Ep. 22 - We Be Freezer Jammin'

It's almost May, In this episode the Stone County Extension Office talks what all programs they've been doing and got coming up. Anna talks making strawberry freezer jam. Tyler tells how to grow strawberries and okra in your garden and how to take care of them.  Anna tells about the time she was at a photoshoot and a goat escaped.  Tyler talks about his failures at trying to conduct the annual horticulture demos.  How Ice breakers are awkward and stories about learning how to turkey hunt.

Transcript

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Are you ready to do this?

I'm ready.

All right. Stone County Extension saves the world. We're here. It's almost May.

That's wild.

Like, what, another week of April, I guess.

Yeah, exactly.

We've been doing this podcast. We've got at least, what, this will be 22nd episode. We've been doing it for six months.

And we're still here.

We're still here. We were looking up. It's like, well, how long does it take for, you know, to gain some traction and said usually people quit within the first six months. And we're still going. We're getting a few downloads, a few listening, listens. Thanks for everybody checking us out. But I feel like we're hitting our groove. We're kind of figuring out what we're going to, you know, what we want this thing to be. And we're going to try something a little different. We're actually going to kind of follow a structure.

Us in a structure.

See if you notice. If you haven't noticed, we've been kind of winging it somewhat.

It's been a busy month.

But to get the most benefit out of this podcast of humor and funny stories and education, we're going to balance it up a little bit.

Yeah, that's the balance we like.

And I think people enjoy the funny stuff.

I think so. I think it's real life and I always love a good story though.

What's going on, things that have happened, things that are relatable. Well, speaking of what's going on in your life, anything exciting?

So I, this year, if you've heard the other podcasts before this one, I've talked about starting flower beds. And yesterday I got in 10 white hydrangeas and we got those in the ground. So I'm super excited. They looked really good. They packaged them well because the delivery driver apparently had them sideways and all kinds of things before they set them down. But I was excited to get them in the ground.

Yeah, I bet that'll be cool. Yeah, we got WEP. Our WEP team's going. I'm not going to be able to go because I'm going to go. I got a meeting at Little Rock, but you're headed to Monticello with our WEP teams.

Yeah, we've got two junior teams and one senior team. And we've been practicing for a little bit and we've got some, the previous state winners, some of the girls are going to volunteer and run the little Cloverbud contest. And earlier this week we had Get Real, Here's the Deal at Ozarka and that went really well. We had a really fun group.

Yeah.

Sometimes they're so burnt out when you get to the end of the school year. And I was very happy to get all the 11th graders in our entire county. So I got all the 11th graders in public school and they kind of bought in. And it's funny seeing the reactions when when they're running out of money and it was fun.

I was running the entertainment like they had to pick something for entertainment and is like eating out or you could go to on a vacation or you could go on a to a concert and most of the kids would get to mine and be like we're done the cheapest thing burgers $10 a person. I was like that's all you're doing all month.

Yeah. Get real, here's the deal. It's a financial assimilation from the University of Arkansas. They get a fake job, fake income, and then they have to, they have a fake family and they have to go around and do the monthly bills. So food, insurance, cars, houses, child care. And we had a fun ad. I've not done the It Could Happen booth yet. And so I don't know why it didn't occur to me to ask some elected officials until this year, but I had the treasurer, Kayla Meeker and Heather Stevens, the county assessor, and they had a ball at that booth because you draw and you may have to pay $250 or you may earn $75. So they had a good time over there.

And so it's kind of, yeah, and it seems like all that always happens to me.

Tires.

Yeah.

Tires is the one that gets me.

Yeah.

It's real life though. One of them was like your kids' spring photos. And I thought, I feel that to my core. It's like, oh, we need $50 for this.

Yeah. It was fun. I think it's like eye-opening to the kids. Like a lot of them are like, what?

And I hope they absorb a little bit about how you can quickly mess up your credit, not just how difficult it is to get started and pay bills, but try not to get yourself behind before you're even really started.

Yeah. So what, you got any more educational classes come up?

I'm gonna have a air fryer and Instant Pot class. I'm gonna have Fulton County and Sharp County agent are gonna come over and do that. That's gonna be in May. I don't have, we just finished up two food preservation programs. So we just did our, like our joint classes where we talk about preservation and growing it. So we just had pickled asparagus and strawberry jam. And I've got a training in May that I'm planning on hitting hard with programming after that. I'm gonna do the Mediterranean.

Supposed to be the healthiest.

Supposed to be the healthiest. And it also looks to be like an enjoyable, I mean, you say the word diet, it freaks people out, but if you talk about another way of cooking and you're talking about the blue zones and the health benefits, and it was one of the things that was asked for by one of my Get Fit members who is part of our subcommittee that helps us decide our programming. So that's coming up at the end of May, and I'm planning on hitting that hard.

I forgot to set that down.

And you're moving things again. But we've, contest season's kind of at a head, so that affects, some of our other stuff with 4-H and we're about to hit Oramas and so, trying to transition through the different seasons of extension.

What I've got coming up, Monday, April 27th, pesticide applicator training here at the extension office at 530. That's if you need to purchase restricted use pesticides, which I don't know how you feel about pesticides, but they're a tool that farmers can use to help control weeds. It's good management practice to control your weeds. So you got, you know, it'll make better nutritious grass. Those weeds aren't out competing your grass. And the goal over time is to use those products responsibly. And if we can get our, you know, our fertility right and our grass to grow and it'll out-compete those weeds and we can use less pesticides. But this here in Arkansas, to purchase restricted use pesticides, you have to have a license and that's what this training is. It costs $20, again starts at 530.

What date?

Monday, April 27th. Then What are we doing next week on Wednesday?

We're taking Wednesday the youth leadership kids are going to the Capitol in the Clinton Museum.

