Lehman's Country Life

The flowerbeds are bright with colors that paint a pallet of brilliance for us to enjoy as we rush hither, thither and beyond.  Just for a moment, stop and absorb the beauty around and may it nourish your soul.

As the colors may revive our spirits, the vegetables that are planted will soon be ready to nourish our bodies.  Be sure to check out the web site at the University of Georgia to see the National Center for Home Food Preservation (www.ugs.edu/nchfp ).  They have many tested recipes and answers to commonly asked questions.  If you have a gauge style pressure canner, check with your local Extension Office to see if they will be doing any classes or testing calibration this season.  Canners need to be checked on a yearly bases to assure their accuracy as you are doing home canning.

How’s your food budget doing, during these difficult times?  Growing a few things might be a way to stretch your food dollars and encourage children to learn in the process.  Patio and container gardens can easily provide lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, and even zucchini or cucumbers if you desire.  These gardens are easy to grow and provide great learning opportunities for children.
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Did you know a typical family of four can reduce its amount of organic waste by an average of 85% with home composting?

When you read about composting, one of the first facts you’ll read is how one-third of all the trash we throw away in the United States is food waste, and 97 percent of these food scraps end up in landfills. Most people think that food waste in land fills isn’t a problem. It’s food, right? And food breaks down and certainly must break down faster than any other material in the landfill… right? Yes, but at an alarmingly slow rate and not without environmental consequences.
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We see the commercials on TV all the time for flea and tick repellant and killer for our pets, but do you really know what a flea is? They are the acrobats of the parasite world. Try to catch one and you will see the speed and agility that makes them perfect for their job. Knowing your enemy is essential to battle so let’s get to know our enemy.
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There are two kinds of cat people in our neighborhood. First, are the cowboys who believe cats were created for the sole purpose of controlling the spread of mice in barns and woodpiles. Period. Second, are the animal lovers who feel bad for the critters who are out there fighting, scrounging and multiplying. An animal-lover’s heartstrings pull every time she sees the inbreeding that leads to death, neurotic behavior or diseased kittens.

Nine-year-old Brigit falls into the second category. And that’s why we are now taking care of three abandoned mama cats. (We only had two mommies at last writing, but they are multiplying!) Little did we realize how much cat food, cat litter and poop scooping this project was going to require! And there’s heartache too.
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One of the most appealing aspects of growing your own food is that you can enjoy a higher quality diet because you don’t have to rely on having your vittles transported hundreds or even thousands of miles to your table. Varieties that boast better flavor and nutrition than what you might find in the market but which are passed over in the commercial world simply because they are too tender or delicate to “ship well” can be yours. What’s more, you can enjoy these foods at a lower cost – and with a little planning ahead, for nothing!

Anyone who has ever grown their own lettuce has probably neglected one or two plants, and as the season gets on they start to grow in a peculiar way: upwards, instead of outwards. This is known as “bolting.” Salad eaters know that the lettuce harvested in this condition will be tougher and more bitter tasting, and so the plants are generally yanked and tossed onto the compost heap. But if they are allowed to go through their full cycle, the tall stalk they produce will soon be covered in attractive little flowers. If pollinated, these blooms will contract and then dramatically expand (like dandelions) to form a delicate sphere of feathery threads, soon cast to the wind. This is the reason why the plant has developed its stalk, to give these floating messengers the best chance of wide dispersal. Each carries a cargo of a single lettuce seed, to start a new leafy generation. With a little careful husbandry, these seeds will be yours to plant, nurture and consume.
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Have you ever posted a tweet on Twitter? Written on a wall in Facebook? If you have, you can skip this article and go directly to our Facebook profile.

But if not, please read on. Because we want to reach you, our customer, when and how you want to be reached, we have always used technology. Yes, it’s true. We use high tech to sell low tech. Years ago it was adding phone lines. Then a toll-free fax. Today, of course, it involves computers. In our efforts to get products to you, a missionary couple in Uganada; or a hunter in a cabin in Michigan; or a second home owner vacationing in the Bahamas; or simply Mom looking for a rag doll just like she used to have, we have to be there.

So again we are embracing technology. Today this means Facebook, Twitter, blogging, YouTube and much more. I invite you to follow Galen, my brother and the president of Lehman’s, on his Twitter account and to keep up with us at our Facebook page. One of the best things about this new technology is that we can inititate a conversation. That’s right. Two-way communication between people. We’d love to hear from you!

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Even though it makes sense that your tomato vines should be at their largest and lushest on the longest day of the year –June 21^st— to get the very most out of summer’s life-giving sunshine, they probably won’t get that enormous until July or maybe even August. Their growth depends on photoperiod (how much light they get every day), climate (how warm and how cold – the smaller the difference, the better), how much they’re watered, and how much they’re fed.

As regards nutrition, around every two weeks I give my tomato vines a light fertilizing with liquid fish emulsion. This is a thick slurry of just what you might think, namely old rotten fish mush from the commercial fishing trade’s copious waste; it comes in a concentrated form in a gallon jug. You mix this with a unit quantity of water (usually 1 tablespoon per gallon) and apply it with a watering can, or just out of a bucket. I mix it a little bit lighter than indicated on the jug’s instructions, and give it to the plants as a substitute for the second watering.

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At The Landing, our goal is to show the public the activities and life of the 1800s. One event that happens every spring is plowing and planting. We have two fields that must be plowed, dragged and planted each spring, and there are also several house gardens that must be prepared for planting.

The 19th century showed the largest jump from “primitive” to “modern” in the history of farming. By the end of the century, farmers had gone from using horse- or oxen-drawn walking plows to steam tractors. At The Landing, we use a sulky riding two-bottom plow, pulled by two horses. Our plow is a real mid-1860s model and allows us to plow more land, faster, than with the walking plow.
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