April Showers...

Bring May Flowers!

 

 I've been hard at work in the yard this Spring! And, I'm proud to say I did most all of it myself! Lance did haul me some dirt in on a tractor, but the rest was all me!

 This is to the right side of the house...

This is to the left of the house... 

This is where the dirt Lance hauled comes in. I fixed these new flower beds with bird baths on each side of the house.  

 My knockout roses are looking great! I was fighting with some dern aphids, but opened a can of whoop Sevin on 'em, lol.

 

I planted a wisteria in this old cast iron pot and got a new trellis for it. I had to shoo some pests off this plant too, so it's not blooming at the moment.

 

Now this is what I'm proud of! I fixed these drainage river beds at all of my downspouts (all 6 of them!). Lots of hauling block and heavy bags of river rock, but very happy with the results! Beats one of those ugly brown gutter extensions!

 

I also fixed some blocks around the 4 dogwood trees by our driveway.

 

Look at those pretty zinnias! Wait, there's none there, lol. I had to replant the seeds because right after I planted them the first time, it rained about 3 inches. Anyways, it will eventually be pretty!

 

Aw, Shucks: Cooking Corn in the Shucks

Last year, when we started getting corn out of garden, I found a recipe on how to cook corn in the oven. I've cooked corn many times in the oven, but never the way this recipe said to. In the shuck. It has turned in to my favorite way to cook corn! It tastes so good, it doesn't even need butter! Can you believe it?

 First, you pick some corn.

 Pull off any of the shuck that's dangling around, then put the corn on the rack in your oven.

 Cook the corn for 30 minutes on 350. It comes out looking like this. Slightly crispy looking.

 Let it cool (or use an oven mitt) and cut both ends off.

 Grab part of the husk and pull it down the cob.

 You can now unwrap the entire shuck. The silks come off so easily!

 Eat up! It is so good!

Since the corn is able to be shucked and silked so easily, I did an oven full this way and froze it! I'm going to put all my corn up this way. It will be fully cooked when I'm ready to eat it!

Help! I'm being squashed to death!

 Who knew that 5 little squash plants....

 especially if you miss one day of pickin'...

 could produce this much freakin' squash in 2 days?! I swear that one squash up there is 2 foot long!  I have canned 30 pints, frozen at least 5 gallons, and have eaten squash every way known to man!

We do have a few other things in our garden besides state fair worthy squash...

We have 8 tomato plants, and 4 of them are loaded with green tomatoes. I've picked one small ripe one so far.

 Our okra is about thigh-high, but isn't producing okra yet.

 We have a row of corn that is coming up sporadically, due to it being so dry when it was planted, then it rained like 5 inches. Good thing we have corn planted in another location too.

 We also have about 7 cucumber vines. I've already made some sweet pickle relish, and I've picked enough in the past 2 days (25-30) that I can make some dill pickles.

 I also have a row of zinnias. My neighbor gave me some of their seed.

 I've never had flowers do this well, very exciting!

Oh and look what else is growing bigger in the garden...me! haha. If you're wondering why I look bell-shaped, I'm wearing a sundress, lol.

Mystery Plant

Here is the row of cucumbers in my garden.

 They aren't quite big enough to produce cucumbers yet.

 The only "cucumber" plant producing is this one.

 Now, it might just be me, but I don't ever remember seeing a cucumber that looks quite like that.

 They remind me of those little pumpkins people grow to decorate with during the fall.

Can anybody identify the UFO (unidentified food object) in my garden?

Farm Tourin'

Last Thursday, a bus pulled into our shops...

Field Trip? Dropping off some kids?

Nope!

We were a stop on a North Alabama Extension Service farm tour!

They stopped by to check out our farm, see our equipment, and to talk about poop. No really. They wanted to know all about how we use chicken litter as fertilizer.

The Extension Agents asked lots of questions, and we gave a lot of answers. Here's Lance's Uncle Jim talking in the microphone and Lance and neighboring farmer Pat Whitley looking on.

I can't tell if the look on their faces shows knowledge absorption or heat exhaustion, lol.

They also checked out our cotton...

and our peanuts. They are growing pretty good!

We only have 4 acres of soybeans left to plant, but the fields haven't dried up enough yet for that!

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Speaking of growing pretty good...

