Sun Tea

 This is one of those things I grew up with and have assumed everyone knows about, but the knowledge doesn't appear to be universal. It is how we pretty much always made tea for iced tea in the desert Southwest.

The process is pretty simple: put some tea bags in a clear jar of water, set out in the sun for a while, and then you have tea.  It's sun- and temperature-dependent, but either working separately, or both together, will lead to some degree of success.  In other words, a cold sunny day or a warm cloudy day will work, but a cold cloudy one won't be so good.  Sun seems to matter.  Regardless of temperature, tea seems to turn out better when it's in the sun.

I was surprised to read that some feel sun tea is potentially unsafe. If the bags are contaminated, they could be correct, but that's probably very unlikely (see also below).  If the water is contaminated when it goes out into the sun, then having it sit out there warming up for a few hours certainly won't help, but if the water is okay at the outset, the tea bags would be the only thing that could cause problems.  In my new house, I was originally on a bored well that had some contamination issues.  I didn't make sun tea much back then because of my work schedule.  The water I was drinking out of the bored well was a mess generally, with or without making it into tea.

Although I've been doing it for decades, the process I follow is still ad hoc and it's widely tolerant of divergence to the upside: leaving it out for too long does not ruin it.  I have a jug that's about 1.5 gallons, and I put three Luzianne family-sized tea bags into it.  Four can be used and will make satisfactory tea faster. Lipton or any other kind also work.

 

Then I just go by sight. On a sunny day in the summer, it can be ready in as soon as a couple of hours.  If it's spring or fall and cooler, it might take four.  If it is cloudy, it takes longer. As noted above, cloudy days often lead to cloudy tea, but I haven't studied it systematically.

 

Lipton, Luzianne, and possibly others also have cold brew varieties.  I have only seen Luzianne on the shelf.  It does work okay, though I let it go for longer than five minutes.  It can be put out in the sun and works fine that way, though I haven't tried it when it was warm out, just when it has been below about 50 degrees.  It doesn't have to go outside: it can also be made on the counter indoors.  The taste is different, but it'll work if nothing else does. And obviously, if sun tea poses a risk, cold-counter tea does, too.

 

Once tea is made, it lasts through the day and usually is good into the next day--but beyond that is very iffy.  Sometimes it's cloudy and getting off flavors the next day, too.  Various sites suggest letting it cool at room temperature before refrigerating it to ward off cloudiness. When the weather is cool outside, this won't be as much of an issue, but when it's warm, the water will obviously heat up even if there's cloud cover.

One of the better aspects of tea made this way is that it is cheap: If  $3.48 (as of May, 2022) buys 48 family-sized tea bags, and each batch yields 10 glasses, that's only about $0.02 per glass for the tea cost, plus any sweeteners or other flavorings added at the time of drinking.  That compares very favorably with any pre- made or mixed tea product.  So drink up!

First Litter

I have two pairs of rabbits: two TAMUKs and two New Zealand Reds.  The TAMUKs are more heat-tolerant, developed at Texas A&M Kingsville, and have several breeds in their lineage, including New Zealands.  The TAMUK doe's first litter has arrived:

The litter had eight, but one fell through the sidewall of the cage to the ground and died.  Four weeks later, they have grown.

TAMUKs can have any color, and mixed-color litters are not uncommon.  The buck is sort of off-white.

Pretty soon they'll be moving to a grow-out cage of their own.  Things are going very well.

 

Patches on Top of Patches

 Patching clothes does work.  The jeans mentioned in the previous post are still in rotation four years post-patch, although some additional dings have been accumulated.  I have some other pants that are on a steep and increasing downhill slide, however.

I had some pants that needed to be patched in the knee a while back.  I don't remember exactly how long ago, but it was a couple of years.  Then another wear spot made it necessary to add a second patch immediately adjacent.  Then a third.  This is how the knee area looks now:

From behind, it's gruesome.

The patch at the left is the newest one; the pants haven't been washed with it yet.  It's the same left-right orientation as the front view above.  However, as you can see at the right of the top picture, there's another tear forming.  These pants may not be long for this world.  Patching is a thrifty way to extend the lifespan of clothing, but there are limits.

 In response to the obvious question, why not do a huge patch to cover the whole area rather than smaller ones: It's not obvious that a bigger patch will be needed.  Sometimes it's not.  A large patch is harder to put on (keeping both layers smooth and properly aligned) and uses more patch material and thread.  Plus, it takes a lot of time.  Speaking of patch material, however, I may be getting more from these woeful worn-out pants soon...

 

Spring Pruning, 2022

 I am virtually always late when it comes to pruning.  Every November I think that I'll plan ahead and get it done early, and every March I wonder where the dormant season went.  Some things are still dormant as of early April, but they won't be for long.  Better late than never, in any case...

