Saturday Dose of Cute: Slow Speed Ahead

The farm is full of turtles this time of year.

So we have satellite Internet connection, and for some mysterious reason it's now downloading at just .05 mbps instead of the 'up to 1.5' mbps our special pro (read high dollar) rate says we should get. That's extremely slow. Like too slow to do pretty much anything online.

Since we were already planning to relocate the satellite dish to the new house, we're going to skip a special service call for this problem and just go ahead and move it. But that won't happen until the brand new, already broken air-conditioning system over there is back up and running, which will probably be at least another week because we're waiting on an out of stock part.

Why am I boring you with all this? In the superstitious (or crazy) hope that as soon as I publicly explain our predicament, the slow speed will miraculously fix itself, which the tech guy said was actually possible since there seems to be nothing causing it in the first place. Hey, whatever works. And it's definitely cheaper than scheduling a service call.

Maybe this will somehow get that a/c part here sooner, too.

In the meantime, want to see some more turtles?

5/6/06: Spotted in the Backyard

5/12/06: Damn Turtles!

5/27/06: Bear and Cary and Me vs. the Turtles

6/15/06: I See You Looking at Me, Turtle

6/25/06: Weekend Baby Turtle Blogging

6/23/07: Looking for My Strawberries?

9/8/09: Baby Turtle Blogging

6/14/11: It's Turtle Season

© FarmgirlFare.com, where the 'slow moving' is also true for all of us critters dragging around the farm in this insufferable and relentless heat and humidity. There's nothing like watching a bunch of chickens walking around the farmyard panting to make you feel even hotter than you already were. Time for popsicles all around!

Tuesday Dose of Cute: It's Turtle Season

Want to see more of Mr. Midnight? He's here. And the turtles? They're here—and everywhere this time of year!

The Daily Donkey 127: Givin' Some Lovin' (one of my favorites)

© FarmgirlFare.com, where the only good thing about not having any strawberries in my kitchen garden this year is that I don't have to fight the turtles for them—and I'm sure that's exactly what this one was searching for. I love turtles, but a girl's gotta draw the line somewhere.

Tuesday Dose of Cute: Baby Turtle Blogging

Okay, inspection's over. You can go back to the garden now.

We have something like 16 different kinds of turtles and tortoises here in Missouri, and as long as they're not anywhere near my strawberry bed (turtles LOVE strawberries), I really enjoy finding them around the farm.

Whenever I take the time to inspect these little prehistoric creatures, the more I realize just how truly fascinating they are.

Want to see and read more about our turtles (and their passion for my strawberries)?
5/6/06: Spotted in the Backyard
5/12/06: Damn Turtles!
5/27/06: Bear and Cary and Me vs. the Turtles
6/15/06: I See You Looking at Me, Turtle
6/25/06: Weekend Baby Turtle Blogging
6/23/07: Looking for My Strawberries?

© FarmgirlFare.com, the hard shelled foodie farm blog where I found this cute little critter hiding in a weedy kitchen garden bed back in early July (and then promptly forgot about these photos).

I probably should have relocated it far away from my strawberry plants, but since this year's berry harvest was already over, and next year's is many months away (too bad, as all this strawberry talk now has me desperately craving a big bowl of this—though if you grow strawberries, the time to ensure bigger berries next spring is now, and here's how) I decided to let it stay in the garden.

I'll no doubt be sorry next spring. And yes, I washed my hands really well after touching this turtle.

Farm Photo: 6/23/07

Looking For My Strawberries?

There won't be any strawberries in the garden this year. After several years and many pounds of gorgeous, sweet bounty, my original plot finally petered out. And the raised bed I filled two years ago with locally grown Super Strawberry plants from the Garden Club's plant sale is history, too.

I do have 27 new Cavendish strawberry plants flourishing in another 4' x 8' raised bed, but one of the secrets to growing strawberries is that you need to pinch off all the blossoms that appear the first year. This allows the plant to expend more energy on itself rather than on making fruit for you. It's not easy, but in the long run it's worth it. I think.

You might think that there isn't a bright side to having a strawberryless garden, but you would be wrong. No strawberries for me also means no strawberries for all the ravaging, ravenous turtles. It's turtle season in the garden again, and for once I couldn't care less.

