Category: Gardening

The Lazy Days of Summer??

The August 2011 edition of Country magazine has on the cover: "Easy Season, Relax and enjoy the dog days". Summer might be the lazy days for air conditioned city folks, but they are not lazy days here on the farm. We have been trying to apply the wisdom of the old proverb: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:  Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,  provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man." (Proverbs 6:6-11)

In addition to all our other work, we have been busy canning and freezing as much of our nutrient dense food from the garden that we can so that we have nutritious food to feed our family this winter when all the colds, flu bugs and other sicknesses are going around.

Sweet Corn 2011
This is a bucket of high brix sweet corn (25 brix) from our garden. Our family loves corn and we grow a large patch of sweet corn. Last year the stink bugs destroyed our last planting of sweet corn. This year Cathy was determined that we would get all our sweet corn. Unlike other bugs that are deterred by high brix plants, stink bugs love sugar. We found a repellent that really works. We used a mixture of liquid laundry soap that we got from a health food store and mixed it with water and sprayed it on the ears as the corn was nearing maturity. We had to spray it twice. It turned some of the outer husks brown, but it didn’t affect the corn. Watering with a sprinkler seems to help reactivate the soap also.You can find more at this link: http://www.ehow.com/info_8607847_stink-bug-repellent-home.html

Cutting Corn
Cathy and some of the children cutting the corn off the cob. The corn is first husked, then the silk is removed. Then about 100 ears are blanched at a time in a large outdoor cooker/canner. The corn is then cooled in water, cut off the cob and put into freezer boxes. This year we put 98 quarts of corn in the freezer.

Canning Veggie Soup
Cathy and Kara in the process of canning 41 quarts of beef vegetable stew. In the lower left corner is canned beets. Cathy learned an easy way to wash a large quantity of beets and potatoes. You put them in the washing machine with an old towel and set it on the gentle setting. It works well and takes the work out of washing all those vegetables.

Cooking Under Pressure
There are also times to sit and relax and learn how to cook under pressure! Here Cathy is reading a new cook book about how to use her new 10 quart pressure cooker. She is waiting while salsa is being canned in the the outdoor canner. She and the girls made and canned 76 pints of delicious salsa that day. Salsa is great on eggs – fried, scrambled, and omelets.

Daniel with Spinning Wheel
Recently, our son Daniel made an electric spinning wheel using a sewing machine motor and foot control. It is amazingly simple and works well.

Oh the non-lazy days of summer, when we go to bed feeling like we accomplished something and we feel more prepared for winter. This winter we will sit by the wood stove in the evening and enjoy a good book or use that new electric spinning wheel.

A Stink Bug Trap that Really Works

We discovered an easy, non-toxic way to get rid of stink bugs. Place a light above a pan with soapy water and leave the light on all night. The stink bugs are attracted to the light. Once they get in the water, they quickly drown. For the soap we used liquid dish detergent. In 24 hours we have caught as many as 400 or 500 stink bugs. This works well in the winter and early spring when the stink bugs are coming out of their winter hiding spots and want to go outside. It may not work in the summer or fall. A friend of ours tried it last fall and all he caught was moths.


A stink bug trap we put in the attic. The light is a twisty fluorescent bulb. We also tried it without the reflector on the clamp lamp and that worked well too.

The Dismantling of America

For a long time I could not figure out why our federal, state, and local governments did not care about  farms and manufacturing closing down and more and more food and other basics needing to be imported. This week, here in Frederick County, there are two more dairy farms closing down for good. Everything is being sold at auction, including the milking equipment. The last several years have been very difficult times for dairy farmers.

The construction industry is also being dismantled. Even if the building industry were to revive tomorrow, I’m not sure how much infrastructure is left to support it. The last several years there have been many sawmills sold at auction—probably most of them sold for scrap metal. The boys and I attended the auction of Monumental Millwork last year. It was a large supplier of doors, windows, and mouldings for the Baltimore and Washington areas. It had been there for years. Everything went dirt cheap, even though there was national online bidding. Most of the big door machines were purchased by a beekeeper who was going to take them apart for parts to put together machines to build bee hives – never to make doors again.

I have been studying the economy and reading many articles glossed over by the main news media. Gradually, I have been able to understand why the government is encouraging the dismantling of America. Normally, when massive amounts of money are "printed" like the government has been doing for the last 20+ years, it causes hyperinflation. But we have not had very much inflation. Why?

