Yucca Valley

In Alabama this plant is called the Yucca plant. It is also called Spanish Bayonet (Yucca Smalliana),  and you may have even heard it called Beargrass. You can see the abundant creamy white flowers 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter blooming from May to June. It also the namesake for the Valley in which we live.

The yucca plant was the inspiration for the naming of Yucca Valley, AL on the south side of the Tennessee River near the present town of Stevenson. Yucca Valley is a 7-8 miles long and a mile wide at its widest point. It runs parallel to the Tennessee River and along the base of Sand Mountain. ending at a TVA lake called Raccoon Creek.

The valley was first settled by the Chickamauga band of the Cherokee Indians during the latter part of the seventeen hundreds. This valley made up part of what is called "Crow Town" by the Cherokees. The Indians in the valley were hostile to the American settlers coming into the area. The power of the Chickamauga's was broken by the Sevier and Campbell expeditions in 1782. At that time the population of the valley was about 1,000 warriors. My ancestor, Doublehead, continued to fight the white encroachment until the 1800's. We will more on Doublehead in a later blog.

The McCoy's moved to Yucca Valley in 1830 and intermarried with the Cherokees. We don't know exactly when the name, "Yucca", became accepted, but we have letters with the postmark of Yucca, AL in 1851. The last post office in Yucca Valley was closed in November 1944 and moved to Fabius, AL. We later received our mail from the Stevenson, AL post office.

Predators and Prey

A pen full of wonderful models are no more. This spring a variety of predators devastated our flock of 50 laying hens. Despite constant efforts to protect them it was all in vain. We even built a fortress to house them at night. We have always dealt with an occasional owl, hawk, opossum, or a raccoon taking one or two victims. This year was different.

This year our nemesis was a bobcat. A bobcat's nature is to kill; not just for food. This one made several visits avoiding all traps and precautions that we could devise. It would kill 6-8 victims a night taking only one away. The others were just killed for the pleasure of killing. On the last night it avoided 6 traps, scaled an 8 foot wall, ripped away the heavy wire protecting under the eves, and entered the chicken house. It proceeded to kill the last 14 hens, piling them in the corner and then taking one victim. It made its exit the same way it entered. It then stopped outside the  fence, scratched up a pile of leaves and urinated on top to mark its territory. Since then it has moved on to a neighbors chicken pen.

We now have purchased our first dozen eggs at the grocery in about 20 years. We are also raising 50 more young chicks to replace the ones lost. Hopefully in 6 months we will once again have fresh eggs. Even though my recent heart surgery has put me on the sidelines, we will prevail!

Summer Bounty

After a few weeks I am back online. Unexpected heart surgery has delayed several posts that I had been trying to complete. Now, I am home recuperating and hoping to get into the garden again sooner than later. I am not allowed to do much but with my wife, family, and friends, the garden is producing and providing some excellent meals. Now we are just waiting on the sweet corn to be ready.

The pen and ink drawing of the garden vegetables is available as a print for $40.00.

Summer Gardening

Summer really shifts in to high gear now that the garden has started to produce vegetables for our table. We have already picked beets, green beans, squash, onions, and lettuce. With the abundant rainfall it is certain we will be busy harvesting more crops within the next few weeks.

Today we harvested two rows of Roma green beans. After giving some away, we still canned and processed 16 pints- not bad for the first picking. One cabbage head also made 6 pints of sauerkraut. The yellow squash was steamed, cooled, and frozen in quart bags. We pickled the beets.

The outdoor sink was very useful in washing our produce before bringing it in the house. The beans were rather dirty after all the heavy rainfall. All the water we used to wash the vegetables was caught in a bucket and recycled back into the garden. Hopefully we will soon have a shed over the sink to give us some shade from the hot summer sun.

Queen Ann's Lace

Believe it or not the Queen Ann's lace is actually a member of the carrot family. In fact it is  sometimes called "Wild Carrot".  Take a moment and smell the taproot and you will notice the carrot aroma. The flowers resemble lace with a single purple dot in the center. The leaves are feathery resembling the domestic carrots' leaves. The taproot has a high sugar content only second to another root- beets. In fact, the Irish sometimes used it as a sweetener in things such as pudding.

There is a poisonous hemlock growing in swampy areas that could be confused with Queen Ann's Lace. Before you eat any part of the Queen Anne's Lace, make sure you know the difference between it and the poisonous cousin, Water Hemlock.

Queen Ann's Lace is a biennial. The first year it simply grows and the second year it blooms.

Shed

We have several different structures around the farm. This shed is one built almost exclusively from materials off the farm. This shed uses cedar collected on the farm as well as shingles made from fallen oak trees. Over the past few years we have lost so many nice oak trees in the woods. The soil here is red clay and dries out quickly. We are just assuming drought did the damage to the trees, but we try not to waste them when they die. The only materials purchased for this shed were a few pieces of wooden lath (1" x 4" lumber) and roofing nails.

The simple design uses two forked cedar posts to hold up a ridge pole. The cross braces attached to the post hold up perlin poles on which rafters rest. The Y braces add strength. A very simple but effective design made of all natural materials.

Right now we are using the shed as additional storage for winter firewood. There are future plans to use it to house a syrup pan for the making of sorghum cane syrup. A fire would be built under the pan to heat the cane sorghum juice to make syrup better known in the south as "sorghum".

Butterfly Bush

Butterfly weed (Asciepias tuberosa) is a flower loved by butterflies and caterpillars. The reason- it produces and abundance of nectar- just what butterflies thrive on. Most are bright orange and can vary from yellow to red. You will find it listed in the milkweed family, but unlike other members of the milkweed family, the sap of this plant is not milky white. You find it in open fields, roadsides, thickets, or railroad banks. We have successfully planted it, but it is very difficult to do. The taproots go very deep, and you must dig up the entire root system in order for it to survive.

After the flowers bloom, the seed pods form. They are four inches long and canoe-shaped. When
they open you find what appears to be cotton. The cottony threads are attached to seeds. The cottony material helps disperse the seeds when the wind blows.

Native Americans chewed the tough root for treatment of pleurisy and other pulmonary conditions such as pneumonia and whooping cough. You may hear it called by its common name, "Pleurisy Root". It was also powdered and mixed into a paste for sores.  Beware, it is poisonous if taken in large doses.