Hot Cha Cha, What Manly Taters

 Tortuga Thursday

In 2012, on the plains of Northern Arizona, two families joined forces and began the trials and tribulations of building a small family farm with nothing in the bank but love.

October sunset over the greenhouse

Mid October and the days are still hot on Tortuga Flats Farm. Nights are cooling off and in fact we've had two nights that hit the light freeze mark. But at least the sweet potatoes made it through. Last year, an unexpected freeze before the potatoes were ready for harvest left us with some less than pretty produce. Sweet potatoes are very sensitive

Good sized sweet potatoes

to cold weather. Happily, no freeze damage this year. They're now in their two week cure period which means spread out in the garage, kept warm and dry. Then they'll be wrapped individually in paper and packed in boxes for storage.

Garlic compost

We're waiting for the soil temperature to reach 50 degrees before we plant the garlic. This morning it was still at fifty eight. In a few days we'll begin breaking apart about 480 pounds of garlic for planting.

Over the years I've covered ways to live and have fun with slim funds. We're continuing our exploration.
Frank and I did some scouting in the Tonto Basin area for RV parks. What a beautiful part of Arizona. What we found were inexpensive parks with two lakes close by for Frank to fish. Roosevelt and Apache Lakes have bass which is Frank's favorite catch. Once there, I'll get down to serious business on finishing book three in my Love and Murder series. Right now we're helping Lance with end of season chores, but once the garlic is in the ground and some various end of year clean up is done, we'll try out the area for a few weeks. This may be a tight budget retirement solution (for those who actually retire!) I'll cover that once we get there.

Christie has been canning lots of salsa, chili sauce (really hot cha cha) and spaghetti sauce. She didn't can any straight tomatoes this year. Tomatoes were disappointingly sparse but no worry. We're still working on last years jarred tomatoes that should get us through until next season.

Sadi likes the RV too - especially the bed. For some reason it's her favorite place to play. She drags a stool over to climb up by herself. By the way, she's yet to call me Grandma. Christie is Mom or Mom Mom. Lance is Dada and Frank is Papa which for some reason she always whispers. We've heard her say grandma but not directly to me. But I get lots of hugs and kisses so I can't complain.

Hot News

Tortuga Thursday

In 2012, on the plains of Northern Arizona, two families joined forces and began the trials and tribulations of building a small family farm with nothing in the bank but love.

Accidental dill - seeds dropped will grow anywhere

Autumn is settling on us at last. Nights are cooling off, but the real sign is the butternut and potatoes will be harvested next week. Getting those two crops ready for storage is a time eater. Clipping the butternut from the vine is simple but digging potatoes takes patience. If they're nicked or damaged then they won't store well. We had butternut that lasted ten months last year.

Shiver Me Timbers - jalapenos!

Our campaign to expand pickle production and bring more of the world a non-GMO and great tasting pickle is in its last week. We haven't exactly torn up the world of crowdfunding. I guess we aren't techy or goofy enough. A phone to project the time on your hand has raised over a million. A game called Sharkapeed that wanted to raise $2000 has raised $5000. We also didn't hire a professional to run our campaign. The crowdfunding theory is that the little guy can put their idea out there, but that isn't necessarily what's happening. The whole idea of putting ourselves out there for fundraising is difficult for all of us anyway. Because of that, we haven't pushed or promoted as much as we are supposed to be doing. We're pretty much do it on our own kind of people. Whether we meet our goal or not, I'll give you an accounting when all is said and done. For those of you on Facebook and/or twitter, if you could spread the word for our last week here is a post you can copy and paste:

Get behind an organic small farm and get perks for your support. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/set-sail-with-pirate-pickles/x/8465750 …

Lance did get the tractor fixed. Exciting stuff. Sadi makes the funniest whirring noise when her daddy is plowing the fields. She hasn't gotten a ride on it yet because Lance won't chance it. He needs both hands to operate it and he's afraid she'll fall off. I can imagine how excited she'll be when he finally gives her a ride.