When newly "printed" money is kept within a country, it causes inflation. But if the new money goes out of the country it does not cause inflation. The government discovered a way to print their way out of their financial troubles without the problem of hyperinflation – at least for now. As a result, the trade deficit with other countries has become huge. Farms and manufacturing through government policies and regulations have been encouraged to close so that more and more money can flow out of the country, so that more money can be printed to cover government over spending. Currently, close to half of our food is imported and almost all of our clothes. It is a short-sighted philosophy, but it has worked very well so far. The questions are: how long will it work? What will the ultimate consequences be? Where will we get food and clothes if other countries decide they do not want our "funny money"?

There is always the possibility that the government has found a monetary policy that will work in the long run. But there is also the very real possibility that it will fail big time. Here at Jehovah-Jireh Farm, we are hedging our bets by trying to learn as much as we can about growing our own food. If something were to happen that would stop the availability of imported food, at that point it would be too late to begin to learn how to produce all our own food. Every gardener knows how hard it is to grow enough food to live on for a year. You have all these dreams about putting seeds in the ground and harvesting all this wonderful food. Then as the summer progresses, reality sets in as plants don’t grow right, bugs devour plants and vegetables, and the weeds take over the garden. The learning curve is steep, but in the end it is very rewarding as you learn to conquer those problems and are able to produce high brix, nutrient dense food that tastes much better than the grocery store food.

Now, more than ever, it is important to learn how to produce our own food and to support local farms. The Fukushima disaster also raises questions about the future safety of the winter fruits and vegetables that come from California and Mexico. Much of the organic salad greens come from these areas during the winter months.

Extending the Growing Season

As we continue our quest to grown as much of our own nutrient dense food as possible, we decided it was time to build our own greenhouse this year. It is placed in Cathy’s kitchen garden so that she can grown greens through out the winter. We based the design of the greenhouse on the design of our chick brooder buildings where we start the baby chicks. The brooders held up well the last several years with all the big snows. The roof is steep enough that much of the snow slides off. The greenhouse is designed so that we can take it down in the summertime if we want to. Or we might just remove the plastic covering and cover part of the frame with greenhouse shade cloth so that we can grow lettuce and other greens in the shade during the heat of summer.


All of the bows are up and it is almost ready for the plastic covering.


We made the bows of the green house out of 2X4’s. Where the 2X4’s were joined together, pieces of plywood were glued and nailed on either side of the joint. The rafters are 8′ long and the side walls are 5′ high on the upper side and 6′ on the down hill side. The bows are spaced 4′ apart. The ridge pole that connects the top of the bows together was not yet installed in this picture.


The finished greenhouse – 12′ X 32’  The cost of materials was less than $300. If you build it yourself, a greenhouse is very affordable. The plastic on the sides can be rolled up to provide ventilation when it gets too hot inside.


Melody gathering spinach in the greenhouse with one of her cats. The spinach was overwintered in two cold frames before the greenhouse was built.

An Incredible Substance – Raw Milk

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Raw milk is a much more valuable substance than what most people realize. Everything that we have fed it to has become more healthy. Our family consumes about 7 to 10 gallons of the stuff a week. The yogurt that we make with it is usually mild and not very tart. We noticed a difference in our children’s health one winter when our cow was not producing milk. The children had more sickness, colds, etc. than they had other years when our cows were producing milk.

We feed the baby chicks raw milk and it has made a significant difference in their health. The chickens grow much better and we have very few die. The milk also seems to make the chicken meat more tender. We have found that calves and lambs that we bottle feed do much better on raw milk than on milk replacer. Raw milk is one of the best protein sources for laying hens. We don’t give the hens milk very often because we do not have enough extra milk, but we have used it when a flock was not doing as well as it should, and they improved with the raw milk added to their feed.

Last summer we discovered another valuable use for raw milk. In our garden, there were a number of different types of vegetables that were low brix. We tried different types of foliar sprays that should have raised the brix. Instead, they lowered the brix. The Brix Talk discussion board did not have any solutions. I couldn’t find a solution anywhere. So I asked God to show me what to do. He brought to my mind that in the Bible the Land of Canaan (what is now Israel) was called a land flowing with milk and honey. I always assumed it meant that it was a very productive area that produced a lot of milk and honey. This time the thought that came to me was, "What if milk and honey put on the plants would make them more productive?" I did a test and sprayed some milk and honey on various plants in the garden. About an hour later I tested the brix. To my surprise and joy the brix had risen 3 brix on most of the plants. The brix of clover raised from 8 brix to 13 brix. We have used the milk and honey spray on our garden this year with excellent results.

