Bradly Tew Berntson and Jane Anne Fitts Wedding

I don't always acknowledge extended family wedding announcements, but this one had special interest to me. I have always had a special place in my heart for my sister Norma. Brad is the oldest of Norma's two flesh and blood children, Heidi being her other child. Norma raised four boys who came from her husband, Dale's first marriage. Dale, a prominent surgeon in SLC, died in 1999. Norma now lives in an apartment complex just off Foothill Drive, southeast of the University of Utah. Brad lives in Holladay, Heidi in Sandy, both in the Salt Lake Valley.

Not too long ago, while I was in Utah on a trip, Brad let me stay at his house while he was away. I regret that Brad and my sons Alan and Neal have never gotten to know each other. Here they are, cousins, living so close, and actually having what I believe are very compatable personalities. Brad was formerly married; I believe this is his second marriage. I wish him and Jane the very best. They are getting married in the Salt Lake Temple on May 8, and will have a pot luck wedding barbeque about a month later on Saturday, June 6, 2009 (11-3 pm) at Sugar House Park. Maybe Alan and Neal can attend and represent our side of the extended family at the reception. I'm sure most of Burton and Louise's clan will be there.

Are you kidding! Retiring in Tennessee?

That's right, it looks like we are going to be doing exactly that...retiring in Cumberland region of Tennessee. Judy and I have just made a committment to purchase property at the Sewanee Creek development that we visited a few days ago (see April 14 blog) on the outskirts of Tracy City. We fell in love with the area and have confidence in the Millers and the vision they have for the development. We are excited about relocating there. We decided to go with modest piece of property within the development, which will still give us more land than we have ever owned before in our lives. Here is a map of the development and our location within the development. We purchased Lot #12 (1.4 acres) at the bottom of the map. It's shape is something akin to the squared off end of a thumb nail. Once you blow up the map, you can see that there is an access road that runs through our property, allowing the timber company that owns the timber behind us, access to their timber. Our future home will likely be on the right side of, and not too far from the access road. The location centrally locates us within the development, not too far from the community garden site and a future pavilion and amphitheatre. There are many unknowns at this point, including exactly when we will start building, when we will actually retire, and so on. But we will keep our blog readers posted as this new chapter in our life begins to unfold. The picture of me at the beginning of this blog entry was actually taken by Judy on Lookout Mountain above Chattanooga, though the scenery is strikingly similar to where we will be living.

Former U.S. Congressman Bill Orton killed in an accident

I was surprised to see that Sunday's lead story in the Deseret News was about the untimely death of former Congressman Bill Orton. Bill was a political maverick who served three terms as a Democrat in one of Utah's most conservative districts. The 60-year-old died in an all-terrain vehicle accident Saturday afternoon at the Little Sahara Sand Dunes in Juab County southwest of Provo, Utah. His past political opponents, primarily former Congressman Chris Cannon and former Governor Mike Leavitt, paid generous tributes to Orton for his integrity and his unwavering adherance to the principles he believed in. In other words, he wasn't the typical political animal that stuck his finger in the air to see which way the political winds were blowing before he acted or voted on an issue. To read the readers' comments following the Deseret News article, it is obvious that Orton was a good and decent human being. During the time we lived in Utah between 1993 and 2000, we had some exposure to Bill Orton during election campaigns. I just remember being very impressed by him, and appalled by Cannon's underhanded campaign tactics. Some of this comes out in the article. Orton was an unabashed supporter of Obama. He married and started a family late in life, and has left two sons who are now without a father during a crucial part of their lives. The picture above was taken in 2000. Hopefully, they will have a strong support system surrounding them that will help carry them through. I wish his wife and children well.