The Week in Pictures on Tortuga Flats

Tortuga Thursday

In 2012, on the plains of Northern Arizona, two families joined forces and began the trials and tribulations of building a small family farm with nothing in the bank but love.

 

Lance digging up unwanted roots

Last October, May seemed so far away and the memory of the prior planting season began to fade. Then, all of a sudden, here we are again.

Lance and Frank spent the week laying the drip system and putting up trellis for cucumbers. The sweet potato slips arrived in the mail. The baby onions and tomatoes were moved from house to greenhouse. The dill in the greenhouse shot up. And there are blooms on the severely trimmed fruit trees. That surprised me.

Our first Farmers' Market was a success. The buzz was that it was a

A pirate pickling family

slow day. It was the first market of the season and we were competing with another event. Pirate Pickling was pleased anyway. We felt like we did pretty good for our first time out. Our booth was next to some really good baked goods so guess where I spent part of the earnings. A pirate has to eat!

Here's more of the week in pictures.

Lance and Frank laying drip system

The dill flourishes

Plum blooms

Lance planting tomato plants

Sadi enjoyed the baked goods same as Gramma

The Last Days of Harvest

 Tortuga Thursday

In 2012, on the plains of Northern Arizona, two families joined forces and began the trials and tribulations of building a small family farm with nothing in the bank but love.

 

Right when it seems summer and harvesting will last forever, the nighttime temps turn cold and yellow leaves signal the end. The more tender plants such as zucchini and golden squash died off a few weeks ago. But there were still so many cucumbers, tomatoes and butternut that they weren't missed in the daily harvest.

Today will see the last cucumbers taken from the vines and the last pickles and relish put up in jars. This has been a real learning season for pickling. Although we had the recipe for taste, the method wasn't perfected until near the end. We won't have as many jars to sell as we anticipated, so we're still debating on just how, where and to whom we'll market. When the labels are done, the licensing secured and the plan hatched, I'll let you know.

The rather massive butternut harvesting started and will wind up by next week. Butternut squash is a favorite on Tortuga. It's also a food we don't have to freeze or can right away. If handled properly, it should last for about six months. Once the vine is dead, it's cut off leaving about two inches of vine on the squash. After washing in a solution of water and Clorox (very weak), it's left in the sun to dry then stored in a cool place out of sun. The same process is applied to the spaghetti squash.

There are a few more onions, tomatoes and peppers to harvest. I think Lance will dig up potatoes and sweet potatoes next week.

Our good neighbor, Dave, came a few days ago with his tractor. He has a mowing attachment which we do

not have. He mowed down the weeds all around the outside of our property fence then asked if we'd like him to come inside the fence. The man loves his tractor. We welcomed him! Frank is going to bake him a pie with the end of last years apples. Dave loves Frank's pies.

Give Me Greenhouse Skin - New Ageless Breakthrough?

Tortuga Thursday

In 2012, on the plains of Northern Arizona, two families joined forces and began the trials and tribulations of building a small family farm with nothing in the bank but love.

Peppers drying

Drying and canning consume much of the day. This neat hanging rack holds three kinds of peppers and is half full. Last year we threaded thread through them and hung in bunches which was much more

Freezing peppers

difficult than tossing them in our hanging dryer. Yea, progress.

Some peppers will be made into hot sauce, salsa and sauce that could be used for any number of dishes such as enchiladas. In fact, Christie has a few jars of

Sauces and tomatoes

sauce already put up.

This year, we're using a short cut for canning the tomatoes. Instead of making sauce, soup or whatever and canning a finished product, we're canning tomatoes to be turned into other foods later. We aren't seeding or peeling them which is so time consuming you can't even imagine. I made some spaghetti sauce with a jar of our tomatoes and it turned out fine. You do run into a bit of noticeable skin but it really isn't a problem. And I think the nutrition is probably higher.