*insert evil laugh here*

Wondering if I've completely lost it? You can read more about the ongoing battle for my berries--and local turtles in general--here:
--6/4/05: Strawberries (one of my very first blog posts)
--5/6/06: Spotted In The Backyard
--5/12/06: Damn Turtles!
--5/21/06: The Turtles Didn't Get Them All
--5/27/06: Beaten To My Berries
--6/15/06: At Least The Mulberries Should Be Out Of Turtle Reach
--6/25/06: Weekend Baby Turtle Blogging?

© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

Weekend Turtle Blogging?

We interrupt this regularly scheduled edition of Weekend Dog Blogging to bring you these special newsbreaking tiny turtle photos!


Yep, I found a second one. Click here if you missed the first one.
















It was so adorable I couldn't help it. How could I not keep it? (Despite the fact that it obviously wanted to fly away--and that I know next to nothing about keeping a pet turtle.) I have it near a window in the living room in a makeshift turtle house (rectangular plastic tub with wire cooling rack duct taped over the top).

In order to recreate a comfortable turtle habitat, I filled the tub with lots of freshly picked grass and weeds (dirt and roots still intact) and a shallow dish of water. I'm all out of strawberries (the only thing I know for sure that turtles eat), so I gave it mulberries, blueberries, spinach, and beet greens, plus a little iceberg lettuce (because that's what Sam's pet tortoise has been living on for the past 36 years).

I haven't done any online research into turtle care because I think I'll probably set it free soon. Sure it's absolutely adorable to look at and all (once I peel off the duct tape, lift up the lid, root around in the grass wondering the entire time if it's escaped, and finally locate the little thing), but compared to what I'm used to around here, it isn't exactly a whole lot of fun. I mean, I have Cary and Donkey Doodle Dandy to constantly entertain me--not to mention the chickens. My new turtle doesn't do much.

I did put it on the hardwood floor this morning to let it run around a bit, and this immediately caught the attention of my 19-year-old cat, Gretel. Now she perches on her kitty condo (which is located next door to the turtle house) and stares into the plastic tub for hours.

So between now and Fly Be Free Little Turtle Day, any advice on caring for an itty bitty turtle is most appreciated. And yes, of course we need to name it. Dare I ask if anyone knows how to tell if it's a boy or a girl? (Update: Okay, we're skipping the sexing thing and just going for a gender-free name. You know, like Pat--only cuter.)

Barring any other interesting discoveries, Weekend Dog Blogging will appear next week at its regularly scheduled time.

July 24th, 2006 UPDATE: Just a note to let anyone who is worrying about the welfare of my adorable little find to know that he (yep, he's a he) was named and set free one week after I found him. I do have farewell photos that I hope to post soon.

Contents Copyright 2006 FarmgirlFare.com

Daily Farm Photo 6/15/06: Peek-a-Boo, I See You Turtle!

At Least The Mulberries Should Be Out Of Turtle Reach
(Though you never know with turtles. Can they climb trees?)

Yes, all of you who guessed that yesterday's Daily Farm Photo was of mulberries are absolutely correct. And thanks for all the great mulberry stories. I had never seen a mulberry until I moved to this farm, where we are lucky to have several mulberry trees scattered around the hayfield. They don't put on berries every year, and the first time Joe showed me some ripe berries (while we were putting up hay) several years ago, they were so high up in the tree we could barely reach them even when standing on the back of the flatbed pickup truck.

This year Cary and I were hot and sweaty and tired and achy and on the verge of quitting The Haying Crew (for the first of several times), when Joe ordered us to stop picking up hay bales and follow him. He led us to a smaller mulberry tree that was so loaded with low-growing, perfectly ripe berries that I immediately lasped into some kind of picking and eating trance because before I knew it, several minutes had passed, I had this sudden feeling I should stop eating berries, and my lips, fingers, and clothes were all purple. Cary preferred nibbling on the lush clover growing in the shade beneath the trees.

Apparently there are many different varieties of mulberry trees, and the taste of the fruit varies widely. We seem to have one of the yummy varieties. While the other trees had hardly any fruit on them this year, that smaller one probably has enough to make a pie. But if I hike back out there and start picking, I have a feeling very few berries will actually make it into the bucket. Click here to learn more than you ever wanted to know about mulberries.