When the brix (sugar and mineral content) of the leaf of a plant is above 12 brix, insects will leave the plant alone. The high sugar content of the plant causes alcohol to be produced in an insect when it eats the high brix plant. It gives the bug diarrhea which results in dehydration and death. We had heard that when the vegetables in a garden are high brix, the insects will leave the vegetables alone and start attacking the weeds. We found it to be true. Insects attack plants that are low quality. In poor soil the weeds are higher brix and the vegetables are low brix. When the plants have the right amount of calcium and phosphates the opposite occurs. The weeds are low brix and are attacked by the bugs and the vegetables are high brix and the bugs leave them alone. Conventional agriculture mindset is to spray anti-life chemicals on the plant to kill the bugs, and then feed the poor nutritional quality vegetables to us. The following pictures show some weeds that the insects were eating.


The bugs attacked the weeds in the corn patch. The brix of the corn leaves was 15 brix.


Japanese beetles were eating on the weed in the center of this picture which was in the potatoes. We did not have any problem with potato beetles eating the potato plants. The brix of the potato leaves was about 12 brix.

We had a problem with the Japanese beetles eating our grapevines. After we sprayed the grapevines twice with milk and honey about a week apart, the beetles left. The milk and honey mix that we use is:
3 1/2 gallons of water
1/2 gallon of raw skim milk
1 cup of honey

I put the milk and honey spray in a pump up bug sprayer and sprayed the plants. It might be possible to get the same results without using the honey. I have not experimented with that yet.

Recently I read an article in a farming magazine, The Stockman Grass Farmer, about a dairy farm in Nebraska that had raw skim milk that was a waste product from making butter and cheese. To get rid of the milk, the farmer applied it to his pastures. He found that where he applied milk it made a significant improvement. It significantly increased the microbes in the soil and the growth of the grass. Further test plots showed that the raw milk applied once, at the rate of three gallons per acre, increased the yield of the hay by 1200 pounds per acre! Their conclusion was that raw milk could be worth two to three more times more money as fertilizer!


Several weeks ago we bought another cow – a Guernsey. Why a Guernsey?

One reason is that my grandfather had a purebred Guernsey dairy herd and sold "Golden Guernsey" raw milk. My father talked about how good the golden Guernsey milk was. We found that we like it better than our Jersey milk. But the real reason that we wanted a Guernsey is that some recent research has found that there are two different types of milk protein – A1 beta casein milk protein, and A2 beta casein milk protein. The A1 beta casein is what most people who have casein intolerance are allergic to. Goat and sheep milk are A2 beta casein. There is a "controversial" claim, based on 16 years research, that the A1 beta casein which is drunk by most people in the US could be a cause of diabetes, heart disease, autism, and schizophrenia in people with immune deficiencies. It is also claimed that the A2 beta casein does not cause these problems. Research has showed that 96% of the Guernsey breed of cows have the A2 beta casein, while the Holstein (black and white) breed from which most of the milk in the US is produced, has the A1 milk protein. Obviously this is very damaging information for the dairy industry and there has been considerable attempt to suppress the information about A2 milk.

For more information read
http://www.naturalnews.com/026684_cows_diabetes_protein.html or the
book Devil in the Milk by Keith Woodford.

Another use for milk is to help a person refuse what is bad and choose what is good. In the Bible, Isaiah 7:15 says that Jesus would eat butter and honey so that He would know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. That is one of the benefits of adequate calcium in the diet. I have heard that the proper type of calcium, according to a person’s body’s need, can help an alcoholic give up alcohol, or a smoker give up cigarettes. The proper calciums can also help children calm down and be well behaved without the use of mood altering drugs.

Raw milk can also be used to cure a number of chronic diseases. The Weston A Price Foundation has a very interesting article about raw milk being used to cure a number of different diseases. http://www.realmilk.com/milkcure.html Recently we purchased the book Milk Diet as a Remedy for Chronic Disease, by Dr. Charles Sanford Porter. It is a reprint of a book that was originally printed in 1905. This book goes into great detail about how to conduct a milk fast to cure sickness.

Raw milk can also be an important survival food. It is a food that can be produced fresh every day year round and consumed without further cooking or processing. This idea came from the Bible, Isaiah 7:21-22: "And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep; And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land."