That'll be fun. Small ruminant conference is on April 30th. I believe that's Thursday. Yeah. April 30th. It'll be at the Hilltop Cowboy Church in Heber Springs. It's one of our multi-county programs that we kind of, you know, we move it around. And this one's we do small ruminants. It should be Pretty interesting training, talking, forages for small ruminants. And if you didn't know, sheep and goats, small ruminants. I think of talking forages for fertility. Are we a big ruminant? No, we don't. Ruminant.

Are we monogastric?

We're monogastric. So ruminant, they have the...

I know.

Okay. Well, what if people don't know? They may not know. Okay. And I can't remember all the chambers.

There's 4, I think.

There's 4. People say, cattle have the four stomachs. Well, it's 4 chambers, and it's O Mason. The O Mason, Abomason, Rumen. And reticulum.

Bam, livestock skills lesson right there.

And, but what these animals do, how they, they're able to eat grass, which is, if here in Stone County, we can grow grass. And stones. And stones. So we can throw cattle, ruminants out on our pastures and grow a viable agricultural product, meat or something. And those ruminants are able to graze grass, they'll swallow it, and then they'll like regurgitate it and they may chew it again. And then they call that chewing the cud and then they'll swallow it again. And that's how they're able to process these.

Do they like go around and just eat it all and then later it comes up and they chew on it?

Well, like.

Or do they kind of work?

Yeah, they'll kind of work cross-pasture in their graze a little bit and then they'll They'll go and they'll lay down. And then that's when they'll ruminate.

You'll see them chewing. You'll see them chewing. I know some people that chew gum like that.

I do.

Are you one of them?

Yeah, Lauren, all the time I'll be chewing gum.

If I start doing that too much, Bruno makes fun of me.

Yeah, Lauren, I'll be sitting there driving and she'll just be sitting there staring at me. I'm not big on gum.

I'd rather crunch a mint.

Yeah.

Oh, and we have the banquet, our 4-H banquet's on Tuesday, April 28th.

April 28th. We're honoring all the 4-Hers and the hard work they've put in throughout the year.

And I'm super excited. We have a bunch signed up, even if they're new or if they've been there. I'm really excited about that. Get everybody together and celebrate all accomplishments.

That's the 28th.

That's Tuesday, the 20th of April.

One more thing about the small room minute conference starts in the morning. I think we're starting at 9, run through lunch, and then We're not sure on how many people it's going to come. So what we decided to do instead of providing lunch with at noon, we kind of dismissed.

Can I have a break?

Have a break and you can run and get your own lunch. And then afterwards, if you want, you know, it can end, but then we're going to have a FAMACHA training. I think that there is a cost to that. I want to say it's probably like $10 a person.

Is that where you're looking at their eyelids?

That's where you look at their eyes and you'll learn how to do it and it's just determining like a parasite load. There's a certain parasite called the barber pole worm that a small ruminants will get and it I was talking about, gosh, I was talking about worms.

That sounds mean.

So the, it gets in there and it'll drink their blood and they don't have a lot of blood and it'll change the color of their eye.

Where is it sucking their blood at?

It just gets inside their body.

These worms.

And then you look at their eye and depending on the color of it, if it's real pink, then they're probably not a heavy load. But if it's, white, light pink, uh-oh.

I want to know if you can do that with people.

I doubt it. They talk about this one specific worm, the barbed pole worm. I need to learn more about small ruminants. When I first started, I didn't know nothing. I've kind of picked up a little bit here and there. When I first started, Les Walls. You know him? Yeah, Les, he's the, he was an agent at the time, but now he's like our A&R instructor. He come in here and he's from down south and I didn't know him. He's like, yeah, I've got about 50 acres and I'm wanting to run about 150 goats on this place up here. And he's like, I need some information. And I was just like, what? What am I gonna say? Cause I don't know nothing about goats.

When he first started.

Yeah. I don't know what they eat. I don't know.

And then was he like?

And I don't know the stocking rate. Yeah, he, I think he, knew like that would get me. Cause I, mean, I kind of looked at him and he just kind of grinned and Rachel, she's like, don't I know you?

That's a good trick.

Yeah, I thought you looked familiar. But yeah, I learned a lot about small roominess. So April 30th, that's Thursday, Heber Springs at the Hilltop Cowboy Church, starting 9 to about noon. I'm talking about, you know, if you wanted to sell meat.

The meat.

Meat and milk.

Milk and meat.

How do you do it? Well, so anything else? Kind of give an update on what's going on.

I'm sure there's more, but that'll do for my update for this week.

Yeah, I think so. Let's transition now to funny stuff.

Oh, funny stuff.

Funny stuff. So I guess we can kind of give you, you're going to talk freezer jam.

Well, yeah, and strawberries.

Strawberries.

I'm mainly talking about strawberry freezer jam, but a little bit about strawberries too.

Yeah.

Some things I learned.

How we run this podcast is we're like, what are you talking about today?

What are you talking about today?

I still haven't decided. I figured that, you know, last week we talked gardening. I figure since you're talking a little bit strawberries, I'll just throw in some, you know, more things to think about gardening because we're in that time of year. You know, what we watch out for. You making fun of my hands?

A few years ago, that's probably been more than a few now. I think this was around COVID times, around COVID and A local photographer would take photos in her family's orchard when the blooms were popping up. And so this one time she had borrowed a sheep, which is this. one of the reasons sheep get on my nerves. But bless them. Anyway, so she borrowed a sheep and she's taking photos of my daughter and they're really cute. And I guess I think I might have been the one in charge of the sheep, the borrowed sheep.

Supposed to be making sure it stayed where it's supposed to be.