Black tomatoes, field and greenhouse

We have both greenhouse tomatoes and field tomatoes. They taste equally good but because of the outrageous amount of rain we've had, the field tomatoes are not as pretty. Too much rain or erratic amounts of water damage the skin of tomatoes. Looking at the difference in the

Processed tomatoes

skin makes me wonder if I shouldn't be sleeping in the greenhouse.

Xena (our dog that ate Frank's $5000 earring aids) is still being Xena. She ate the insides of a squeak toy and was a sick doggie. The squeaker didn't agree with her. She no sooner got over that when she zeroed in on a bag of trash we hadn't got put into the can. I think she tore into it and ate as much as she could as fast as she could before we caught her. She upchucked a whole, in tact paper towel. As much trouble as she is, the sweet quotient is huge. When Sadi sits in the floor, Xena moves to lay beside her and is fine with Sadi pounding on her back.

Paulden shopping mall

Paulden is really coming up in the world. As you can see, we now have a shopping mall.

One last note - I signed a contract with The Wild Rose Press for the first book in my Love and Murder series. This one is The Art of Love and Murder and is set in Flagstaff, Arizona. Yea!

Scoring the Big One

Tortuga Thursday

In 2012, on the plains of Northern Arizona, two families joined forces and began the trials and tribulations of building a small family farm with nothing in the bank but love.

Lance scores a big one

Although some days it feels like the dog days of summer on the prairie, harvesting is going strong. And there are some crops that have yet to come ready such as potatoes. Cabbage is doing great!

Eight hundred jars and counting. Who needs a dining room? That's our pickle room. But then so is the kitchen. The cucumber plants continue to produce and pickling still ties up the kitchen all day long. As the season nears an end, the cucumbers are less than perfect as far as how they look. Because of that, we're doing more relish than pickles.

Ugly pickles probably won't sell. But I have to brag here, Frank's relish is outstanding. His standard relish is
sweet and dill at the same time. And his spicy relish is so very unique. These relishes will not be limited to hotdogs and hamburgers - think roast beef, pork chops and gourmet sandwiches.

I've been more involved this week than normal. I usually harvest the jalapenos, dill, bell peppers and onions for his recipes, but my duties have been expanded to helping in the kitchen a bit too. Christie is off the farm taking real estate classes. She's loving it. I'm missing her for more than her winning personality. Which she has. She normally assists Frank with the canning. I've also been doing dinner every night. Another chore that she doesn't consider a chore and gladly does. But I'll suffer through. LOL She'll make an excellent real estate agent.

Back to pickling. One huge draw back of this house is it's all electric. With the stove going all day long, our electric bill went up another $60. It's already outrageous because of the hot summer we've had. I also suspect the unit is old and inefficient. I'm having to rob other budget line items to cover our half of the electric bill. I'll report on the shortfall at the end of the summer and pickling season. My bailout plan of winning one of the smaller lotteries might not work.

The tomato distraction

This morning, I headed out to pick green beans as I do every other morning and got sidetracked by tomatoes. I couldn't help stopping and picking. They're way more fun to pick than green beans which require more bending and parting leaves.

Carrots are the hardest to harvest for me. It's tough to get them loose

A rainbow of carrots

from the soil. I some times have to dig. I've been known to break them down in the dirt. We have red, yellow and orange carrots. Wonder why we only see orange in the grocery store.

Onions are kind of fun to harvest. They come up easy and in all sizes. We have three varieties. Not too fond of tying and hanging but love

White onions hanging to dry

onions so much, it's worth the trouble. 

At least I got my harvesting in before the rains hit. As I'm writing this on Wednesday afternoon, out my window I see Lance trudging back and forth through the mud. Better him than me.

Meatball Trees and Pasta Bushes

Tortuga Thursday

In 2012, on the plains of Northern Arizona, two families joined forces and began the trials and tribulations of building a small family farm with nothing in the bank but love.