Raw milk is a valuable substance. It is unfortunate that it is illegal to buy or sell raw milk here in Maryland. Perhaps some day…

Update, August 9th:

One thing I failed to mention in last month’s article is that the milk and honey foliar spray did not work for us on green beans. It actually decreased the brix. The foliar spray that we use on our beans is:
4 gallons of water
12 tbsp molasses – we use feed grade
16 oz. Cola soda – a source of phosphoric acid
4 tsp hydrated lime
10 tbsp liquid fish
4tbsp seaweed powder
8 oz. apple cider vinegar
1 tsp sea salt

We also alternate the above foliar spray with milk and honey on our sweet corn. Our sweet corn was 26 brix this year. 24 brix or higher is in the excellent range.

The American Chestnut Orchard

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As many of you know, the American Chestnut Foundation has an American chestnut breeding orchard located here on our farm. Recently a new sign was put up so that you can see where the orchard is located. The orchard is located on the right side of the lane, up the hill behind where the sign is located. The American Chestnut Foundation is working to develop a blight resistant American chestnut tree by cross breeding the American chestnut with the blight resistant Chinese chestnut. The cross bred chestnut trees are then back crossed with an American chestnut a number of times until a blight resistant chestnut tree is obtained that is 15/16 American chestnut. Currently, there are about 500 trees in our orchard. The oldest trees are four years old and the youngest ones were planted this spring.

The American chestnut was at one point the most important tree in the forests from Maine to Georgia. The chestnuts provided abundant food for many species of wildlife. The wood is beautiful and is great for cabinet making and furniture. In addition, the wood is excellent for outdoor projects as well. It has the rot resistance of redwood, but it is much harder and more wear resistant. In 1904 an imported fungus caused a blight which started killing the American chestnut trees. By 1950, approximately four billion trees on some nine million acres of eastern forests had been destroyed by the blight. Only a very few American chestnut trees remain today. When the American chestnut trees died out, a lot of wildlife went with them because a lack of food. The oak tree replaced the chestnut in many areas. However, the acorn does not compare in food value to the chestnut.

Chestnut orchard sign
Chestnut orchard
This is the entrance to the chestnut orchard. Note the deer fence to keep out the deer.

When I do volunteer work, I often feel like I receive a greater blessing than the ones that I help. This has been true in our work in caring for the chestnut orchard the last three years. When we moved here, the chestnut orchard was the worst piece of ground on our farm. The Department of Natural Resources had sprayed RoundUp and killed all the vegetation before they planted the chestnut trees. As a result, instead of grass, it was the most awful plot of thistles and other weeds! The trees grew poorly. For the next two years, I would let the thistles grow until they started making a flower bud, and then I would mow the orchard. I know that some of the people from the American Chestnut Foundation thought that I didn’t mow often enough and that my plan for getting rid of the thistles wouldn’t work.

This year I received the blessing from my labor. I discovered that in taking care of the chestnut orchard I had learned an important lesson on how to take a poor plot of ground and turn it into a highly productive soil. In addition the thistles are gone! The thistle plant is at its weakest point when it is starting to produce a flower. Its energy is being put into making seed rather than into growth. By repeatedly cutting it at that stage it is weakened and eventually killed. The chestnut orchard is now the best plot of ground on our farm. It was in the chestnut orchard that we discovered how to increase the brix (sugar and mineral content) of the pasture. This summer the brix of the clover in the orchard was as high as 17%, up from only 7% last year. We are using what we learned in the chestnut orchard to improve the soil on the rest of the farm.

So how did we improve the soil in the chestnut orchard? We did it by letting the grass grow tall and then mowing it short. The roots on grass go as far down in the soil as the grass is in height above the soil. If the grass is four inches tall, then the roots are about four inches deep. If the grass is a foot tall, then the roots go about a foot deep into the soil. When the grass is cut, the roots die back to the same amount that is left above ground. By waiting until the grass was a foot or more tall before we mowed it, it meant that we were adding a lot of organic matter a foot or more deep into the soil in addition to the grass clippings that were added on top of the soil. In other words, we are creating topsoil a foot or more deep. Not only is organic matter added to the soil, but also carbon is being sequestered in the soil as the roots die back. The grass takes the carbon out of the air in the form of carbon dioxide and puts some of it in the roots.