Here's some of the cherry tomatoes in our garden. They're the only thing we're getting out of the garden so far since we had a late start.

This is the biggest regular tomato we have. If I wasn't so excited to have my first "big" tomato, I'd pick that sucker and turn it into a fried green tomato, lol.

Here's one of my cucumbers. He's looking pretty tasty.

And here's my squash. At the moment, I only have 1 squash and 1 cucumber plant producing because the rest of the plants are just now peeking out of the ground after being replanted, thanks to a certain farmer and his tiller. *ahem*

My 2 bell pepper plants have some itty bitty peppers.

I'm still concerned about my okra though. It got drowned, then half of it stood back up, now I'm not sure if it's still growing or not. Oh well, at least it's still green, lol.

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This might be my last post for a week or so, we'll be leaving on our annual Smokies camping trip on Saturday and returning next Friday! Henry is going to be our official photographer, so stay tuned!

Planting Season's In Full Swing!

Planting season is a busy time here at Miller Farms! We've finished planting our peanuts and are currently planting cotton. We haven't planted any corn yet because those fields were too wet, and hopefully we won't have to plant any soybeans! If we plant soybeans, that means we ran out of time to plant cotton.

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This is Lance, his Uncle Jim, and farm employee Anthony loading peanut seed into the hoppers.

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We planted 150 acres of peanuts, 40 more than last year!
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You can see Jim planting in the background, and Lance is running our new tractor in the foreground.
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Lance is using the new tractor to row-till. Last year we bedded the peanut ground, (see the 1st picture in this post to see what bedded rows look like!) and that turned out not to be a good thing because of all the rain we had in the fall, the peanut combine picked up a lot of dirt with the peanuts. So this year, we disked the ground to flatten out the beds. We are using the row-till to lay off the rows to plant in.
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Look Mom! No Hands!



Wait...and now Lance is napping while he's driving the tractor?



What's wrong with him? He's gonna wreck! Maybe get a ticket!



Nahh...Look at this fanciness we recently acquired!



What the heck is that you ask? Why it's GPS for the tractor! We had a Trimble Guidance system installed! It has auto-steer which drives the tractor for you! It uses satellites which helps farmers to row-till, plant, plow, spray, and harvest more accurately! It lets you know when you've overlapped rows and keeps the tractor/rows straight as possible. Once you've driven over a farm once, it will always know where the rows are. The only thing you have to do is turn around at the end of the rows, otherwise you'll just keep on going, probably right into a tree. There is an alarm that sounds every so often in case you do go to sleep like Lance.

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Check out this cute doggie that joined us in the field a couple of days! He even has a cast on his right leg! He sure did like to try to hug you with it, lol.
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We've planted almost 200 acres of cotton so far, and this is what it looks like now.
We're going to plant around 500 acres of cotton this year.
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Here's what the peanuts look like at the moment...

They are just beginning to sprout from the ground!

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Speaking of growing things...

The grass in our yard is finally growing! It still looks pretty brown right around the house, but is improving everyday!
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Check out this rosebush that survived the house building! (Not many things did!)

What's my secret to growing great roses? I haven't touched it at all! It should live forever.
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I have been trying to spruce the place up a bit. I was tired of everything outside just looking like dirt.

So I planted some flowers in pots to put on my porch.
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And I planted 4 azaleas by the backporch.
Unfortunately one has died. I'm pretty sure it was dead before I even planted it. Considering they were bought for me at Christmas, I'm surprised any survived!
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When we were walking around the yard, figuring out what trees to save before we started building, we decided to keep this thing. It was in the winter, so we couldn't tell what it was, just that we thought it had some flowers on it at one point.
Turns out it was a blackberry bush. Yay! Unfortunately it has all kinds of little bitty trees and junk growing in with it. It even has a pretty good size sassafrass tree, which I haven't decided if I want to keep or not. Are there any blackberry bush experts out there? I've never had one!
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Our garden is actually surviving too!

I thought it was doomed when it rained 4 inches the day after I planted it. Most of it pulled through though. I only had 1 hill of squash come up out of 6, and about half of my okra drowned, so that will need to be replanted. I have 2 rows of tomatoes, bell pepper, okra, squash, and cucumber.
I have a few tomato plants, 1 regular and 4 cherry tomato plants, that already have small tomatoes on them. Yay! (As long as the peacocks don't find them!).