This year I also need to pull out some of the fence circles I put around trees when they were first planted.  The trees had outgrown them, were growing through the fencing in some instances, and old enough to stand on their own. That's not to say that there won't be problems from the deer, but it should be relatively minor damage at this point rather than lethal.

This was not necessarily an easy task, but had to be completed before the trees leafed out.  I found that in some cases, the wire had to be clipped to free the branches, and some roots had grown over the bottom fence wire (no tree roots, fortunately--mostly grass, and in one case, privet). This points to one of the problems with the fencing: it discourages maintenance activities inside the wire.  Speaking of privet, this was growing inside the fence circle next to my Enterprise apple:

Once the fencing was out, the t-posts had to be removed.  Several years ago I got a t-post puller, and had seldom used it.

If you don't have one of these and you have to pull t-posts, get one.  I've pulled them up by hand and this is vastly easier, quicker, and doesn't tear up the ground as much.  The price from Tractor Supply is up from when I got mine, but it still isn't bad at under $55.  It's awkward to use in close quarters but does work well, even if it has to be short-stroked.

I was even later with pruning most of the muscadines.  Some of them leaked sap profusely after pruning, but hopefully they'll be fine as in years past.

A Treat for the Bunnies

It's only about two months past when I should've pruned my fruit trees and the muscadines, so it's time to get going on that task.  Ahem.  At any rate, this year I have a potential use for the small branches taken out in pruning: rabbits like them.

 Although my New Zealand doe doesn't look terribly impressed with the offering, she did eventually gnaw it pretty thoroughly.  Shown below are a couple of freshly-cut sticks with one that has been debarked.

I do spray my fruit trees with a variety of things, but this season all they've gotten is one dose of copper (they're due for another), and I've gotten about three inches of rain since I sprayed the first time.  So I figured it probably wouldn't hurt them to give them a treat. I have also given them some dandelion leaves, which they like (I don't spray the grass at all).

Other than that, they're still on hay and pellets.  It seems to be working well.

The End of Psycho

 As I mentioned a few months ago, my Barred Rock rooster was not behaving well.  Things continued to deteriorate with him to the point that holding him down brought no improvement at all; he'd come at me in another day or two again.  Two things made me finally pull the plug:  The first was the realization that I didn't want to propagate his bloodline (Joel Salatin, in his new book, makes it clear that animals with behavioral problems have to be culled to get improvement in whatever you're breeding).  The second (and probably decisive) element was the attack at my face that left me bleeding in several places.  Yes, I should've been more wary around him, and yes, the injuries overall were relatively minor.  But still.  I was kneeling on the ground refilling their feeder, and he came around and hit me from above and the side.  So he truly had to go.

Ultimately, the destiny of all of them is the freezer.  He just got there a little sooner than he would have otherwise.

Shown below are the breast meat fillets:

The one on the bottom is from Tyson--it's a Cornish Cross breast, so is larger, but the color difference is striking. 

The rooster was about 18 months old, so the meat was a little firm, but not objectionably so.  The Tyson breast, coming from a chicken that was about eight weeks old.  It was definitely more tender.

I processed him on a Sunday, breaking the meat down right away.  It sat in the refrigerator for a couple of days before being frozen for another few days before baking.  That should have been enough time for any post-death rigor mortis to subside. So I'm assuming the not-entirely-tender quality of the breast meat was due to age alone. However, as I do more, I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Tractor Modification Update

 As discussed in an earlier post, I made some changes to the tractor design for the second build, which is still occupied by the second group of Barred Rock birds. The main thing I was trying to accomplish was lowering the nesting boxes so that they would be lower than the roosting bars.  I hoped this would avoid the problem that developed with the first tractor, in which the chickens roosted in the nesting boxes and laid on the ground underneath the boxes.  Lowering the boxes greatly complicated the build, but last year it seemed to work reasonably well at getting the birds to lay in the boxes rather than sleep--after an initial period of them laying on the ground.

Well... this year while they have been parked, they have fallen into the same habits the first group of chickens acquired.  They're laying on the ground (again) and roosting in the boxes.  This is what I'm finding daily:

The egg in the picture is a fake one, providing a hint that is not being taken (at least for now).  I'm hopeful that this is more a product of the tractors being parked, with the resulting hay inside, that is making a little nest area at the back on the ground more attractive than the boxes.  Once I started rolling last year, the birds soon moved to the nesting boxes for their egg-laying and all was well.  I hope that happens this year, because there's no room for a nesting box under the existing nesting boxes in the new tractor--unless I cut one down.  At this point, I'd say my design modification was not worth the effort and I wouldn't do it again.  Ah well.

Meanwhile, the Delawares in Tractor 1 are mostly laying on the ground, but I've found a couple of eggs in the boxes--and not much poop.  So there is some hope.

 Update:  both tractors are rolling again, as the grass is greening and the winter weeds are abundant.  Both groups are laying in the boxes more often now, but the Delawares are still laying one or two on the ground every day.