The results in the chestnut orchard this summer were amazing to me. I noticed significant growth in the trees throughout the summer. Last year the tallest trees that were at the end of their second growing season were about 42 inches tall. Last year the American chestnut foundation said that our orchard was one of the best growing orchards in Maryland. This year, with a similar amount of rainfall, the tallest trees at the end of their second growing season were seven to seven and a half feet tall! This was accomplished without any fertilizer.

So why doesn’t this principle of soil building work on your lawn? It is because a lawn is not left to grow a foot or more tall over and over through out the summer. If a lawn is cut when it is six inches tall, it is only adding organic matter into the top six inches of soil. The deeper the top soil, the better the growth of the plants. That is one reason why raised beds tend to be more productive. They add topsoil on top of the topsoil in the soil which increases the total number of inches of topsoil for the plant to grow in.

Two year old tree
This two year old chestnut tree is 7 1/2 feet tall. The 2×4 is 8 feet long.

Tree planted this spring
This is one of the chestnut trees that was planted as a seed this spring.
You can see Sugarloaf Mountain in the background.

Producing High Brix Food

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A number of people have requested information on how to produce high brix food and how to increase the brix of the pastures.

Producing high brix food is not achieved overnight. It takes three to eight years to get the nutrients balanced in the soil so that high brix food can be produced. When you first get your refractometer and start testing your vegetables it is discouraging discovering how poor they are. However, it becomes exciting as you see the improvements in the brix reading, taste how much better high brix food is, and you know you can’t buy this quality of food in the stores.

The best way to know what minerals should be added to your soil is to do a soil test. It needs to be a weak acid LaMotte soil test such as is done by International Ag labs, not the usual strong acid soil tests performed by most labs.

The first year, in the fall of the year, plow the soil and apply soft rock phosphate at the rate of 100 pounds per thousand square feet or 10 pounds per 100 square feet. After applying the soft rock phosphate, apply high calcium lime at the same rate. Do not use dolomite or limestone with more than 5% magnesium. Magnesium releases nitrogen into the air and messes up the soil balance. We get lime from Frederick Farmers Coop in Frederick. It is called Thomasville lime (Old Castle) for $3.05 for 50lbs. Soft rock phosphate is available from Lancaster Ag for $11 for a 50lb bag. They will ship UPS. Lancaster Ag also has garden blends to help gardeners produce high brix food.

Producing nutrient dense, high brix food is more involved than just putting down soft rock phosphate and limestone.

There are also foliar sprays that you can apply to increase the brix. Our tomatoes, potatoes, squash, and cucumbers were low brix and I could not find a foliar spray that raised the brix. I remembered that in the Bible it referred to the land of Canaan as a land flowing with milk and honey.  I tried two cups of raw milk and a little honey per gallon of water. It raised the brix of the leaves of the plants from 7 brix to 10 brix. It raised the brix of the clover in the pasture about 5 brix.

A foliar spray that we used on the green beans and the sweet corn that raised the brix and produced 28 brix sweet corn was:
Per Gallon
6tbsp     molasses – we used feed grade
8oz.       cola soda – a source of phosphoric acid
1tsp       Hydrated lime
3tbsp     liquid fish
1tbsp     seaweed powder
14tbsp  apple cider vinegar

If you want more information, I encourage you to check out the websites listed below.  I also recommend reading the book Nourishment Home Grown by Dr. A.F. Beddoe. Refractometers that test the brix reading are available inexpensively on eBay. Get one that reads in the 0 to 32% range.

Weston A Price Foundation – High Brix farming and gardening
http://www.westonaprice.org/The-Quest-for-Nutrient-Dense-Food-High-Brix-Farming-and-Gardening.html

Soil tests and articles – International Ag Labs
http://www.aglabs.com/soilTesting.html

Supplier – Lancaster Ag, Lancaster, PA
http://www.lancasterag.com/catalog/garden/intro.html

High Brix Gardens
http://www.highbrixgardens.com/

Brix Book and articles
http://crossroads.ws/

Test equipment and articles
http://www.pikeagri.com/
Check out their user guides – plant sap analysis and compost guides

If you are a farmer, we highly recommend the Carey Reams seminars that Pike Agri has. They are well worth the cost. They take you to levels of agriculture that you did not think possible, such as how to produce alfalfa that is 28% protein, grows 12 to 17 feet tall and produces 20 to 30 tons per acre! Carey Reams was hired by the nation of Israel, when they first became a nation, to show them how to turn the desert into highly productive farmland.