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Well thanks, everyone. I did get the long raised bed cleaned out and I brought up two pickup loads from the coop and spread about two inches over the entire length of the bed. Then I went down to the landscapers yard and brought back two pickup loads of creek sand to put back in the run. It...

I've got the day off because it's MLK day and I've promised myself I'm going to work in the garden. Back in the fall I cleaned out all the boxes and covered them with straw but there's one area where I have a 70x4 foot raised bed where I grow okra, winter squash, beans and corn. I'm thinking...

We have both the Grimes Golden and VA Beauty. Many of the apple trees he has will produce some really ugly fruit. But when you bite into one like the Grimes it will take you instantly back to when you were a kid and you were stealing apples from your Granny's tree. There is not a store-bought...

My favorite red apple is 'Red Bevans' which is an old-timey, heirloom apple. You won't find these in a store and probably not in most roadside stands. We bought a variety of 24 apple trees over the past several years and planted them in the back forty and they're just now starting to make. We...

Sure looks a lot like Audrey here... I'd be careful if I were you...

For me it would depend on the time of the year. In the spring the dogwood would be my hands-down favorite. In the summer it's a toss up: I love the mimosa and the sweet smell of it as I sit out under it and watch Chicken TV in the early evening. But the pecan tree would have to be right up...

As Tony Montoya said: "Say Hello to My Little Friend..." We were cleaning out a couple of boxes in the garden and Teresa jumped and started yelling for me to come over. I thought she'd turned up a snake but this little darling was sitting there. If you look closely in the bottom left corner of...

Southern, so sorry. I don't mean to be preachy or offensive. I'm just an avid beekeeper and I'm always encouraging people to consider keeping bees. Sometimes I get carried away. Again, sorry. No offense meant.

Yeah, I think we had a pretty good year too. I've got some romaine lettuce in now that I'm about to start taking. And there's a whole box of collards just waiting for the first good hard freeze. I know I said it before but we took the last of our collards out on Valentine's day of this year...

Bay, I've heard about dehydrated okra but I've never had it. Would you season it before putting it in the dehydrator? I bet it would be pretty good.

Well said, Marshall. I think... :P

Steve, I just went to your page and you have a really nice place there. Do you keep bees or chickens? Get some bees for sure and you'll find a great hobby plus make a few dollars throughout the year. Raw, local honey sells for $8.00 a pint here in central NC. We'll sell maybe 80 pints in a...

In the freezer section. You should be able to find it in bags. If not then use the unbreaded type, let it thaw, and toss it in a bowl with a half cup of corn meal and the same amount of flour. Salt and pepper to taste and throw it on the skillet. Uh, oh. I just saw that you are from the San...

I'm sorry, but when I was writing this I had this thought but it didn't get in the post above. We weren't different from most of the other families in rural Alabama at that time. Most of my friends and cousins grew up just like us. Poor but not poor. The early sixties were tough because...

Nope. Nothing like cactus. Now I understand that a lot of people won't eat okra because they think its slimy. It is if you boil or steam it, like in soups, etc. But fried okra is something else. Properly fried and seasoned okra is a bit of charred Heaven to a Southern Boy. Some fried okra...

Did you know that almost every major building in NYC has a bee farm on top of it with multiple hives? And there are hundreds of bee hives hidden in Central Park out of sight of the public. You can raise bees in town. They are non-intrusive and they will benefit anyone in your neighborhood who...

I'm going to revive this old post only because I want to do a final report on the results of growing my own Campari tomotes. The harvest was good and long. We were taking tomatoes as late as the middle of September. The first month we got Campari tomatoes that were the proper size, form and...

I'm sixty-two years old and grew up dirt poor in the south as the oldest of eight children. I don't think my Daddy ever made more than $40 a week at best. He was a tenant farmer in rural Alabama. I planted, hoed, chopped and picked cotton. We had a well and me and my brothers had to haul...

There's no in-between on okra. You either love it or hate it. I love it just about any way you can fix it. I'm like Bufford 'Bubba' Blue, the big black guy from Forrest Gump. "You have fried okra, you have steamed okra, you have gumbo what has okra in it..." I like it anyway you make it...

That stuff's like candy! I open a quart jar and I can't quit until it's gone or the wife pries it out of my hands. I took some in about a month ago and gave it to a few okra lovers at work and one guy ate the entire quart before the end of the day. When I asked him about sharing it with his...