Yeah. Well, it saw an opportunity and it darted away. And I mean, when I say darted, like this sheep got up and gone. And so I kept kind of going after it, going after it. And I feel like somebody had a random pony in here also.

Oh, yeah.

It was near your Uncle Fred's house. Yeah. Well, then, so the sheep took off, and I mean, acres away, it's just going. And the fact that it's a borrowed sheep makes it so much more upsetting. So borrowed sheep is just heading out of Dodge. Somehow, the angels of Fred and Tanner cast and appeared in a side by side.

Yeah.

Because me and the photographer lady's husband, we were trying to get, I don't know how all this happened, but I ended up like going down a road. Maybe your mom even showed up.

Yeah, I remember mom telling me about it.

They called her in. They get into this whole other field on your neighbor. If y'all know Ricky Stewart and Odie, you know A lot. Anyway, got over there and it's It's kind of grown up where the cows were and his cows proceeded to want to kill the sheep. And so, or whatever they were doing, they were just kind of circling around it and whatever. And the sheep was kind of freaking out. And then your mom wasn't scared of those cows, but they were pretty big while the cows were all spooked. You know, like they'll kind of get spooked and they also were nosy. And so all the cows were kind of after the sheep. And then your mom was helping. I feel like Taylor might have been there. And then somehow the sheep ended up back in another field. And at some point friend Tanner ended up there and like people were lunging for the sheep and like it squirted through one of the fences and ended up in another field and like trying to go after it was side by side of me. We're talking like 5, six people trying to get this. Stupid sheet. we kind of got it cornered near a pond and it jumped in the pond.

It's probably hot.

Like, I think it was like, this is Molly. Well, it probably would have drowned. And I think Tanner or Fred got in there and got it and then held it down side by side. I was not letting go. Or I don't know who ended up with it. And I was like, I never got asked back for that photo shoot. After I lost the sheep, I've never taken orchard pictures again.

If you've never chased an escaped critter that don't want...

Yeah, that doesn't want caught and it is nowhere near its normal home.

Yeah.

It was so spooked. And I mean, there was no option other than go after it.

Yeah.

Or it was just going to continue running until it got in the woods or got lost. Yeah. That was stressful.

It is turkey season here in Arkansas. I did think of a funny turkey hunting story.

Oh yeah.

We weren't successful, but the whole thing's kind of funny. So I didn't grow up turkey hunting, just learned how to do it from watching like the outdoor channel. I think one of the very first times that me and Tanner went and tried to go turkey hunting, like we walked up in the mountain and like sat on a deer stand and just kind of waited and were deer hunting them. Because turkeys, you know, they come through. But we were kind of learning how to call and we're not a lot of turkeys around where we were hunting and so we just go around like it didn't matter where whose property it was. We'd just go, and I think it's Ricky's, you know, right there around Fred's. That's what made me think about it. But we'd meander, you know, it is attached to our property and we make, you know, we're just kind of walking around through the woods, not thinking anything about it. And one time we're like walking and like, we're calling and I swear, I'm like, I can hear something over here. And I was like, I was like, that sounds like a hen. And I was like, just, and so my cousin would call and then it would answer. And so. I felt like I know where this is going. We didn't, we didn't know. We didn't know where. kind of what to do or how to play it, how do we do with this turkey here?

Do you stay or do you walk?

Is that, it's a hen or do we need to, kind of, what's gonna be the maneuver? And so I was like, well, I'd seen where people would like, walk behind their decoy. I'd seen that before. And so.

That's so dangerous.

Me and my 2 cousins, like we're walking in a line. We're walking, yeah, standing up. We're kind of hunkered down, like kind of walking through the woods real slow. Oh my goodness. And like we can, like we can hear that calling because it's like no one else is around. Well, we were wrong. All of a sudden we see looked like a Bigfoot, like a camouflaged man, like run through the woods. So, and then I was like, oh no, there's somebody. And we turned and we run away because we'd seen them.

Are you telling the truth?

Yeah. And so what we think happened is we were both trespassing. And we both caught one another and we all ran. Oh.

My goodness. Is somebody here?

Anybody here? No.

Sorry, I try to keep it together.

Yeah.

What if it actually was a Bigfoot?

It could have been. He kind of made a maneuver like. Yeah. Running through the woods. This is a big guy. I've seen some silhouettes. Another time we trespassed me and Tanner. You know, Sue Gammel. has that property across from my dad's. There'd always be turkeys over there. And Sue didn't care that we'd go, but she is leasing it to Lance.

Yeah.

And I think it was Lance that caught us. And then there was another guy that, I forget his name, lived down the road there. He hunted there too. Well, me and Tanner get there early, like as one should. As one should, and we get out there and we're set up. And we're just sitting there camouflaged, waiting. Spam. And then all of a sudden we hear something and there's a man walking like, we're sitting here and he walks like 5 foot behind us, like just walks by us. And I was like, oh no, we better get out of here. And so We just kind of got up and kind of we're gonna ease back around. Well, as we're trying to, you know, get it repositioned, I don't know who it was, but I imagine it's Lance, it's a man and his boy. And he's like, hey, who are you? And we're like, Bilbo, he's like, yeah, get out of here, y'all, he's supposed to be here. Did you really?

Did you ever tell him?

I don't, I'm not for sure if it was him, but it has to be.

You should ask him.

But his me and Tanner, and we just kind of, and as we were leaving, we heard one gobble and we thought about going for it, but.

If he hears this, we'll not get any.

Sponsorship at our farmstead anymore. Well, we didn't kill a turkey. We shouldn't have. Maybe they were sick. We should have just stayed. Yeah. And it ended up, like they were like, oh, I didn't mean to, somebody had talked to dad and they're like, oh, we didn't mean to scare him off. So we've had permission somewhat to be there.

