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The Element

E196: Spring Fling! (The Exciting Aspects of The Seazon, Bass Catfish and Crappie Fishing Heating Up, Turkey Hunting Across The Country, Deer Interest, Vegetable Gardening, Fig And Tomato Nerd Out!)

THE ELEMENT — two hunters seated beside two deer, MEATEATER podcast, presented by First Lite

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1h14m

We get a little antsy this time of year. Things start greening up and cabin fever goes into full effect! So much to do, but always so little time. We discuss the exciting thing that are coming up this Spring like Fishing, Turkey Hunting, and Gardening.

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00:00:00 Speaker 1: I am Casey and I'm Tyler, and you're listening to the Element podcast tune. I don't think what is happening out there? My people, man who live Tyler, my air conditioner. My house is premimus broke right now, and I'm pretty much broke right now. It ain't looking good. We might be, you know, just living great depression style this summer, which everybody might be by the way things are looking. But anyways, there's a good fan. We got a real good singling fan. We di established that between level two and level three it is not an incremental increase, not at all. It's kind of like the difference in like a one year old and a two year old bug. It's not very incremental. I to go up a lot between those right there. Yeah, and then you hope it just keeps on getting big. And we actually, uh had some one year old, some two year olds and some three year olds plus on a traike camera in Oklahoma from public land. We just checked, and that's out on YouTube right now. Just kind of a fun little troike camera check video. You're about to say that's out on the in the nation turnpike or something, Actually it is. Yeah, yeah, uh no, So I go check out that vide if you haven't. But um, right now, quite honestly, at least half y'all don't want to talk about dear. That's all that, That's all there is to it, because I mean we can tell like what everybody's interested in, and you know, when we post something pretty dear centric right now, I mean, yeah, there's still people who are like, you know, I don't know, junkies, but there's also people that are like, man, I'm kind of like recovering from hunting season right now, and uh, I'm not really thinking about that, and that's okay. Honestly, it makes the year really more fun if you don't just you know, just specialize in one thing, but if you can kind of have a little variety to your life. What's the old saying is variety is the spice of life, right, and then what it is? So it works that way sometimes, and it works that way for us. We have a lot that we look forward to for springtime. Um. Honestly, one of the big things for us is gardening, which is uh um, a very slow thing to talk about on a podcast, but also something that deer hunters don't always get into unless it's Brasca. Uh, not kneasy either, but just starting a podcast called Southern Leven, are you Yeah? I bet it would be okay, some gardening, get some ceason to see us, probably gardens. Yeah, yeah, I think it is. You could like name it Martha Stewart. I don't know if you've ever thought about that. That Actually I was. I was thinking those are two cool, like yeah exactly, uh yeah, but actually, you know, I used to be called Stewart that little yeah, and then you got big, used to a big and Martha, you know, and Martha's venue. Well I wanted to change my name to Martha, but back then it wasn't acceptable. Now it's better. Well, uh, there's a lot of stuff you can do in the spring for fun. I mean, of course we get into the garden and stuff. We'll talk about that in a little bit, um, but fishing season is here, especially with these tents we've been having. It's like, I know, we were driving back I guess it is on Saturday, and uh, there were people just posting pictures of limits of Croppy just all over Facebook, and I'm like, here, we are just driving down the rule not limited on Croppy, Right, We're gonna yeah, not at all. We're gonna go do a little crop of fishing on Friday and maybe get get a few. You go up with a guy local here who's supposed to know the game, and we're gonna make a bid oud of that too. You should be pretty cool. Yeah, We're hoping to do like a little mini series for you guys how to so hopefully it helps you throughout parts of the season. And uh, I know, for me, crappy fishing is not like I'm not an expert at crapper any by any means. Uh, just talking to everybody and new buddy Paul about this the other day and we're both like, yeah, we're not really I'm not that good crop fishing. He's like being either, you know. Um, definitely feel more comfortable going out and chasing bass. Yeah, so I'm pretty interesting to learn from from dealing. Actually, I