Meet Blossom, reaching for her morning carrot and ready to come right over the fence if she doesn't get it. She's a half-horn: longhorn mama, Limousine (oohlala!) papa. Big, brown, and sturdy, and a whole lotta cow. She and her mama (Texas) are busy clearing everything edible from this pasture, including the King Ranch bluestem, an invasive species brought from China by the Klebergs of King Ranch fame, back in the 1920s as a dryland cattle forage.
I used to hate the darn stuff--KRB--which crowds out our native South Plains grasses: bluestem, lovegrass, Indian grass, switchgrass. [Update on switchgrass. Chris posted a comment, below, with the link to an interesting NPR piece about the effects on the climate of substituting switchgrass for corn as a biofuel.] But the KBR roots go so deep, 20 feet or more, that this now wide-spread grass stands up to drought much better than the natives. We still have some live forage, where many of the farmers/ranchers across the state are having to buy hay. Or worse, sell off their cattle, especially where the wells are going dry. We're holding another pasture in reserve, but it has to be fenced, and that's not a job for days when the thermometer hits 108 in the shade. Here, so far this year, we've had about four inches of rain. Normally, by the end of August, we would have had 20 inches-plus. It's a reminder that we live on the 98th Meridian, the "fault line" between the hot, dry, desert West and the cooler, wetter, forested East. And then, of course, there's global warming...
Which brings me to baked beans. It's time to plant fall gardens here in Central Texas. Our first frost usually hits around Nov. 6, which means I should have about 70 days left in the frost-free season--except who knows, these days, whether it will be a "normal" season? (If you're curious about your first frost date, go here and put in your zip code.) I planted snap beans (soaked the seeds as usual) about 3 weeks ago, McCaslan, a variety that almost always does well here. I expected them to look like the beans in the photo above, which was taken just about a year ago.
But no beans. They didn't come up. I checked the soil temp one afternoon, when I was out there looking for beans. It was 138 degrees. Baked beans.
I went back indoors (where it was cool) and did some online research. I learned that beans, while heat tolerant as they are growing, do not like high soil temperatures when they're germinating. Heat kills. But with that first frost date looming, my planting window is closing. The soil isn't getting any cooler, but the season is getting shorter.
So five days ago, I replanted. Same variety, same bed, but this time, I didn't soak the beans. They're up this morning, looking green and cheerful. I don't know how they'll feel when they get a dose of our afternoon sun, but at least they've started on the journey that leads to our dinner table. And I have a bit of new information: soaked bean seed may not do as well in super-hot soil as dry beans. I say "may" because there are always so many variables out there in the garden. But every little bit of information helps.
The Great Summer Chicken Saga has come to its expected end, with about 75 pounds of delicious, home-grown chicken in my freezer and an equal amount in my partner's (Dolly's) freezer. Cost in $$: about $1.20 lb, counting the cost of the birds and their feed--not counting construction costs on the coop, which will house later generations of chickens. And not counting my labor. Really. We won't go there. If you'd like to read a recap, go to the Lipstick Chronicles, where I posted a narrative synopsis, with photos. Or read through the blog entries here for the past 10 weeks. The heat made the project so much more difficult: seriously, if I'd have known I was raising chickens in the hottest Texas summer ever, I think I would have put it off.
The writing desk. I'm working on another project, but it's not time to tell you about it yet. When I have some news, I'll pass it along. For now, I'll just say that I'm very excited about something--not a mystery, not one of my usual series books, but a one-off, a single title, something I've had in mind for over two decades. Or maybe "excited" isn't the right word. Maybe "obsessing" is closer to it. I'll tell you more as soon as I have solid information (that is, not just hopeful speculation).
Reading note: As one contrasts the civilization of the Great Plains with that of the eastern timberland, one sees what may be called an institutional fault (comparable to a geological fault) running from middle Texas to Illinois or Dakota, roughly following the ninety-eighth meridian . . . When people first crossed this line they did not immediately realize the imperceptible change that had taken place in their environment, nor, more is the tragedy, did they foresee the full consequences which that change was to bring in their own characters and in their modes of life.--Walter Prescott Webb