Some news and updates

I'm sorry for the lapse in my posts. I have been side-tracked preparing materials for two ministries projects that I have become involved with, and my free time has suffered a bit.

My wife and I are now leading our church Senior High Youth group. It just started meeting this past Sunday and it's been a wonderful challenge. There has been a lack of good Bible/discipleship training in that group in the past, and we hope to get the group on the right road.

I am also prayfully considering starting a teaching ministry. This ministry would take me to various churches and settings to teach the "whole counsel of God". I am passionate about teaching God's word, and feel an urgency to the Body of Christ. I am seeing a startling rise in Biblical illiteracy in the church, this is a dangerous position as it quickly opens the door to apostasy and more. You only have to look at how the major denominations have traded Biblical truth for political correctness, all in the name of diversity.

Finally, I am going to begin a teaching on the book of Isaiah this fall at Camp Risley. Preparing to teach this book is a huge undertaking, but I love every minute spent in the word.

*****UPDATE on Hope the pig**********

Hope is doing fantastic. She's back at the farm where she was born. We were able to get her weight up over 3 lbs, she is eating grain, and walking all over the place.  Trust me when I say that a toddler pig is worse then a human toddler. She got into everything, so we knew it was time for her to rejoin her brothers and sisters.

A piglet named Hope

What an eventful weekend. I apologize for not adding my normal Sunday praise and worship post, but we were beyond busy this past weekend.

Friday night we went out to my good friends farm to see his new litter of pigs. His pig LuLu had a litter of nineteen piglets. Three were still born and there was one runt.

The runt just wasn't going to make it. The mother did not have enough teats to begin with and this runt was getting shoved aside and it was obvious what her fate would be. We were not going to let that happen. So between my family and another family, we decided to take it upon ourselves to get this piglet "over the hump".

Meet Hope, a very adorable, very hungry piglet. We brought her home Friday evening and commenced the every two hour feeding schedule such a young piglet requires to survive. Every two hours means exactly that, so all through the night my wife and kids would wake up to handle Hope's needs.

What a worthwhile endeavor, despite the sleep deprivation, the kids loved it. My wife took the brunt of the late night feedings saving the early morning feedings for the kids.

Hope seems to be doing very well, although I'd like to see her add some weight, she is a voracious eater. We started her off an a mixture that was found on the Internet, a mix of whole milk, raw egg, and half/half. Later we were able to get some colostrum from a nearby Dairy Farm. This hopefully, will do the trick.

Our friends took over pig raising duties last night to give us some needed rest, and we'll take her back this weekend. The goal is after two to three weeks she'll be strong enough to handle life on the farm.

Squash loss mystery solved

Meet Halyomorpha halys, better known as the the brown marmorated stink bug. These little plagues are the cause of my total squash loss this year. Had I paid a little closer attention I might have been able to stop the damage and save my squash, but unfortunately, my attention was focused elsewhere and my squash was a total loss.

This garden pest could prove to be a major threat to home gardens and organic farms. Government entomologists are especially worried about a new Asian variety that has been spreading from Eastern Pennsylvania. The problem is that this new variety has no natural predators in the U.S. and the damage they can do is catastrophic. “If they get to Florida, it could be like the atomic bomb going off,” said Douglas G. Luster, research leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. “They’re starting to show up in North Carolina.”

The problem with this pest, it is an equal opportunity eater. It loves fructose, any source of fructose. My squash with their hollow vines full of sap were a nice treat, but they eat everything else from tomatoes, cabbage, grapes, peaches, anything sweet.

There are tests being done to see if an Asian wasp can be introduced to the U.S. to handle this menace, however, there is always a risk when introducing new insect species in an ecosystem. For organic gardens and farms, there currently is no remedy except to pick them off and burn them.

So how did I get hit so bad with this bug? For the first time I planted sun flowers in my garden. In fact, I planted them in a row right next to my pumpkin bed. It seems that sun flowers are one of a few of stink bug "trap plants". Stink bugs love them, so the idea is you plant them far away from your garden and the bugs can't help but go to the sun flowers. I planted mine 2 feet from my pumpkins.

You could watch the spread; first the pumpkin row, then up one row to the next series of squash. Unfortunately, my grapes are in line next. We destroyed everything in the lower beds last night and took as many of the bugs out as possible. I'm pulling the sun flowers today.

Lessons learned:
1. Be more vigilant in the garden. Look close at each plant to deal early with any problems.
2. Companion planting has a dark side. I need to learn more about companion planting, there are things that can be planted that pests hate.

Farm primitives

I have a hobby that has really begun to take off (as if I needed something else to occupy my limited time), I collect farm primitives. Farm primitives is a small area of antique collecting focusing on old tools and equipment found in barns, farm yards, and the like. I have always sought out old rakes, shovels, hoes, etc... but lately my hobby has taken a dramatic turn.

In a previous post I gave tribute to my father-in-law, Alger Langworthy, who recently passed away. Alger was a collector of all kinds of things and thru him, I was able to bring home a couple fun, interesting pieces for my collection. The first piece is am old, horse drawn, two-armed cultivator. This piece is wonderful. It rolls fine and is begging to be restored and someday put back into use.