You had permission, but they didn't know you were there.

Yeah. But that's, getting into mischief as a child is, that's learning how the world works. And transition.

Send your youth to us, people.

Yeah.

I don't know.

That's why we're so good at dealing with youth.

We've been there.

We've been there. We were youths once.

We were youths once. We remember.

We remember.

What it was like being a youth.

Yeah, and that's the thing. Like when I was a kid, it's like, I don't think they remember. They didn't remember what it's like to be a kid. And then you hear about stuff later and you're like.

Now when you're almost 40 and you're like, what?

Yeah.

Y'all were way worse.

Yeah.

My dad told me about throwing eggs. That's worse than Doe.

Yeah, least Doe.

Yeah, whoever, I don't know who you are, I don't know what, but apparently it took someone's eye out. They're blonde. We've never done anything like that.

No. Yeah, but we remember what it's like to be kids.

Yeah, definitely. Every now and then I forget for a moment. And then I remind myself that, you know, you thought you were cool once too.

Yeah, they're too cool to participate.

No, I don't like that. It depends on what it is.

Do you like to participate in the dances that they kind of do?

I'll do a little. What is really hard for me is an icebreaker.

Yeah. What's your favorite icebreaker?

I need an icebreaker that has an answer that's a normal-ish answer.

Yeah.

Not, tell us about yourself. I just, I freak out. I just come apart. I don't know how to act.

You gotta get weird with it.

Well, that's, but I don't think it's funny, weird. I think it's like, oh, that's kind of weird. Like what?

You gotta like.

Well, okay, you're funny when they're like, Tell us about yourself. And I'm like, and you're like, I think Bigfoot's real. And they're like, and then I feel like I say something. They're like, oh, that was awkward.

You got, you got to learn timing.

Yeah. I got to read the room. I'm a lot better than I was. Like, I feel like, you know, these last few years, I'm like, you know what? Because one day I had to pick like an animal that started with an A. What'd you pick? I said, awkward. I said, I looked up awkward animals. And there was an armadillo because I feel so awkward doing icebreaker. So I said I'm the awkward armadillo. They laughed. I don't know. It was fine. I got through it. One time I got an icebreaker and it's like, what animal do you like to feel? That was really odd wording or touch. And I was like, that's odd.

I like to touch snakes. that's so soft.

There's no way that can come out normal sounding.

I like to touch snakes and spiders.

You don't feel them crawl on the skin. Brandon don't catch a spider. It doesn't bother him at all.

You got to know how to handle these things. Are you scared of spiders?

I'd rather have a snake than a spider, but I mean, I don't really mind having a tarantula around, but you know, Don't get too close. Whatever. Brandon's like, oh, you sweet little baby, let me move you.

I'm like, you're eating all the little bugs. There'll be a spider. Lauren and Eddie and Case are all terrified of them.

Kill it.

Kill it.

And I'm like, if it's one that's going to hurt me, then that's a problem.

Well, what do you mean? Like a brown recluse.

There's a lot of black widows on the hill, on Lee Hill.

Well, don't be reaching underneath anything. That's where they'll be.

Listen, no. They're out in a boot. They're on things. They're living their life, not worried about hiding. I had a pepper plant and I go to pick a pepper, a peck of pickled peppers.

Pick a peck of peppers.

And there was a black widow just right there hanging.

They are cool looking though.

They are cool, but I just.

They are creepiest.

Brand's uncle got bit by one as a child back in the day. And I think he couldn't feel his legs the next morning. He just like dismissed it. And the next morning he couldn't feel his legs. Now that's scary.

Yeah, got to be careful. I've seen a deal that said, you know, mostly brown recluses. They'll only bite like if you're like sitting on them, like they're not going to come like just sneak up on you and bite you. Like, oh.

I love a story. I still told story time. So one time I was a grown kid And we were at my friend's Kayla's house and we were playing hide and seek as grown college age kids.

I'd still play hide and seek.

And we were going and I was like, something's in my pants. Or no, I'm getting in the vehicle after playing hide and seek. And something was in my pants. and I pulled my hand out, like I kind of put on the side of my leg, pulled my hand out and a leg came with it. My pants, I shook those pants off. I did not care who was around. I was by Luber Road. There was a spider in my pants. And those pants, gone. Did not matter. Like, so I had to get provided a pair of shorts and it bit me like it had bit me.

Yeah.

In the, probably in the frantic freak out of grabbing him, grabbing him, getting my pants.

On to death and ripped his leg off.

And he's like, there's plenty of me right here. Yeah. I think I have paranoid. I'm paranoid that someone's coming in. But yeah, I've taken off my pants.

Yeah. And I like, you're watching be like, what are they doing? Why they keep looking out the door? Madison, she's a.

Oh yeah, she's at the support staff conference.

Conference, support staff conference.

Yeah, hope that's going well for all the support staff. Hope they're having a good time.

Learning lots. She'll come back and be able to keep us on track.

She'll tell us how good we are.

Yep. tell us about this freezer jam.

Okay, let me pull my little slide back up. So I really, it's a personal preference, but as far as strawberries go, I do not like a cooked strawberry. So when it comes to jam and things like that, I'm not gonna do a canned jam. I like a freezer jam. And so you're not cooking the berries, you're heating up the pectin. And we'll talk more about that. But first, I thought it was interesting. Where did you think they first really discovered strawberries? Obviously, indigenous populations know about them, but when did they kind of get discovered, so to speak? Or where? What country?

Okay, I'm going to guess. China.

No.

South America.

Yes. Do you know what country in South America?

Chile.

Yep. Yep. In the early 18th century, French explorers discovered them. And they were cultivated, so the indigenous were cultivating them in Chile or Chile in South America. And then, but eventually about 1714, they took them over to Colonial Virginia and started to do genetics and things to breed them and have like, why are you looking at me like that?