feel like I'm real proficient when they're in three foot of water or less. Yeah, but I think a lot of people are, so I probably shouldn't feel too cool about that, you know what I mean. It's kind of like bab and hold on and which is a lot of fun. I know, people like the jigum and I like to run a jig a lot too, because sometimes it's way more effective. But dead gumming if watching that court disappears, and a lot of fun doing that and Larry cort Man. But then there's a there's turkey season coming up to We're gonna do a lot of turkey hunt this year, hopefully, hopefully we're gonna do a lot of hunting. We're gonna, yeah, we'll see. Uh, Tyler and I are about to get real ambitious with how much killing we think we can get done on some turkeys. And uh, Eric is gonna go, oh, oh, are we supposed say his name? Oh no, oh no, We're gonna have to introduce you all to the guy who we aren't in a name yet. Yeah, it's gonna happen pretty soon. He's gonna be our our camera dude for this year. He's a he is top notch man. That hog footage Amy shooting all his pigs. Eric threw threw down on that, and that was oh, isn't it again? All right? Anyways, we're not really hiding him for any reason except it's just kind of fun to do a true intro. So I was trying to think of some some rhyme, you know, for his name, like dud the stud. But it just I couldn't get one to come out, you know, so I mess that one up. There's not a lot of things that end with Derek Derek, like oil Derek, Oh, Eric to Derek Ye good footage. Okay, So we've been getting some stuff in mail lately, a little mail evidently, bills, mostly bills, A couple of notices. Yeah, so we as you know, we hunted from saddles a lot. We've done some um saddle um video saddle type videos this year, uh saddle versus stand. We did uh everything bad about tethered saddle, which there ain't too much bad about them, but there was a few things that we thought we could talk about that people might need to hear before they bought them. Honestly, you know, I think across the board, I don't We're not trying to trash anybody by any means. We were super pump that we got the tethered saddles given to us, and they were a huge help this year. But we just got a new saddle to try out. And if you watch the video, you saw it. Cruisers sent some stuff and this is we've gone, uh, we've we've gone the Cruiser to see if we could try out some of their saddles, because we had so many people message us and comment and tell us Cruiser is the way to go, And honestly, we put up a Cruiser I think Cruiser on Boxing or maybe it was I don't know, one of the one of the more recent videos. Uh, same deal. Somebody's like, man, you al should try the Cruiser. So we, uh, we tried the Cruiser and uh, they sent us some more stuff here. Let's send this box because these are some like ropes, uh that are more lightweight than what we're used to running. I think that's gonna be pretty cool. There's some saddle bags as well, a couple T shirts because they're sweets saddle bags. Yeah yeah, saddle bags cool, dude. Yeah it's big too. Yeah. So I think these ropes are all gonna be about the same thing. I don't know what to look and see, but um, yeah, it's pretty easy to fit to those in one of those bags. Oh yeah, uh oh yeah. One of the things with some of other ropes we've used in the past is they're a little bit heavy and bulky. So this will be kind of a nice change. It feels just to touch, more durable, fuzzy. Yes, these are way skinny. They're cool and it looks right. There's a little uh oh no, that's what the Caribbean goes on. Anyways. Yeah, there should be pretty sweet cool hats. I mean I can't go wrong with a Richard in one twelve style hat, right, so um anyways, the Richards in one twelve. Yeah, the Richards. They look like one twelves meeting. Just think Tyler says his head doesn't fit good in those big we got that look at ye mossy oak bottom lands. Dude, what to leave mine outside and break on me in too? Tyler is that kid that used to like throws tennis shoes in the muddy ditch or whatever, just that they would bring Definitely not my tennis shoes, just my hats hats. Um. But yeah, there's the Chris Webb, Chris Webber most emo friends. They didn't even didn't even get the black on black man he were he wears black pants, black skinnies into the woods. Yeah, and he ain't wearing a black hat. It's crazy, crazy man, what is he thinking? I don't know, he's gonna be jelly of our black hats. It's a lot of hats that he is. We talk about half of this stock for crazier. But Tyler just exploded the hats. Tyler, Yep. When you think about fishing in East Texas, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Pot bellied, large mouth bast man? When are you catching those fish? I like kitching with March. It's almost like that's the time that we're doing right now. Ah yeah, I see a little