm forced to make decisions from my head and not my heart. Oh we keep Mildred who hasn't done a thing but she scrounges around for her supper and I supplement her foraging a little but her drain on our income is minute. And I can't afford many Mildreds so that cute cackling hen lost her head this morning along with all the rest of the Buff Orpingtons. Some were offspring from a Buff Orpington rooster and some were last years hens who proved that we weren't going to be raising any more of their breed.

The hen on the left is a fifteen month old hen who's obviously not laying and the one on the right is this years offspring.

This is a close up of that hen. Her comb is darker than the three month old but not of a deep enough shade that tells me she is laying. Here is Gerties to compare with ..and an Austrolorp hens who shows the deep red color of a good layer.

So what happened yesterday and today is six hens each day lost their heads, literally. I'm cooking them up and canning them for chicken noodle soup this winter. I always have a feeling of remorse when I do the dirty deed but it has to be done so I square my shoulders and "Get er done." as my son would say. And now that they are gone, I've a number of other potential replacement hens that I have to choose which will stay on through the winter and which will also loose their heads. I've narrowed it down partway this morning and I'll start tomorrow with eliminating some more roosters. Then I'll move on to the hens. There is a few hens with coloring that is eye appealing BUT I need to look them over more carefully since they not only have to look pretty, they have to have a straight breast bone, good strong legs and non crooked toes, and a good thick hen look with wide pin bones.
I think chickens have pin bones. Let me know if I'm wrong.

And not only are the hens going but Pedro got out this morning and had to be trailed home. It's a sure sign he's about ready for the cook pot also. It seems that when ever our hogs or our beef start destroying fence and getting out and just becoming destructive, they are of the age and size when they need to be put in the freezer. Maybe it is God's way of making it easier on us or maybe it's just his way with me for I become so annoyed with them as I repair fences and deal with their destructive behaviors that I just want them gone. Pedro has begun to push that button and he is filled out enough to butcher but we of course need some cooler temperatures to do the dirty deed.

Spinning Llama

This is the bobbin of grey llama. For some reason I do prefer the spelling of grey with an e rather than gray with an a. Just like I like the spelling of colour rather than color. I even say the words a bit different according to their spelling. Funny, maybe but words have always fascinated me.
But I'm suppose to be talking about llama wool. I've finished the rovings I bought in Colorado when we had our parent and daughter weekend. This is the last of the two single plys hooked on the Lazy Kate and being plied off.

With not enough grey or dark brown to make two balls, I plied them together.

Now I've got to get out my sock books and decide what pattern I'm going to use. Something simple I can do while I set at the show table with Kirk. We'll be leaving for Texas soon and I need a hand project for the trip. This should do nicely. I wouldn't of gotten it done but for my bi-annual attack of Fibromyalgia. With diseases that can't be cured and must be therefore endured, I try to have some busy projects that I can do that still make me feel productive while I'm down. You see depression lurks just below the surface and I do all I can to keep it from raising its ugly head. Depression is something that naturally goes with many of my ailments. Of course it doesn't need that excuse to appear as many of you know.