I was thinking about, I was like, man, you're gonna sound like a dip when you said China. I'd be like, what? And I feel like I have to say why I said China. I was thinking about, I don't know how I got this sidebar. Sidebar. But Did you ever watch King of the Hill?

Yes.

So, like, I know Khan, he's Laotian, but he tells like a proverb, and I associated that with the time where there was a, he's like, there was a man, and he falls off a car. a cliff and he's going to fall and below him is like, or above him is a tiger and he's going to fall. But as he's about to fall, he sees this strawberry and he reaches out and it's the sweetest strawberry he ever tasted. And so I associated, I was like, well, maybe they come from China. Or Asia. Asia, yeah. And, but what's funny is when Hank tells, retells the, the Chinese proverb. He says, well, one time there was a quarterback named Tom Landry. That's always Tom Landry. And he looked and, or it could have been Roger Staubach or something.

Yeah, because wasn't it Tom Landry High? It might have been Tom Landry High.

Tom Landry may have been the coach.

It would have been a Texas reference.

I'm not a Cowboys fan. Anyways, I am.

It's tough life. Dallas and the Racerbacks. Pray for me.

Yeah, I'm more of a bandwagon type person.

Oh gosh, you fickle fan.

Yes. But anyways, he's like, he's about to get sacked and he looked over and saw the Gatorade and he reached out and is the sweetest Gatorade he ever tasted. All right, to transition strawberry.

Okay, back to strawberry.

I do have a question. What's the difference in jam and jelly?

Well, jelly is just the juice where jam has the pulp. So freezer jam. So like I said, they took several of those plants, crossed them with the wild strawberry in colonial Virginia that pretty much built what we have today. And one of the things I thought was cool was strawberries are the most widely cultivated small fruit in America. So I like a good fun fact.

Yeah.

So I'm ready for a trivia question on that. But it says that They're so adaptable to soil and climate conditions that you can grow them in any part of Arkansas. So I thought that was cool. And our main season is like April, mid to late April through May. So Arkansas strawberries. And then of course, when you're picking berries, you want them nice and red. And I didn't know this, but it makes sense now that I think about it. they don't ripen anymore. So you want to have them fully ripe when you, or the ripeness that you prefer when you pick them, because they're not going to ripen like a banana. So if they're green, they're going to be green. Yeah. And you want to make sure that the caps are green and healthy. You don't want any like brown or dried up. And I thought that was really interesting fact. And then it's best to wash them right before you use them. So don't bring them home, wash them, put them in the fridge. You want to hold off on washing. And it was an interesting thing too. We don't want to soak our berries, but it said that if you take the caps off, that can affect their flavor. Like if you take the caps off and store them. So you don't want to take the caps off until you're ready to preserve them?

Like they lose some sugars.

It says it can reduce flavor, texture, and nutrient quality. So I would, I'm sure that sugar would be in that.

Yeah.

So when you store them, make sure you get rid of the bruised or the rotten ones. You know, that gray mold can set up really fast.

Yeah.

And refrigerate them immediately and only do them like a couple layers deep, like just two, like 2 strawberries deep, no deeper, because they just kind of push down on each other. And then so a shallow container, 2 berries deep. Cover it with wax paper or plastic wrap when you're storing it. And instead of just leaving it in the open flats or the, you'll get the plastic containers that's got the holes in it. You know, you want to take them out of that. Don't wash them yet. Too deep in a container, wax paper, plastic wrap. So. But if you want to freeze them, they're good optimally for eight months. You can go 12 months if you just want to like freeze them whole. But freezer jam's good.

Yeah. They had us make some that I lead.

Freezer jam or jam?

Freezer jam from strawberry freezer jam.

Strawberry freezer jam. So they don't require any cooking of the fruit and that way you're really keeping that natural flavor and color. That's another thing. I don't like them. Like if you cook them, sometimes they can start going brown.

Yeah.

If you're cooking them properly, because I know some that aren't really following recommendations when they're making their canned jam. But that's one thing I love about freezer jam. So So what you do is you're just making sure that you, if you're using the berries from the store, you might have to cut them a little bit. You want to mash them up really good. And then they need to sit in sugar for 20 minutes. And I had a few people say they were having trouble with theirs getting set. And I think they weren't letting it sit in the sugar.

Not long enough. Why do they call it freezer jam?

Well, so we're going to heat up our water and our pectin. And we're using fully ripe fruit. And when you're canning, you typically want to use not fully ripe, like 1/4 of the fruit not fully ripe because you're wanting the natural pectin to help with the powdered pectin. But in this case, we're going to take like, for this recipe that we have on the UAEX website for strawberry freezer jam by Terry White, You have one cup of water and one package of powder pectin, and you're gonna heat that to boiling and boil it for a minute. And then you're gonna add it to the sugar and strawberries you've had sitting there for 20 minutes. You're just gonna stir it, let it sit at room temp for 24 to 48 hours, and it'll set up, and then you put it in the freezer. So your preservation method is freezing ultimately. But when you let it thaw, it still has that nice jam quality. And here we got the phone ringing.

And we'll pause. So we're back. We had a phone call, took a kind of reset and we were talking freezer jam.

Yep.

You feel, told all the folks. So it's a way that we can, you know, utilize strawberries.

That maintains their color and freshness. And yeah, that recipe is on the UAX website and just Google search UAX strawberry freezer jam and it'll pop right up. And if you have any questions about it or want me to send it to you, I'd be happy to.