The one thing I look mostly look for in farm primitives is their ability to be used again around StonePath. These old tools, with very few exceptions, are not meant for decoration, rather, they are meant to be refurbished and put back to work.

Many of the old rakes, forks, and such just are not made new anymore, or worse are made in China. Their function is still sorely needed, however, there is no market demand. Many of my old, antique forks, find very good use around our homestead. They made need a little TLC, a new handle perhaps, but they still function as designed. The old saying, "They don't make them like they used to." definitely applies in old tools.

The piece pictured above is a classic horse drawn plow. It needs new handles and a  new coat of paint, but otherwise it's a tool looking for a horse.

I hope to start restoring both of these large pieces sometime late fall, but I'm in no hurry. These tools were made to last and can hang on for quite sometime.

I encourage anyone looking to homestead to consider older tools. They are usually much cheaper then a new tool (if it's even made), built far better, and can be surprisingly useful. 

The Country Boy's (or Girl's) Creed

The Country Boy's Creed

I believe that the Country which God made is more beautiful than the City which man made;

that life out-of-doors and in touch with the earth is the natural life of man.

I believe that work is work wherever we find it, but that work with Nature is more inspiring than work with the most intricate machinery.

I believe that the dignity of labor depends not on what you do, but on how you do it;

that opportunity comes to a boy on the farm as often as to a boy in the city
that life is larger and freer and happier on the farm than in the town,

that my success depends not upon my location, but upon myself—not upon my dreams, but upon what I actually do, not upon luck, but upon pluck.

 I believe in working when you work and in playing when you play and in giving and demanding a square deal in every act of life.

-Edwin Oswood Grover

My wife and I found a framed copy of this creed in an antique store and immediately fell in love with it. It says exactly what we feel. It's simple truth is tonic to our souls and what we seek at StonePath Farm.

Busy weekend at StonePath

We spent a very busy weekend at StonePath. We are remodeling our front room (a subject of a future blog), which caused my wife and I to split forces so that we could get work done on the room, the ton of canning that needed to be done, and some chores around the farm.

We canned nine quarts of our much praised salsa using tomatoes and peppers grown here at StonePath. We did need to supplement with some locally grown green peppers but only a few.

We also were able to can thirteen pints and 6 1/2 pint jars of zucchini relish. This recipe could be our favorite thing we can each year and the most requested item from our friends and family. We are tthankful to some of our friends up the road who provided us a bunch of zucchini so we could get this project done.

In an earlier post I talked about the complete loss of all my squash, zucchini included. We were planning to replace the lost harvest at our local produce auction, however, our friends wonderful gift got us moving in the right direction.

We also managed to freeze seven 4 cup packages of shredded zucchini to be used later in a variety of ways.
The spring lettuce, in the kitchen garden bed,had run it's course and bolted in this heat. Normally, I replant lettuce in this bed and we take advantage of the micro-climate the house creates. We had lettuce into the second week of December last year (not bad for North-Central Ohio) largely due to the house, exterior walls providing warmth and shelter.

I decided to plant a second zucchini crop as an experiment. I am not ready to throw in the towel on zucchini, it's too much of a staple for us. So I ripped out the lettuce bed and planted three hills of zucchini Costata Romanesco, which is a 52 day heirloom variety, and three hills of Zucchetta Rampicante, which also is an heirloom and around 55-60 day. I will have to trellis the rampicante, it runs fairly long vines.

 

Tonight I intend to harvest our beets and use that bed for our fall lettuce crop. I doubt it will produce as long in the lower garden as it has in the kitchen garden, however, I am more interested in the squash then the lettuce at this point.

Words of Praise and Worship

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. - Gen. 1:31

God created the heavens and the earth for us, for me! The thought never ceases to fill me with wonder and amazement. The reason the sixth day was "very good", was He had finished all His creation with the pinnacle achievement of man.

God did this knowing we would disappoint Him, reject Him, and ultimately kill His son in the height of our rebellion. He did this anyway and pronounced it "very good".

The relationship that God desires to have with us was worth it enough to Him to leave heaven and die for us.

I say humbly, it is very good.

Bad squash year

I am having the worst year for squash that I can remember. My entire pumpkin bed is gone, that is over 15 vines. I have two sad hubbard squash vines left, however, they are not sending out any vines. My entire lower squash row is a total loss.

That's not the only affected area. I have lost my entire vegetable spaghetti bed. Last year we produced so many spaghetti squash that our freezer was packed and it provided all winter. Our acorn squash is producing but just barely. We have a total of two fruit on eight plants!

The zucchini is also barely producing. We have harvested four zucchini off of a similar eight plants. Our rampicante zucchini isn't producing at all. Yellow squash yields are similarly bleak.

The rest of the garden is flourishing with a few exceptions. I just can't explain my squash failures. To combat pests, I used floating row cover until late June which should have done the trick in that arena.

I am wondering if the very wet spring, coupled with the early, prolonged heat wave created the perfect storm of poor growing conditions. I'd like to hear what others are experiencing.

In the meantime, we'll be supplementing from the produce auction this year.