bit on there that Sorry, thumb doesn't straight enough. That's all right. The right one is worse than the left one. Yeah, they kind of go the same direction. Yeah, football, he got a few things food marks on that thing. Have I fished your catch today? I probably caught I don't know. My dad and I we caught at least fifteen each, maybe twenty man Yeah yeah, yeah, my dad. Uh pace for this private water program where you can go check you know, you can sign up and go hunt or go fish any private waters you know that are in the program. Our buddy Drew's in it, and that's who got my dad into it. Actually fished with Drew and Handy today. Joel will smoke him. Yeah, we did. We fished the same. We both fished the same you know lake or whatever lake, and it was it's a cool place, man. Um. Not I had never seen a big fish come out of it really, Um, probably like four pounds is before. Yeah, we fished it once in my uh jet fish it with my dad too, a couple of times. Um. But it's hard. You're fishing out of a john boat. It's hard to get a good hooks at have a john boat. Sometimes even that much more out of a kayak. Yeah, always so low to the water. Man, weird dude, like you see. He's like, kayak fishing is really taking off on Lake four lately. I don't quite understand it. We've talked about it. You could either get a fancy kayak or a you know, nineteen nine nine bass tracker for about the same price. So what are you gaining? But anyways, sitting a hook in any type of a little vessel, it's like you move more than the fish does almost. Yeah, you gotta if you want. There's like a whip kind of technique that you can do, but that's how you end up breaking rod tips and snapping lines and stuff like that. Yeah, I like to do a big old just you know, full body rotation type hooks. Yeah, that's hard in a john boat without knocking your dad out of the back of the boat. It's just especially like you don't get to square up on it, like if if you're fishing out in front, it's just like yeah, just you know, like using your hips and everything in it. But um, so we lost a few, Like I lost a couple of bigger fish like four pounders you know or whatever. But it was it was fun day. They pulled hard man, Like I don't know, it's just a large mouth fight good man this time of year, especially in that uh scenario, whether in a pond that the water temp is probably higher than it is the lake. Like they're fired up. So it was Funyeah, that's cool. So large mouth is kind of like the thing that comes to mind in the spring. Yeah, actually so too for me as well. But I mean crappie is definitely right there at it. It's just that it's weird because large mouth I get an enjoyment out of catching an individual fish, whereas crappie it's like if I go catch four Yeah, I don't really think about like, oh man, that was awesome, which maybe I should but like it. I want to catch limits because I want to eat them, and it's like there's something cool to Brian Coke is probably losing his mind because we're talking about limits, right, But limits are good because that means your freezer gets more fishies. It's hard. There's hardly anything worse than crivate fishing than keeping the first one and that's the only one. And then you're like, well, I made it back to the dock. I'll see if anybody wants this thing or I thought that, which probably illegally either. So I mean you end up having to clean one fish and you're like, I gotta get everything out used to do this, like I'm eating a bite size. That's when you end up scaling it. I've done that a few tiles, yeah, because I just don't even feel like dealing with two copy filets. If you scale a fish, you probably gon't. I don't know. There's probably some ratio Jesse Griff's probably knows, but more meat, probably imagine or something. You know Cassie and I, well, she won't eat that, so that's probably not true fish. But I bet you a scale once you'd be weirded out of it. But yeah, I think that I'm looking forward to doing the croppy thing that springs more. Uh you kept bass today? Did you kept everything under fourteen inches? Yeah? So yeah, how many of that ends up? I didn't catch any under fourteen so I don't know. I mean my dad caught a few. But y'all haven't much tack. They're kind of hitting whatever they want to. Um. Yeah, we did have some tactic. Uh. It was real tough this morning. We were sitting there, um, like, what is going on for a while. I think, honestly, I think it warmed up. You know, dude. People get all gung ho about getting out there early there in March. You know. I think it's like the competitive mentality or whatever. I've not had a lot of early March mornings that have been very good. It's the same thing on a trout stream, in my opinion, a lot of times, like you just don't that's the thing. Is like getting the bugged hatch didn't happen until you see some sunlight