So related to strawberries, I have kind of, I don't know if it's funny, but we do demonstrations where we're going out and like showing, you know, how to do something. Or we were doing at this time a variety trial for the horticulture, like probably for the last, six or maybe even more than that. Like the horticulture department, like our state, this horticulture specialist, they'll do like a, some sort of horticulture demo that they'll do around the state. And it's been strawberries before. We're doing okra. We did okra last year and we're doing okra again this year. They've done sweet corn before.

Pumpkins maybe?

Pumpkins. And well, I've never been successful, hardly ever at any of my horticulture demos, just because, it's.

Factors beyond your control.

Factors beyond my control. So going back to this, the strawberry demo we tried to do one time, they'd got us like strawberry plants and like we were supposed to plant them in October and then watch them. And I told them, I'm going to work with one of the schools and plant them. And so I talked to a teacher and got them these strawberries and they were going to get the kids to help and plant and kind of send me the stuff. And like I'd be like, I'd e-mail check, hey, how do y'all get them planted? Do y'all do this? How's it going? I need to come take a look at them sometime. Where they at? When he'd like, or they would like to avoid me, not like answer anything. Well, finally, like it's like, oh, they're here. And like I went out there to look at the strawberries. And I could tell that they were just planted strawberry plants that like I was supposed to plant them in the fall. And then I get there in the spring when they're supposed to be like blooming. Produced. Producing. And they're just, one or two strawberry, like fresh, just planted like a couple of days ago.

Yeah, but how did they look? Just all, oh.

Well, they were, I mean, they were alive, but they definitely weren't the strawberries we were supposed to plant. It was some that I probably forgot to plant them. And then when I asked about them, they just went and.

Did a switcheroon.

Did all the switcheroons. Like, yeah, there they are.

Man, you could, if those would have produced and you would have like reported back on them, they'd been like an outlier of information. Yeah.

But so strawberries. Is it funny? I don't know. It's just kind of like, well, I'm supposed to be kind of good at horticulture and doing these horticulture demos. And the first one I've participated in was a bust. And then it's been like that ever since. so the first year did the strawberries. That's the first one I participated in. They obviously didn't plant them and just threw some strawberry, like a couple. Like I gave them like 30 or something plants. Oh my goodness. And then go show up and there's like 2 strawberry plants out there and that's them. And I was like, okay, thanks.

Thanks.

So I didn't sign up for any of the sweet corns. I did sign up for...

You know who likes a sweet corn demo? A raccoon.

Yeah. Maybe I could work with them?

I'd always joked, like when we grew sweet corn there for those few years, they would just peel the husk back and take one bite. And if it wasn't ripe enough, they were like, nah. Nah. And then the night that you're like, all right, we probably should pick it in the morning, I always joke that they were like in a line and they were like this and they were throwing it to their buddy. Because I mean in a night we had 1000 ears one time we estimated was gone. They moved quick. They love sweet corn.

We need to train those guys to pick. That may be what we need to focus some of this research in is train raccoons.

I think we need to increase harvest of the raccoons.

That's a habitat management practice.

We got wet tomorrow. We need to increase harvest.

Yeah, so sweet corn. Sweet corn didn't do that. Then the year that we did pumpkins and they provided the pumpkin seed, I think I gave them, worked with the farmer and we're going to get them out and they put, we're going to put them in plastic. We get them planted and it hails and destroys them.

Oh, that's a shame.

Yeah. And then?

That'd been a fun one.

I tried to do the okra one last year and that seed didn't germinate very well. But this year, it's okra again. It's okra again and I'm going to do it right. I'm going to do it in the community garden. I got some trays, going to plant them in the greenhouse, going to put them in the community garden and plant them. Have.

To make sure we pick up.

Yeah.

Excuse me?

Do them right. So.

What kind of, what kind of varieties do you know?

Oh, I'd have to run in there on my desk to remember.

Just one like a cow horn type. Those are my favorite.

The varieties we're doing this year for the okra trial is some jade, crimson, spineless, and jambalaya 2.0. Yeah, we'll see how that does do. I'm going to pay attention and do it right. And I'm going to plant them probably like, plant them as transplants in the greenhouse next week after the Master Gardener plant sale, which I don't think we mentioned.

I don't think you did, but it's Saturday.

This Saturday, April 25th. Yeah. They've got a bunch of plants started out at the greenhouse, reasonable prices, starts at 9.

If you're watching us on YouTube, we've got one of the plants that's going to be at the sale behind us. I wanted to carry this thing in here. It's heavy, but it's pretty. We've had a lot of questions about it.

Kalancho.

Kalancho.

Yeah, it's a neat plant.

It's pretty. It's pretty.

So okra, one thing if you're wanting to grow some okra, we'll move into some educational garden education. I guess I'll talk about garden tips. We talked about strawberries. So for okra and strawberries, I guess I can cover some stuff if you're wanting to grow those. Let's see. So strawberries. if you're a homeowner, how do we want to grow them? If we're looking in and wanting to establish some strawberries, what would be the best type of way to plant them would do to be some sort of matted row system or do them in a raised bed and we're going to get a few plants and plant them, like say we're establishing them this year, space them, I think, I think it's like 18 inches between plants or maybe it's like 12 to 18 inches. There's different methods, but the goal is we want to space out our plants and allow them to throw those runners off and fill in this first year. And so it's a row where we're planting a few plants and then they'll mat together. That's why they call it a matted row. So those, the strawberry plant will throw off runners and it's essentially a clone of itself and it'll root and regrow and it spreads out. Then the next year, we'll start getting a harvest. Now there's different varieties of strawberries. There's everbearing, which is kind of a misnomer. Doesn't mean they'll want start and they're blooming forever. It's they'll, you know, they'll produce fruit. Here where we are in Arkansas, if you're leaving them uncovered, not in a high tunnel, typically around late April or early May is when you're starting to get this time of year, strawberries are starting to come off getting ripe. And so they'll do that May and June, and then maybe again in the fall, or between the fall, but then they'll also produce another crop in the fall. So May, June, and then maybe a little crop in between and then a fall crop. And then we have what's called June bearing varieties, and they'll just produce everything at once. So you're a homeowner, it might be good to have, you know, a mixture of June bearing and ever bearing. Some differences also in the yield you'll get since the June bearing produced like all at once, you'll get bigger berries and a little bit better yield. But then you get 2 crops with the everbearing if you choose to use that. And not as much, but I went out to a guy's place and he had like a row of them and he said they just produce. and he's like, and they spread like crazy. And he's like, I'll just pot these up. And so once we go through and we, harvest the next year, so we're just letting them establish the first year. Next year, they're gonna produce their crop, we're gonna harvest, then we're gonna go in and we're gonna thin those plants back to like 6 inches between each plant. You can repot those or do whatever with them, but thin them out and then let them regrow again. And that's going to kind of be how we treat our strawberry bed. It's like a perennial crop. It's going to come back year to year to year to year.

