Category: food (Page 9 of 35)

Garden – Winter 2018 & Spring 2019

June 17, 2019 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

Just a little catch-up on garden events…

Winter 2018

Late last year near the end of December, with the milder weather up to that point, we had an extra squash plant just start to grow from seed planted in the Spring, and after keeping it covered with blankets when necessary, the Lord graciously granted a few squashes, and we thank Him:

And He granted a turnip to grow too, for which we are thankful as well! Some time ago I just threw down a bunch of turnip seed, and every once in a while a turnip just shows up! 🙂

Spring 2019

We planted garlic at the end of last year, and recently it was time to go get them!

Here is how the area looked in March…lots of weeds, but garlic growing too:

We pulled one up back then, but there was no bulb on it, so we realized we were still too early. I did put that one garlic back hoping it would continue…

The prickly lettuce that just grows natively here really took over our gardens this year, I believe especially because of the many rains God has graciously granted, so I went into the garlic area and cut everything down that wasn’t garlic, to try to give it all some sun:

But then about a week and 1/2 later, the garlic plants started looking like they were maybe dying, and we had more rain coming, and I was worried they would start rotting, so I decided to start digging them up…

This is a planted garlic:

I cleared the mulch around it:

Dug down the full hand-shovel length at 4-5 points around it, several inches away from the plant, and lifted slightly each time:

And then when the ground around the plant was loose enough, I gently pulled out the bulb:

Interestingly, some of the garlic plants started to bolt what looked like a new bulb! I wonder if over time that would have planted itself…

I don’t know, but here are some of the harvest results! Not that every plant that sprung up made it up to this point, but after pulling up that one early with nothing on it, and with what I thought was going to potentially be a problem with any garlic bulbs already starting to rot in the ground, the Lord graciously ended up granting that every single plant have at least some bulb on it, including that one I replanted!

I made a meat dryer some time ago, which is perfect for hanging garlic to dry and cure. Here is after the first part of the garlic was gathered:

And then the rest of it:

More Harvested Garlic Hangling in Meat Dryer

And finally with the meat dryer’s screen panel in place:

Harvested Garlic Hangling in Closed Meat Dryer

We are always very thankful to God for His gracious provisions, and the miracle of taking a seed, which appears dead, and burying it, and then life coming from it, and growing and multiplying itself and being fruitful according to the Lord’s providence alone (ie. I can’t make a garlic bulb just appear), like His word planted in the hearts of men and His Spirit bringing forth new life as He wills, and like His Son, the Lord Christ, dead and buried, but miraculously raised out of the ground again to life! We are eternally grateful to God for the salvific life He brings through Jesus Christ!

— David

Providence’s Perennial Provisions: Pink Primrose

June 6, 2019 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

While our work for our provision requires the sweat of our faces (Gen 3:19), in God’s glorious creation and graciousness, He has provided some things to just grow naturally as edible for humans. We here are always looking out for those kind provisions, and we’ve talked some about them in other perennial blog posts, and so we have another one we have discovered on the land — Pink Primrose.

Recently I was mowing the orchard area. With the gracious rains the Lord has brought this Spring, this is what I was mowing down…many of the weeds half the height of many of the trees!

… and during the mowing, I came upon a pink primrose patch that the honeybees were making great use of, and so as to not take away their food supply (we do whatever we can here to help the valuable honeybee!), I left the patch. If you look closely, you can see some of the bees busy working:

We had learned about pink primrose in the past, but I thought now would be a good time to do this blog post. Here’s a patch of them:

And this one shows the leaves well:

And here is Foraging Texas’ article on pink primrose. You can eat the leaves before flowering, and you can even eat the flower petals! The plants apparently provide vitamin F and some fatty acids. You just have to be careful about how much of it you eat, although the leaves are pretty small, so it takes a bit of work to collect much of it anyway.

But, once again, we are thankful for this free gift from God in graciously granting something He is singly growing for us!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 2019’s 3rd & 4th Chick Hatchings

May 23, 2019 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

The Lord graciously granted another couple of chicken hens go broody this 2019, and here are the results!

This mama hatched out 8 as our 3rd group this year, and all 8 are still going strong, thanks to God. I’m guessing all the eggs under her were hers as every chick basically looks like her…I don’t remember something like this happening for us before. 🙂

And this mama hatched out our 4th group this year, 9 this time, and all 9 are still alive and healthy too!

And here is their video:

As always, we are thankful to the Lord for His continued provisions. May we look to Him for ALL things, in every spiritual and temporal matter!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 2nd Round of 2019 Chicks

April 15, 2019 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

The Lord graciously granted another hen to go broody this 2019, and graciously allowed 7 new chicks to be hatched out!

