A Sweet Week

Ma’s new chicken shoes arrived, and the birds each had to strut over to inspect. Style, comfort and cleanliness make tending the coop more enjoyable for everyone. I added to the fun by feeding them a couple of “treat sticks” that had trespassed on our plants.

Across the yard at the banana bed, just below the mulch line and attached to sprawling vines was a jumbo yield of sweet potatoes we weren’t expecting the first year. These grow better in enriched sandy soil but put all their growth into leaves and vines, not tubers, when growing in recently built-up composting mulch. Such had been the case twice in Estero, but this time we just kept pulling up the goods. The largest one had a sculpted surface that reminded me of a whale shark’s skin, and it tasted great. We left the other two-thirds in the compost larder for another month and high-fived each other in celebration of our starch crop win. Food sufficiency is a critically important benchmark here, with regular potatoes on the way for the Winter crop.

Also in season are roselle hibiscus, cactus fruit, beans, and – barely edible in case of nuclear war – American persimmon. We decided to put frozen watermelon chunks from July in a blender with mango yogurt and a few tablespoons of condensed milk for yesterday’s Snack-Thirty.

The week unfolded well with considerable effort and despite the tropical storm passing right over us, nothing was damaged. Morning glories are in full force and prominent view as we transit from project station to station. To prevent them from spreading everywhere next season I trim the spent flowers and seed heads every morning. Seven feet away from those I started our first oyster mushroom logs, and in six months we’ll see how it worked.

Honoring the name of our estate and the semi-xeric ecology are the ever-growing crops of cacti and now the first young gopher tortoise we’ve ever seen, at four inches in length and scarfing down Florida pulsey weed near the newly installed Tent 2. Our wild areas on the acres host five or six large adults, and a couple of them have apparently been busy in their burrows ensuring the survival of their protected species. With no livestock or dogs here anymore they appear to be thriving.