Ron Cook

I view my 12 hens as egg layers and a really good source of chicken litter for my quarter-acre + vegetable garden that can never get enough of stuff like that.

Okra requires 100% sunlight, no shade whatsoever.  It also requires quite a bit of water too, due to the transfer evaporative aspect of its large foliage.  It also likes a pH of neutral (around 6.0) and needs plenty of nutrients ...  I mean, okra will 'survive' conditions not up to those standards, but for it to thrive, okra needs excellent growing conditions, even more so than tomatoes, due to okra's incredible potential rate of growth.  I've had Heavy Hitter Okra plants reach a height of 8' feet and a width to match that in a single season.  My record HH plant grew 65 branches and well over 250 pods.  That kind of production is very taxing on the soil and requires plenty of water.

One of the misnomers I hear most is that okra 'LOVES' hot weather.  That is not entirely true.  The term 'Hot weather' is relative.  To a person living in Canada, 'Hot' would mean 90° but to a person living in Arizona, 'Hot might mean upwards of 120°.  Okra really does love 90° weather, but anything above 100° soon becomes detrimental to its health.  Much like people, okra does not fare well in climates where the daytime highs are consistently above 100°...  Once again, I mean, it will 'survive' temperatures well above 100° but for okra to thrive, requires much more moderate conditions.  

What happens at temperatures above 100° is that the reproductive parts of the blossoms suffer damage and for that reason, the plant loses production in the form of blossom drop without forming a pod.

Another factor to consider is that okra pods are age sensitive; (for lack of a better term).  Any okra pod more than 4 days old will become fibrous and tough, regardless of its length.   An okra plant that receives plenty of water (an equivalent to 1" inch of rainfall or more per week) and is experiencing moderate temperatures (in the ballpark of 90°) and is growing in nutrient-rich soil, may produce pods 6" inches in length or longer and still be tender, but an okra pod grown in less favorable conditions might be tough as an old boot at only 2" inches in length.  This is due to the relative growth rate of each pod for a given amount of time (4-days).

I am not claiming to be an expert on okra, but I do harvest about 2,000 pounds of tender pods per season.  Heavy Hitter is the variety that I grow.  It was developed on our farm, so high-quality seeds are no problem for us.

There is a good reason blueberries are so expensive.  they are hard as heck to grow and to keep alive.

(My Thoughts on Outdoor Kitchens.)

I used to work up near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, back in the mid- 1980s.  The Amish and Mennonites around there, cooked inside Summer Kitchens, built separately from their homes, so their houses would not get over-heated in the summer months. Some were more Spartan than others, but all were separate from the main house.

There and then, I said to myself, "I'm gonna build a Summer Kitchen someday."

It took me until 2012 to get it done.  I started construction back in 2009.  It took me three-years to complete, as I didn't want to borrow money, so I just set aside $200.00 each month to buy building materials.  Some things, like the concrete slab, cost almost $1,000 so things like that took several months to save for.

It took a long time to accomplish, but it was money well spent.  I built it 14' feet by 26' feet, so we could host Thanksgiving dinners and Birthday celebrations out there.  My only regret is that I didn't build it 16' feet wide (that extra 2' feet of space would make all the difference, once I got cabinets on the walls.  We use it way more than I ever expected we would.  I put a commercial stove, a commercial refrigerator, and a commercial freezer out there.  It makes great storage for items that we've caught on sale over the years.  and when we need two ovens for Thanksgiving and Christmas, it sure frees up a lot of kitchen space, so my wife and I can cook and not be stepping on one another's toes all day long.

Rabbit fur is high in nitrogen, so it is good to mix with compost.

Azita,

I used to have the same dream.  I worked construction and lived in 16 different States; following the big jobs from powerhouses, to papermills, to Chemical Plants, to oil Refineries, to Car Plants, to State Prisons, to 'you name it.'  At about 42-years of age, I discovered I wasn't as young as I used to be and I made the decision to sell everything and move away from the big cities I had hated for the past 22-years.  I bought a small, 3 bedroom, brick Indian house, in Oklahoma, that had been foreclosed on and I lease 4 additional acres adjacent to it. (total of 5 acres).  I took up teaching school as a substitute teacher and went back to college to earn my Teaching Degree.  I quit working construction and taught a country school of about 200 kids from pre-K to 12th grade.  (That gave me summers off, to garden and to sell produce).

I grew up on a 210-acre farm, so 5 acres felt like a postage stamp at first, but as I get older (59-years) I start to realize that 5-acres is all a person really needs.  I have a drilled well with excellent water.  I have an outhouse in case we ever need it for power outages (which happens occasionally). I have a hog pen, a hen house full f laying hens, and a flock of Cotton Patch Geese.  I have an orchard, I have a hand planted berry patch, and a quarter-acre Certified Organic Garden.  We used to heat with wood only, but as we cleared more and more timber, we resorted to using mostly propane, because we wanted to keep plenty of shade trees.  

We grow enough produce in our organic garden to sell surplus at the Tahlequah Farmers' Market twice per week in the summertime.  We also supply 9 local restaurants with slicing tomatoes.  We used to supply Tahlequah City Hospital with all of their organic produce for cancer patients, but they changed owners and stopped buying from small farms.  Over the years, I have made enough money doing this to pay for two zero-turn John Deere riding mowers, a 2004 GMC farm truck, and a 2011 Massey Ferguson tractor, plus a Plasticulture Mulch Layer, a Bush hog 3 point tiller, and a brush hog for my tractor.  I have also built an on-site Farm Processing Kitchen, where we do all our canning and butchering. Plus, I've developed my own variety of okra, called, "Heavy Hitter Okra."  I sell seeds each winter through our at-home-farm-store. https://www.drycreekfarmstore.com/

Sure, it's a lot of hard work, but what else are you going to do in life?  Life is hard all around, no matter where you live.  You've just gotta choose your own conditions.  Living in the country is a dream come true!  We live 12 miles from the nearest town and have a wonderful local country Church were only about a dozen people attend, but there is such peace here that we will never leave.  I say, "Follow your dream ..."