All are still doing well and continue to grow…

And here’s their video:

We try to never take these things for granted, nor anything for that matter, and we are very thankful to God for granting these new farm provisions!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 2019’s First Chicks

March 14, 2019 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

We recently had one of our young hens from last year go broody early this year. Usually if they go broody late in the year or during winter, we just pull the eggs so we don’t have to deal with trying to keep a place warm for new chicks during very cold weather.

But I decided to let her go this year, and she hatched out 7 new chicks! And they are all still alive today and doing well, thanks to the Lord!

We did run the heater in the summer kitchen a couple of nights where they were when it got down to 20 degrees F outside, and it all worked out just fine.

On an aside, this mama had a pal hen that was part of the clutch she came from, and these two hung around together. Her friend was white colored, and I called her Nilli (for Vanilla). And so with this one being grey, and them being friends, I call her Granoli (for grey-Nilli 😀 ). Sadly though, Nilli was killed by a predator late last year, but God is granting her friend make up for her loss with the new chicks. 🙂

And here they are:

And here’s their video:

We are very grateful to God for His graciousness in granting these new chicks! We pray they, and our entire homestead and community, are used by Him for His glory and the benefit of others!

— David

Garden – Fall 2018

November 29, 2018 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

Since our last garden update, we thought we’d show how the garden has progressed through a difficult drought. With lots of heat and little rain in the Summer, the plants struggled, but coming into Fall, the Lord graciously granted some good rains, to Whom we are thankful.

Here’s a recap of the garden goings-on…

Okra

Okra always does very well:

But even this year, they struggled, and dropped their leaves early, which is quite unusual. Normally, they stop producing when the freezes come, but it was different this year:

But we are thankful to God for what He granted! And here are some of them preserved in apple cider vinegar:

Sweet Potatoes

This year, I planted them in our original garden area. Between the rains, and with hard freezes coming, it was time to get them out of the ground. Here are the main plants the day of:

And some volunteer ones from last year:

Here’s Sue helping dig them out:

The uncollected harvest:

And then what the Lord graciously granted! It seems less than last year and they are quite a bit smaller, but I put them in a garden that has had only one mulch layer put down, and we went through one of our worst heat spells and droughts this year, so besides the fact that God doesn’t have to grant anything if He doesn’t want to, we are thankful for what He did, with food coming directly from Him!

Now it’s 3 weeks of hardening out in the open, and then 6 weeks into the root cellar, each individually wrapped in newspaper for sweetening! Yum!

Garlic

Since we had a garlic harvest last season, we saved some for planting this year, and completed that process recently too. I believe this is our first time of replanting our own!

Here is the beautiful soil the Lord composted over the last year, into which we planted the garlic cloves:

And a newer pile we had started:

And here are the garlic plants starting to sprout up!

We pray for God’s provisions from these next year, as He wills.

Around the Garden

Here are some other things currently growing in the garden…

The Goji berry plant:

The blackberries, which died back, but started growing from the roots again:

Our little volunteer squash plant. I cover it with double blankets most nights 🙂 :

A volunteer tomato plant. It had little flowers on it, but sadly,even covered with blankets, didn’t make it because of the cold:

Free prickly lettuce:

And a volunteer turnip:

And finally, I thought I would include here the last from the orchard, this year’s pecans. Once again, I think the drought really made things struggle:

But, as always, we are very thankful to the Lord for granting all these provisions! May we be humbled He even considers giving these things at all, and may we be satisfied with, and thankful for, what He does. And may He grant us to be fruitful followers of Him as well!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 5th & Surprise 6th Round of 2018 Chicks

November 12, 2018 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

The Lord graciously granted another hen get broody this 2018, and she hatched out our 5th set of the year! She hatched out 4 with 1 sadly not making it more than a day, but the other 3 are still doing well as of today!

And then one day, Sue was taking the dogs up to their goat field for their evening running around, and lo and behold, there was a hen walking around with 5 chicks following her! Wow! We eventually tracked down that she had been sitting in a pecan tree fenced-in area. Thanks to God for allowing her to sit out there for at least 3 weeks without being eaten herself!

We gathered them up and got them into the summer kitchen brooder building, and here they are. She had 5 with her, and they also are still all going as of today!

And here is the video for both groups:

As always, we are grateful to the Lord for granting these provisions, and His extra graciousness in preserving the mama and eggs outdoors for all that time!

— David

Category: food (Page 9 of 35)

Garden – Winter 2018 & Spring 2019

Providence’s Perennial Provisions: Pink Primrose

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 2019’s 3rd & 4th Chick Hatchings

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 2nd Round of 2019 Chicks

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 2019’s First Chicks

Garden – Fall 2018

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 5th & Surprise 6th Round of 2018 Chicks

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