First, I have to give a shout out to all the readers of my blog from around the world. I'm not much of a statistics person, but today, I decided to look at the stats for this blog. I had no idea there were so many of you from Latvia looking in on my blog. I'd like to say hi to all of you who stop in from the U.S., Latvia, Poland, Canada, Russia, United Kingdom, China, South Korea, Columbia, Indonesia, Germany, India and Austria. I'm not sure blogger lists all of the countries so, if I didn't list yours, give me a shout back. I'd love to hear from you.

Picking beans, wading through grass

I'm writing this on Wednesday to post on Thursday. Here's what happened today on Tortuga Flats. Lance and I rose at 5:30 - not purposefully together. We just have similar body clocks. We drink different coffees so I made mine and he made his. While we drank our coffee, news and email got checked, mine on my laptop and his on his iPad. By 7:30, Christie and Sadi were up. Lance and I headed outside. Not too long after, Frank got up and after some breakfast he canned and canned and canned cucumbers. Meanwhile, I harvested today's garden peas and green beans. Then I edged the lawn, front and back. After that,

Cabbage

I pulled weeds from around the the outside of the yard fence. The last thing I did was pull weeds in the squash row. While I was doing those chores, Lance worked on the fifth wheel hitch and went for manure to compost. He had the lovely job of turning compost and mixing with the manure. Christie helped Frank by chopping garlic and adding the other ingredients to the pickle jars. As I write, Frank is still canning, Christie is cleaning and Lance is harvesting. A day in the life of Tortuga Flats Farm.

Squash rows

The hook worms are still munching on tomato plants, and we've found a few in the pepper rows. We've heard that in Chino Valley farmers are fighting blister bugs. Sure hope they eradicate them, and they don't move over here. Our biggest debate is the grass invasion. We've just not been able to keep it out of  some of the areas. Last year at this time, we'd all but given up on weeding. We were doing flood irrigation and with what was going on other than farming (like a wedding) we lost the battle. This year, with drip irrigation, we've been much better at keeping the weeds under control.

No meatball or pasta trees but the rest grows here.

But there are a couple of areas we were not on top of and now grass, looks like Bermuda, is a real problem. The debate is how to take care of it this year without chemicals so we don't have the problem next year. The debate rages on.

Sadi Belle is growing like a weed, too. And that's okay!

Pickles, Pickles Everywhere...

Tortuga Thursday

In 2012, on the plains of Northern Arizona, two families joined forces and began the trials and tribulations of building a small family farm with nothing in the bank but love.

Four hundred and eighty jars and growing. We have cases of pickles everywhere. It's a wild schedule around here during the day. Cucumber harvesting, washing, icing, washing again and processing goes on all day long. We're all involved in it in one way or another. I happen to be the least involved directly with the pickling. Add to that the other crops, maintenance, household chores, a new baby and a multitude of other tasks. In the middle of all this work, we each have our own projects. But whatever we're doing, we're constantly working on something.

Nicknames have been tagged by the chores we've each fallen into most commonly. Frank picked his up first - Pickles. He created the recipes and is the lead when it comes to pickling the cucumbers. Digger pretty much sums up Lance's activities. I wanted to call him Farmer since he's the one, but I was told that's a profession not a nickname. Christie is nicknamed Cookie. This is a dual moniker since she loves to cook and does a lot of it AND she bakes a good many cookies. My alias is Weed. Lovely, huh? But, dang, I hate weeds and I can't hardly pass one up. Takes me a while to walk across the field because I keep stopping to pull.

Cucumber 2 1/2 weeks ago

Once the cucumbers have slowed a bit, we'll get the labeling started.

Cucumbers today

Once we get the logo trademarked and labels created, I'll reveal the final product.

Someone asked me today if our experiment is working out. We've ironed out a lot of kinks, been through a great many changes over the last year and a half. Yes, it's working, it's enriching and there's still so much to experience and learn.

Me picking greenbeans

Grass choking the vegetables - the next big problem to tackle.