Steve Mendez

Here are a few pics of the Red Amaranth. The pics with the Kale and with the Morning Glories are from this year.

In 2022 we had a Volunteer Red Amaranth in our garden. It was a pretty plant and we let it stay until the seed clusters turned brown.
The following year we had an Amaranth explosion in the garden. We pulled some when they were fairly small and steamed them. It reminded me of spinach or chard but with a bit more texture. We couldn't keep up with it by harvesting so we ended up by hoeing nearly all of it out before it completely took over the garden.
Every year since, we've had Red Amaranth volunteers. We harvest a bit and hoe the rest, leaving two or three plants for ornamentals.
The plants produce a tremendous amount of seeds but they are miniscule, maybe one fourth the size of poppy seeds.

After the surgery and all the while that I was in the hospital I was given strong pain meds and was prescribed strong meds to use "as needed". I didn't use them at all at home because in 1974 I had a right hip disarticulation amputation and was in the hospital for 60 days. During that time I developed a strong addiction to opioid painkillers. Ten days before my release, the Doctors stopped my pain meds cold and I went through severe withdrawal to the point of having to be strapped down to the hospital bed for several days. After that experience I have a strong aversion to pain killers or any other kind of addictive drugs.

I think that a large part of the pain that I experienced after knee replacement was the result of favoring my old knee for years to the point of atrophying the muscles, tendons and ligaments around my joint. With the new knee in it's place with the proper alignment and the muscles, tendons, and ligaments stretched back to where they belonged, the physical therapy with movement of my leg into positions that hadn't assumed for years caused my poor little unused parts to really complain at first.

I let the therapists do all the manipulations of my leg on the schedule that they'd worked out with my surgeon. My regimen was modified because of the fracture and it hurt but I figured they all knew what they were doing. I grimaced, and grunted, and sweated but I didn't have them back off or let up at all.
It was totally worth it.

Hang in there Susan, in a few months you'll look back on this as a good worthwhile experience.  

We covered our tomatoes and sweet peppers with plastic tarps the last two nights when temps were forecast to drop into the low 30s. Our uncovered beans, squash and cucumbers took a hit and the leaves are wilted and dark green. Now we can see the few unharvested beans, squash and cucumbers that were hiding out in the dense foliage. Now we have at least a week ahead of us with lows in the mid 40s and highs in the upper 60s so we can take our time harvesting the last of the crop and won't need to worry about covering up with the tarps.

We've kind of lucked out this year. After a devastating late frost in May that killed almost the whole garden (even the peas), we replanted late, and now our first frost is a month later than usual, so in the end our harvest has been similar to previous years.

Like Douglas, we also like to pick the green tomatoes just before the real hard frost and store them in the garage. They'll slowly turn red and we can have "fresh" red tomatoes for Thanksgiving and beyond.

I wonder if installing a very tall perch for large raptors in the vicinity of the town would discourage the Prairie Dogs?  

I think my wife and I are "hybrid" Gerts because we were employed full time while developing and running our farm.

Our family struggled and scrimped and worked on the farm for years before the farm turned a profit. Once the farm business started making money we invested in infrastructure and improvements even though we did not own the land. Plowing that money back into the farm paid off with a drastic increase in production and profitability. We then used those profits to pay off our debts, and then to max out our 401Ks, IRAs every year, and to purchase rentals as well as a new home on a half acre with irrigation water.

The farm also paid for college for two of our kids (oldest son is an ER physician, youngest daughter graduated from an Ivy League school with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Environmental Engineering and now designs solar farm sites). Our other daughter went to college for one year and got married and put her husband through school, they have a successful I.T. security company. Youngest son joined the Marines in 2004 at age 19 and came back much matured and with a love for operating big trucks, he and his family live locally.

I retired from my job with a maximum pension at age 64 when I reached the Rule of 90 (age and years of service equals 90). I was fortunate in that I loved my job.  
All the while we paid self employment tax in my name on the farm income so I qualified for the maximum when we sold the farm business and I took Social Security at age 70. My wife retired from her job early at age 60.

I'm occupied in my retirement with managing rentals, Wed and Sat morning coffee at the diner with friends, exploring the desert and mountains on the side by side, gardening, fishing, hunting, traveling to visit friends and family, and restoring antique vehicles and other projects in a recently purchased shop in town.

My wife is busy with irrigating, yard work, reading, relaxing on the deck in the mornings with coffee and me, riding her bike, daily exercise classes with friends, traveling, and playing the violin with the local symphony orchestra.

Winter cold, snow, and ice on crutches is taking a toll on me and we're seriously considering getting a little winter place with palm trees in the yard and a local orchestra in a town a days drive south of here.

Being Gerts, to us means healthy eating from our own land, no prescriptions (so far), no debts, no payments, no competing, no set daily schedule, no alarm clock, and no boss.

I have waited until after your successful knee replacement to relate my knee replacement experience.
In 2013 I had left knee (my only knee) replacement surgery after suffering severe bone on bone pain for years, cortisone injections and a knee brace had done very little to alleviate the situation. My leg had become very bowed at the knee. After walking with forearm crutches for 39 years
my height had gone from 6'2" to 5'10". The orthopedic surgeon had told me in 2010 that I was the perfect candidate for a knee replacement. He said I would know when it was time to have the surgery but it had to be done before I retired from my job which provided excellent medical insurance. My retirement was set for 2015 on my 64th birthday.

The morning of the surgery I was assured that I would be up and crutching around the next day.

In the recovery room the surgeon came in with a grim look on his face and showed my the x-rays of my new knee. They revealed a spiral fracture in my tibia from the knee to the ankle. During the surgery when the surgeons were pounding the anchor for the new knee into the cut off end of the tibia the bone had split open and the crack extended to my ankle. He explained that I had the hardest bones he'd ever worked with.

I was sent home in a wheelchair three days after the surgery with a machine that flexed my leg every minute or so while lying in bed. For the next two and a half months I went to he hospital for physical therapy sessions several times a week.

After ten weeks I stood up on my crutches for the first time, totally pain free, with full range of motion in my leg, and restored to my original height of 6'2".

The knee has been working fine ever since. The hardest part now is complying with the 25 pound weight restriction for lifting and carrying.
 

Hey Ryan,

There are plenty of potentially valuable wild/rare plants and animals that are just waiting for someone to develop the parameters for farming them and supplying a lucrative niche market.
The same goes for off the wall services that others haven't thought of or figured out how to do.

While working on your project/career/business/farm (whatever it may be) you'll need an income, possibly from a job you don't like and with people as you've described in your previous posts.
Suck it up and get busy. With study, hard work, dedication, and single mindedness towards a goal, you and your wife can overcome failure, disappointment, and setbacks to achieve a great outcome.
Try to stay positive and keep your future in mind.

You might try going out into your yard on a warm night with a UV flashlight. I know that scorpions and some centipedes really "light up" under a strong UV light.

I wonder if perhaps you are drowning the newly deposited eggs and newly hatched larvae. In my experience there is a fine line between feed too wet and feed just the right dampness for starting the maggots and for the flies to lay viable eggs. It doesn't take much to drown fly larvae, especially the small young ones.