Transitioning from potatoes to corn in our garden

Last Friday after work, I harvested most of our potato crop to make way for a second planting of corn. The three rows of potatoes that I planted earlier this year can be seen in the lead photo on the March 31 blog entry, and also the March 13 entry about the beneficial effects of seaweed mulch in our garden. The potatoes were planted on February 7, a bit risky, but we were fortunate this year not to have more than a very mild freeze from then until now. And, as of mid-April, the possibility of an unseasonably late freeze for southern Louisiana is behind us. We filled two five-gallon buckets worth of ‘Red Lasoda’ potatoes. When I planted the potatoes back in early February, we happened to have a few brown potatoes in our pantry that were sprouting, so they were no longer very good for eating. I threw them in the garden along with the potato starts that I had purchased from a local feed & seed store. This explains the contrasting colors seen in the photo above that Judy took at dusk immediately after I finished spraying them down on our lawn.

On Saturday, I tilled the garden where the potatoes were harvested, shaped the rows, and transplanted corn that I had started in a greenhouse two weeks earlier. This represents the second wave of corn in our garden. The photo on the left shows the corn and edible soybeans I planted in early March. I suspect the corn and soybeans in the Midwest won’t look this far along for some time. The first planting of sweet corn was with a super sweet variety called ‘Early and Often’ which is advertised as being ready to eat 64 days after planting, or about three weeks from now. Right now, the tassels are visible inside the whorl of inner leaves, so the plants are on track to meet this target. The second planting is of a new variety of corn bred at the University of Hawaii. This variety is called ‘Sweet Sarah.’ It has a much longer planting-to-harvest interval, so I am expecting almost a two-month separation between the two corn harvest periods.

As a side note, corn and potatoes are almost universally included in crawfish boils down here. They are thrown in the mix, along with Creole seasoning, and really add to whole crawfish boil experience…reminding me that two weeks from yesterday, we will have our annual Thibodaux Ward Crawfish Boil. All are welcome to come and enjoy. You can check out last year’s by using the key words “Crawfish Boil” at the top of this blog.

Our citrus trees at sunrise

As we pass through springtime toward the summer months, I am frequently greeted with a scene very similar to the one shown here as I look out through our screen door after waking up. There is the usual layer of haze hovering over the ground reminding us that because we are so close to the Gulf, the humidity down here is typically at 100% until the sun climbs above the horizon a ways. Our citrus trees have already bloomed, and are now loaded with tiny fruit approaching the size of marbles. They will be ready to pick in the late fall. The three larger trees in the front are satsumas (a type of mandarin orange that was developed in Japan). The smaller tree in the left rear is a newly planted key lime tree (so we can make key lime pies), and the smaller tree in the right rear is a newly planted grapefruit tree. Louisiana has a small citrus industry that will likely remain small for two main reasons. While citrus trees can handle a mild freeze, they cannot handle a hard freeze. In 1989, the industry literally had to start over because night temperatures that year dipped below 20 degrees Farenheit. The other main threat is hurricanes. Most of the commercial citrus orchards in Louisiana are in Plaquemines parish, which follows the Mississippi River SE of New Orleans all the way to the mouth of the River. This is where Katrina came out of the Gulf and did its initial massive wind and water damage, severely impacting citrus orchards as well. Plaquemines Parish may never fully recover to its former strength as a parish, population wise or production wise. Citrus trees tolerate the heavy soils we have down here surprisingly well. We have tried other fruit trees and bushes down here, like nectarines and blueberries, and realize that while they can be grown, the requirements to successfully grow them have thus far been beyond our means and/or ability.

Report on our Tennessee Trip

I am happy to report that our trip went largely without incident, though we had a few "interesting" moments, weather related. It took us about 9 hours to get to our campground next to Nickajack Lake from Houma. The campground was sandwiched between a freeway and a railroad, but a nice enough location on its own merits, not far from the lake. Thursday evening it rained very hard, and our camper met the test, staying completely dry inside.

On Friday, we spent the better part of the day at our ultimate destination, which was to check out lots on the property of Grant Miller, who we met online. Grant and his wife, Becky, live near Tracy City, and have purchased about 750 acres of pristine land in the Cumberland region of Tennessee, of which 500 acres cannot be further developed. They are developing 30 acres for themselves, and have subdivided another 70 acres into 18 lots of varying sizes (2-7 acres) under the name, Sewanee Creek. Their vision is to emphasize self sustainability and "green" in the development of these lots and are looking specifically for people who have the same vision. We enjoyed our visit with them, and they seemed happy to spend whatever time . We expected to see much more building and activity occurring than what we saw, which was a bit disconcerting.