If you're wondering about what the turtle has to do with all of this, click here to read my post about Turtles & Strawberries (not a recipe) that appeared last month on my kitchen garden blog. I was going to re-post it on Farmgirl Fare due to popular demand (okay, okay, my mother told me I should because it was so cute), but I think a link to it should suffice. Though I guess now I should beg you to leave comments on that post so my mom will know that you really did go take a look.

A year of Daily Photos ago: Peek-A-Boo Beagle

Daily Farm Photo: 5/6/06

Spotted In The Front Yard

There are something like 16 different kinds of turtles and tortoises in Missouri, and this is the time of year they pop out from wherever they've been hiding and start heading down the rural highways. I find these creatures absolutely fascinating, and I often cannot help myself--I pick them up to examine them more closely, turning them over and over, admiring and tapping on their gorgeous shells, trying to get them to poke their heads back out, and yes, probably making them quite nauseous in the process. My favorite thing about them? The way the 'door' on their shells always makes a soft "whooosh" as it closes up tight. Sheer mechanical brilliance.

Lately I've felt like doing just that--crawling into my shell and hiding for a while (and not just because of losing the three baby lambs). But after being overwhelmed by all of your wonderful comments and emails over the past few days, I have a feeling that isn't going to happen. I would no doubt receive payback a thousand fold for all those poor turtles I just can't leave alone. I can hear your incessant tap tap tapping on my impenetrable shell already. So not to worry. I'll keep my head out. And really, think of how much I would miss if I didn't.

Besides, my garden desperately needs me right now. While I try my best not to mess with Mother Nature, I must confess that I do quite a bit of Turtle Relocation this time of year. Because you see, every single turtle out there is making a beeline toward my strawberry bed. I kid you not. These historically slow moving creatures know how to run. Read this if you don't believe me.

Current Lamb Count: 21. Annette had a set of tiny twins this morning. One boy, one girl. So far so good. Heading back down there now.

Strawberries

Ripe & Ready To Pick

There is nothing like a strawberry. No one ever bites into something and says, "This tastes like a strawberry," unless it is a strawberry. But sadly, most strawberries today do not even taste like strawberries. As with so many other foods, they have been manipulated and modified so much that they only look pretty and travel well. Flavor is barely a consideration. I saw some strawberries for sale at a megamarket the other day that were literally so gigantic they just looked weird. And I bet they probably were tasteless.

Perhaps it is because of this lack of flavor that strawberries are often subjected to needless abuse in the kitchen. Even I once made a baked strawberry pie, complete with instant tapioca. I now realize this was a mean thing to do. A good strawberry should never be cooked. The exception, of course, is strawberry jam (which I adore), but I cringe each time I read a recipe that calls for more sugar than berries. Instead, try simply mashing a few very ripe strawberries with a fork and spreading them on a slice of toast or a warm scone. If you do decide to try your hand at making jam, be sure to include some underripe berries, as they are full of pectin and will help the jam to thicken.

One of my cookbooks claims that the strawberry is "America's favorite berry," and I think that everyone must have at least one vivid strawberry memory. Joe has reminisced more than once to me about the time, years ago, he and a friend accidentally walked into a formal, private party at a Miami yacht club. Despite being sunburned, windblown, and severely underdressed, he managed to procure a glass of champagne and pounce upon an enormous bowl of perfect strawberries without being noticed.

My most vivid strawberry memory is of strawberry pancakes, which our family must have eaten on dozens of weekend mornings during my childhood. They were very thin French pancakes (I suppose that technically they were probably crepes) liberally doused with melted butter, sprinkled with powdered sugar, covered with halved, just-picked strawberries from the backyard, and then sprinkled with yet more powdered sugar. They were not stacked, but were arranged neatly in a circle over a large dinner plate--thus ensuring maximum butter and sugar coverage. The pancake batter was mixed in the blender, and the recipe was so simple even my little brother was an expert at making them. They were cooked on a rectangular electric griddle, six at a time, and you knew exactly how much batter to pour out for each pancake because the griddle was clearly marked from years of using it for nothing but those pancakes.