What do you put down like a ground cover? So in the matted row scenario.

So like if you're doing like a row.

Or a raised bed.

Like in a raised bed, so like are you talking about like a mulch type stuff? So How we planted a bed and how we're going to run it, we're not going to mulch till like the fall. And then I'm probably going to use straw, they're strawberries, and just go in there and throw that straw over the top to keep those, you know, to provide some heat and coverage to those crowns, to provide some protection so they hopefully don't die over the winter. during this time, I'd just be watching. I wouldn't use a ground cover yet to allow those runners to, they're going to create kind of their own ground cover essentially is what we want those strawberries to do is to spread. I'd go through there, watch for any weed competition and just, you know, hand pluck that. probably a good idea to you here in Arkansas, you be sure that we're doing some sort of fungicide spray program. There's a lot of diseases that can affect strawberries. Gray mold, you mentioned that one, anthracnose. There's insects that affect strawberries, tarnished plant bug. There's, everything. We'll get in there and try to destroy your crop.

That's Arkansas.

And so.

The fungus is among us.

The fungus is among us. So doing a weekly spray schedule, fungicide spray schedule, that's to protect. And we do that before that disease shows up. So we're providing that protection because you miss a week, don't spray. Disease can take hold like that and you're SOL, if you know what that means.

No strawberries for you.

Yeah. Strawberries on what would SOL? Strawberries.

On a leash.

Strawberry.

On the loose.

Strawberries on loose.

I don't know. My mother-in-law has edible landscaping. Sorry. And Whitney's just been grazing and eating all the strawberries. None of us have had a strawberry. She just goes out there and picks them.

Yeah.

She will share raspberries.

So mentioning that made me think of, so again, you're establishing strawberries this first year, and they'll have blooms on them. You'll be like, oh, cool, we're going to have a crop. It'd be better to pluck those blooms. So I can focus on creating those runners, creating roots, and getting established.

In that first year.

In that first year, good practice. And then, yeah. Just watch your production again. You can, they're going to clone themselves. You can repot those. You could cut off those runners, repot them. Let's talk commercial production, how they do it. It's kind of different. And they'll do it like a lot of people do it in plastic culture where they'll go out and they'll, we've seen it, where they'll put down the plastic in rows and then they'll plant, you know, two strawberries. They're about two foot rows and they'll plant like a strawberry side by side and then spaced over like 2 foot or so. And in that, it's like an annual crop. They'll plant that in the fall, allow that to overwinter and grow and they're protecting it from frost and everything. And hopefully if, you know, we get good weather and protect the blooms this time of year, those are starting to bloom and we're going to go out there and harvest those berries. They will also try to throw off runners and they'll go in and they actually pluck those runners off. And then so that strawberry, say it's going to throw those runners, and say you wanted to start a new plant, you could cut that runner off and repot it and it'll root. But in commercial, that's what they're doing. They're trying to increase fruit production and they run them like an annual cycle. So once they produce, they'll pull all those up and restart. And that's how they run an annual. Using high tunnel, we can extend our growing season to where, you know, it's April, or late April, May, June that we're producing. If we grew them in a high tunnel, it may be, you know, we're starting in March and we can get a jump on the, if we're growing them in a high tunnel, to get ripe a little bit sooner to extend our selling season.

I like okra. Do you like okra?

Yeah.

That had so much confidence.

All right. Yes, I do like okra since we are, we're talking about it. Still, I like fried okra and pickled okra. I like it.

Yeah, you do like pickled okra.

Like, have you ever heard, well, my mind went blank. What that comedian? Jerry. Jerry Clower. When he talks about okra, boiled okra.

No.

Slimy boiled okra. I'm just kind of like.

Hey, I had a, we had one of our Cajun people that brought us okra that one time. He told us that you got to put a little lemon juice in it and it won't be snotty.

Tips, you got to listen to this podcast.

That's what he said. I was like, oh, life changing. Not that I have snotty okra, but if I did, but I was already adding an acid to my okra.

Okra, yeah. So if you want to grow some okra, it is a warm season, not one that you would want to plant in the soil early in the spring, because we want to wait until the soil temperature has risen in at 60, around 62 degrees, and at least for like 10 days.

It's not been that yet.

Yeah, we want that soil temperature warm. warm. So we're looking where we're, northern Arkansas, that's, mid-May almost probably by the time we hit that. Maybe if you're in southern part of Arkansas, it might be this time of year.

A little sooner.

But so we've, you can start okra from seed, go to transplant, but you can also like direct seed it.

I think I've only direct sown okra.