We visited the neighboring towns of Monteagle and Sewanee. As we approached Monteagle, we stopped at a National Park site to get a better understanding of the Cumberland region. Immediately after going inside the building, fierce winds and strong rains followed by marble-sized hail descended on us. It got very dark, even though it was around 2:00 p.m. The lady hosting us told us that we were under a tornado warning; she was obviously anxious about what was going on outside. We were very thankful to be inside a sturdy building. We later learned that a very damaging tornado hit the city of Murfreesboro, only 50 miles away, during this period. We visited The University of the South in Sewanee, a well-endowed university, with impressive buildings on the campus, and tough admission standards. They are able to attract the likes of T. Boone Pickens, who will be talking about energy on their campus tomorrow.

On Saturday, we went toward Chattanooga with the intent of visiting one of the many caves in the region. We ended up going to the top of Lookout Mountain that overlooks Chattanooga. There, we visited Ruby Falls and Rock City, both of which were well worth visiting. Ruby Falls has a spectacular waterfall at the end of the cave to climax the whole experience, and Rock City is literally a city of gigantic boulders with crevices between boulders that one can barely fit through, creating the effect of a City of Rocks with avenues and streets. The owners have built overpasses, underpasses, and hanging bridges on the massive boulders, have added overhangs and waterfalls, gardens and trees, strategically placed gnomes and elves, and other features to make for an incredible experience.

>>>>>On Sunday, we visited the South Pittsburg, TN branch that the Millers attend. They meet in a Phase I building (like Julie's and Matt's). They were very happy that Judy was there to play the piano. In fact, after the 3-hour block, some of the members gathered around the piano, mostly young women, and encouraged Judy to keep playing hymns so that they could keep singing. It was really a cool experience.

>>>>> After church, we returned to Overlook Mountain, to learn more about its significance in relation to the Civil War. There are only four Civil War military battlefields that have been preserved like the Chickamauga/Chattanooga, the other three being at Gettysburg, PA; Shiloh, TN; and Vicksburg, MS. All four were pivotal to the outcome of the Civil War.

>>>>>Sunday evening into Monday morning, strong winds kept pounding us, making me wonder at certain times if we might get flipped over. Apparently, there were reports of gusts that exceeded 60 mph in the area. Monday, we returned home, encountering some heavy rain in Mississippi. We learned that there were more devastating tornadoes in the general region over the weekend. It was a fun trip, and we definately learned more about the camper, and a few things we need to do between now and the next trip, whenever and where ever that will be.

Preparing for a Tennessee adventure

From April 9-12, we will be camping in Tennessee next to Nickajack Lake which is just west of Chattanooga. This will give us our first opportunity to test out our pop-up camper that we bought a few months ago. It's a Fleetwood Westlake in the Fleetwood Destiny Series. This website gives you a look at its floorplan. Judy bought me a very nice compact digital camera, so I will learn how to use it and hopefully bring back some nice pics of Tennessee.

Kevin and Emily Voisin, friends at Church, were excited to announce over the weekend, that their family's business, Motivatit Seafoods, and it's star product, Gold Band Oysters, will be featured on the primetime Food Network program, "Will Work For Food."

If interested, tune in on Monday, April 6, 2009 at 7:30 PM-CST to see television personality Adam Gertler try his hand at oyster harvesting in South Louisiana. Click here to find out more about Adam and his many adventures in the name of food. According to FoodNetwork.com, Adam gets a tough and messy lesson in oyster harvesting from the back-breaking haul to the cleaning, shucking, and banding of this amazing delicacy.

Whoever hasn't been to the oyster processing plant in Houma before, this will be a great opportunity to see the operation in full swing!