or something happened, you know. Sometimes so um, but yeah, I mean we we ended up um kind of doing this thing where we were like almost like walking the dog with flukes. I mean it was unbelievable, like that was one of the best things. And then there was. And then we started figuring out a lot of times that we could throw it up close to the edge of the grass and walk it out a couple of times to kind of make a little ripple, you know, and let it fall, and they would just smoke it on the fall. Man. Oh man, that used to be in high school, I carried around, uh was it silver flake? Four and a half inch zoom flukes and then in the tuant hook and that's all I needed, and I just pawd fished everywhere and I would catch fifty and sixty fish, you know, because it's just like something about those you know, sixteen and unders. They just cannot handle seeing that happen, you know, like you're walking that things long and then you hit it real hard and it pops up out of the water and goes back down. Oh man, they can't take it to It's fun. We had a good too, you know. Yeah. I don't know, we probably kept we probably kept like tin fish or so. Yeah. Yeah, for sure, man. I love large mouth. I mean there there's some of my favorites. Man, I love it and large Yeah. Yeah, we haven't um done this ship. We talked about catching it over and cooking it and see what that's all about. I mean, I haven't ever eaten nine pound bass. People are gonna raise it, so it's legal. So I just wonder if it's you know, how good it is. People love, you know, bluegill flats and stuff. Well, what's interesting that a lot of people may not know, and I may have said this in the podcast before, but a black bass, a large mouth bass, is in the sunfish family, and when you flay them out, they are clear and tasty. They are good man, So definitely worth it if you if you have a place family of sunfishes, do you know what it's called? Uh, fun fishes? I didn't know, because I know that the genus is my crop dress, that's your cropterus. Yeah, okay, yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's the genus for for bass, my copterress, my crop dress or something like that. But I didn't know if you knew the family name for sunfish. I don't get into scientific names because I can barely remember my own name. I think it's for some reason, maybe just because I like to try to sound smartin or not. But um, just trying to be dead the stud. Well, I mean, crap, you're gonna fall in same thing to you, right pretty much. You need the large scaled freshwater fishes. You're gonna be all in that same kind of family. So most of the stuff we eat except for catfish, which that's another thing. People like they'll go out and catch a fifty pound out flathead and be like, oh, look at the flames, you know or whatever. But that's a that fish is way more rare than uh in like the sense of like taking time to grow or whatever. Then uh, you know, eight pound bass, you know what I mean. But for some reason we've deemed it, you know, unethical to kill a bass that's that big. But these flatheads have been here as long as these rivers have been here. But them them, uh Florida strained large mouths ain't been here but since about the seventies. So I mean, what are you supposed to do there? Released the flathead and knock every bass in the head and thumb on the bank, right, I think, uh, I think bass fisherman of the world, a hard core bass fisherman, or in the same league as the pheasants forever type of guy. They got you know, this might have would be the case. And if y'all are this type of person, let me know what this is all about, because I don't quite get it. But if I ever see a guy who wears a ring on his right hand it's like gold and it's just for an accessory, that's when you know, you know what I mean? And I've known a couple of guys like that and they either have matching bass boats two trucks or that guy that we met at the event in Minneapolis. He had it was fluffy and slip back. At the same time, he had a gold ring with a little diamond and the middle of it. Who's that? T? Jones? And is some pictures from today? But yeah, gonna hed you elemon outfelle on everything. There's a healthy looking fish. Yeah they are, man, there was a lot. There was only a couple of big head little bodies, you know, but overall they were chunks. Man. Yeah that's good. Well, uh um, what about other stuff? I know that uh um, some guys might be getting fired up about bow fish and stuff this time of year because that's when that all kind of cranks up. Um. You know, we've kind of probably talked about both fishing a little bit in the pass on the podcast, something you and I have both done a lot of and kind of, um, I don't want to say matured out of, because that kind of puts like kind of like we're poop pooing on it or whatever. But we don't really care to kill