The powdered sugar came out of an ingenious contraption I had completely forgotten about until today. It was a tall, white plastic thing with a small, airtight lid and was a combination storage container and server. I think it was Tupperware. You turned a little crank and perfectly sifted powdered sugar snowed out of the bottom and onto your plate. Because these pancakes were so thin, even a small person could eat a dozen of them in a sitting. When it wasn't strawberry season, we ate them with just the melted butter and powdered sugar--never with maple syrup.

Sliced strawberries served over really good French vanilla ice cream is a wonderful thing. And while I would not pass up a homemade strawberry shortcake if somebody handed me one, lately I have found myself becoming more and more of a purist when it comes to my garden bounty. In my opinion, the best way to savor a batch of luscious strawberries requires doing nothing more than making sure you have clean fingers and a plain white dish. Even chilling them seems to steal away some of their flavor.

Unfortunately, to find a good strawberry these days, you must look to your own garden or a farmer's market. And if you are going to eat only one food that is organically grown, make it strawberries. When grown commercially, strawberries are subjected to more herbicides, pesticides, and other poisons than any other food. Years ago I read that in one laboratory test, a single commercially cultivated strawberry was found to contain residue from 22 different toxic chemicals. That doesn't even seem possible. What is more ridiculous is that it is easy to grow delicious, organic strawberries--even on a large scale.

Anyone can raise their own strawberries. If you do not have a garden, you can buy a special strawberry planter and produce a decent little crop in about one square foot of space. My edible garden is made up of twenty-two 4' x 8' raised beds, and my current strawberry patch takes up one of the beds (plus some overflow I can't bear to pull up). It was started in 2001 with 25 plants I ordered from Pinetree Garden Seeds: 15 Honeyoye and 10 Sparkle.

For planting and growing guidance, I turned to my trusted copy of Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Gardening and Landscaping Techniques. I also amended the soil with natural rock powders and mulched with hay and lots of sheep manure (which I know makes everything I grow taste sweeter). I make sure the plants are well watered each August and September, which is when berry size for the next year's crop is determined. After a few hard frosts in late fall, I mulch the entire bed with a thick layer of hay and uncover it in early spring.

I have had no disease problems, and apart from a few bugs, the only real "pests" I have to contend with are the wild turtles. I have never seen a turtle run except when it was hurling itself toward a ripe strawberry. They are very sneaky, but I have caught more than one turtle nestled in my strawberry bed, happily munching away, berry pulp dripping out both sides of its mouth, so absorbed in its bliss that it was totally oblivious to my presence. Once I even busted a female turtle laying eggs in my garden.

Despite turtle attacks, last year I harvested seven gallons of beautiful, delectable berries from that one plot. It was more than we could eat, and I froze many of them in single layers on baking sheets, and then packed them into plastic zipper freezer bags. Once the last berries were picked, I refreshed the bed by pulling out most of the plants so it will keep producing for a few more years.

I also started a new strawberry bed this year. I was at a Garden Club plant sale in April and could not resist buying three plastic grocery bags bags that were each simply labeled Super Strawberries 7/$1.00. They had obviously been dug up from a club member's garden that morning, and now they are flourishing in mine. I can't wait to taste the first harvest.

In the meantime, my old plot has fewer plants this year, but they are loaded with sweet, ripening berries. Their thick fragrance rises up to tantalize me each time I walk by the bed. Today was the first real harvest--I picked well over a quart of berries and only a few had bite marks. (The chickens will get these--no strawberry goes to waste around here.) Today was also the hottest day of the year so far--90 degrees in the shade and very humid. It is too hot to cook, and nothing sounds good anyway. But I've just come up with a perfect idea for dinner. All I need to do is wash my hands and grab a plain white dish.

* Footnote: I kid you not--half an hour after I finished writing this post I went out to water the garden and found a turtle three feet from my strawberry bed. First one I've caught this season. I shrieked "Oh my god!" and it ducked into its shell. I then picked it up, marched across the farmyard, and deposited it just outside the gate into the hayfield, pointing away from the garden. It probably wasn't far enough, but I was in a hurry. I knew I should have left those bite-marked berries as decoys.