The seed is pretty hard. It'd probably be recommended to like boil, kind of do some scarification, boil that seed, kind of loosens up that hull, makes it more likely to germinate, softens up that hull, because if you pick one up, it's pretty hard. So those way we can, that's probably why I didn't have good success last year germinating them, because I just, like only one variety I had germinated last year. And then I was trying to start them inside. And what I'd messed up on is I was using a heat pad. And this, like if you're wanting to start transplants at home, maybe that's where, learn from my mistakes. You know, we want to use that heat pad again to increase that soil temperature. But if you don't watch it very close, Like they'll germinate and they'll get leggy quick.

Oh yeah.

And that's what happened to some of my okra is like, I planted it and I'm watching it and I'm keeping it here at my office and then go home over the weekend thinking, oh, you know, I'm gonna heat up this soil temperature and it'll take like 7 days to germinate. Well, I heat up that soil temperature and I just happen to germinate in four days over the weekend and they get real leggy. But then other varieties I planted, they didn't, they never come up. I didn't do any scarification to them. Mark didn't heat them up. No, they just didn't germinate. So, you know, there's a lot of, people call us all the time with gardening issues and it's like, I'll ask questions and I don't want it to, want you to think that I think that you're dumb. Like, but there's, I'm going through a checklist. Like, if I ask you, well, have you watered? Don't be like, well, yeah, I'm just making sure, because some people might forget, because that's one thing. You just have to check off the list. There's a million things, troubleshoot that could be happening to that plant. And so we work our way through. Is it a problem with the roots? It's a problem through. So people will be like, my, this didn't germinate. Well, Check on, what are you trying to grow? Do a little bit of research. Does it take, does that seed need to have some scarification, which would be like, you're scratching up the seed from the border. You're not scaring it. Not scaring it.

Is it scarification or scarification?

I don't know. Don't ask me about pronunciation. I'm from northern Arkansas.

You're just a hillbilly.

You know.

I don't know if like I had to like, jump around a corner.

Yeah. What is it like? How do you say pin? Oh, there's somebody.

Pin.

Oh, take a break. We got Robin. We're back again. We took a break for our ads to run all the ads we have because we're so popular.

Yeah, phone calls.

Yeah.

So I don't really notice you saying a lot of words funny. Truly, though. I have a few things.

Yeah, pen. We were talking about pen because...

Pen.

And you said...

It's like a writing utensil or where you're putting animals. It's in a pen.

That's a pen.

Oh, they're spelled differently, but they sound the same.

They sound the same to me, pen. But I'm pretty sure up north it's like...

Pen.

Pen in a pen.

The word I say funny is OWL.

Owl.

An owl.

An owl. That's how you say it. But anyways. I want to say it like owl. How did you say it?

I say owl. An owl.

An owl, like an Albert.

Yeah, that's how it comes across. And then I have a hard time saying the word pinch. I normally just say pinch.

Pinch, yeah. But we were talking about scarification, scarification. I don't know how you sponounce it.

Scarify, scarify.

And now I'm like not 100% sure that's even what, because there's like scarification, stratification. There's another one that.

Oh, there is? Things you do to a seed.

Yeah, there's vernalization. I think, and now I can't remember. But I'm pretty sure scarification is where you rough up that seed. You beat them up a little bit and say, germinate you. It's violent. Yeah, you got to rough up some of these guys. But okra, kind of round it out. We want to wait till our soil temperatures warm enough. It's like 62 degrees for a week and we can direct seed it. We can start it from transplants. Want to probably scarify that seed a little bit, boil our, you can look it up. We have a fact sheet about it. Heat up some water, just soften up that seed. It allowed better germination and harvesting. So once you start harvesting, you got to stay on top of it. And it's about every two days that you want to harvest. They'll get tough. They'll get tough and they'll get tough quick. You'll go out there and it'll be like, oh, look, I got another little okri. And then you'll forget and then, oh, I'm going to go check on that little okri. And he's like that. And he's, you try to chew on it and it's like chewing on a piece of cardboard. So I think, That's wrap up the education. We'll go, kind of updates again, what we've got coming up real quick. Again, I've got the pesticide applicator training, April 27th. That's coming Monday from when we're recording this. will come out probably Friday. What's tomorrow, the 20th? No, 24th. 24th. I keep wanting to think that like Saturday's the 26th.

Yeah. I don't know why. Well, we have our 4-H banquet on Tuesday and then youth leadership on Wednesday of next week. So the 28th and 29th. And I feel like there's something else.

I had the small room conference at April 30th, starting at 9, Hilltop Cowboy Church in Heber Springs.

Early May, we'll have our county O'Ramas. And then I need to get out that we're going to have the air fryer and Instapot class. So if you're interested in that, get a hold of me now and I'll go ahead and add you down. And I have agents coming from other counties to teach that because they have done a lot with it. And then I'll have my Mediterranean cooking training. And then this summer, we'll be cooking a lot of stuff.

We'll be cooking up some Mediterraneans.

Sure.

It's called Mediterranean cooking.

Cook them up in olive oil.

Yeah. Okay, so final segment. What kind of wrap up end? Got anything humorous? Anything? Any final thoughts for the folks? Any words of wisdom? We do have a, I guess somewhat say, current events.

We do have some words of advice. Some social media etiquette could go a long way. And our advice is to not say anything. Really, if what you have to say is not going to contribute in a positive manner or help anybody, just don't put it out there.

Yeah, because we all still got to live together and we're going to be in the same community.

Yeah. I know as well as anybody, things you say. People remember that forever. Yeah. And so, try to try to keep it in.

Yeah.

And try to give people some grace.

Well, we're all people. We've all made mistakes. We've all.

True that.

We all will make more mistakes.

That's the truth.

So, but we try to get better. That's it, yeah. That's right. And somebody just showed up, so we'll sign up.

Over and out.

See ya.