a bunch of fish anymore. But we talked about maybe going and like trying to shoot a big guard to eat and just see what that's all about, you know, and maybe trying to figure out if there is a a function to both fishing that makes sense for everybody or whatever. We're not trying to hate on anybody now, we're just it's just not kind of our cup of tea, for lack of a better phrase. But like, um, I think it's I think it's cool because I think that, like if you think about it, that there's like some some historical reason or basis behind both fishing, you know, Like I think that's something that I'm sure Indians did imagine they were shooting them before they were catching him on a hook. Yeah you know what I mean. Yeah, So like it's cool, it's cool to think about, but I wouldn't I wouldn't imagine they shot just a bunch to just throw in the ditch. They were putting them under their corners, using them some way if they didn't need them. You know, they ate them. You know I would too. Um. I bet you could take a car and dry it out and then you can have you some chaps or something out of that snake chaps. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but brushbusters, man, that'd be cool and looking like a stick man. Tell you what, I've been walking around barefooted around the lake and stuff before, and a single car scale is like almost like hair ahead. It'll it'll like almost cut your foot. Yeah, I bet it would. So you know what I don't do is walk around the lakes, but I'm not. I've never got never got a hook in my foot. Yeah that I figured that would come. My dad used to used to, you know, not like us to swim around the dock down there, too much hung up underneath on them, you know, fifty pound piece of braid or something. You know, you're I don't want to think about that. Yeah, scary, scary, Yeah, it's real scary, but yeah, it's a fun time. Your cat fishing is the thing that you know a lot of people are gonna do as well. It's if you want to talk about like something that's probably the most approachable, it's catfishing because it's like quintessential bank fishing for a lot of people. You know, like you can go down here to the creek that runs in the lake and just you know, throw you have some chicken livers and probably catch catfish in thirty minutes or so. And it's a way the batter and anybody can go fishing, and a lot of a lot of ponds around her stock with the catchables you know that you can take home and eat and uh dude, they're so adaptable, man, if you think about it, like they can live in some hot water and they can live in some cold water rivers. To there's catfishing and like tons of different cold water rivers. You don't catch trout, you know, catfish where you catch trout sometimes. Yeah. One of my coolest fish stories is I was in West Texas up on top of a mesa probably six thousand feet and there was a peel up there, which is a a old kind of mud cement top um water tank our Michigan base. Tell them about what what a mesa is too? Oh uh Yeah, so, uh, it is like a escarpment or high mountain. Tabletop top means tabletop, it means table So it's like a it's a mountain, but that's flat on top. Yeah, so it's a it's you know, you go up two thousand feet and then there's a big flats bott on top where you can also have critters and uh up there on top of that mesa in this wind meal pila that was holding clear crystal clear water. It had moss and there were catfish swimming around in that thing. It was it was real cool. They're tough, man, I don't know what they were. They probably were like some type of bullhead or um what's that mad Tom Tom? Yeah, I don't know if I've heard that, So Matt Tom there's it's probably the most plentiful um turkey type of catfish. You know, you got like your flatheads and then you've got I don't know, I don't know how you're gonna, you know, do the nomenclature on these, but Matt Tom's are essentially dwarf catfish. Tiny's They get to maybe like four inches long, but there's more bad kind of but usually yeah, uh dude, some of those records for bullheads are like two and a half pounds. You're like, dude, that's a big mudcat. If you don't know mudcats, bullheads or the same thing. If you're being nice, you call the bullheads. If you want to throw on the bank, Usic called mudcats. So um anyways, uh yeah, there's like, I don't know, twenty five species of mad Tom's or something like that, like those uh blind catfish that live in caves, those are matt Tom's. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, so that's weird. They check that out. Yeah, there's also a spotted bullhead. I would like to catch one of those one of these days. I bet that looks cool. It's like kind of like uh uh, I don't know, it's more like a flathead kind of color. But in head and lake for it's being a minute, it's but usually whenever And that's not even my favorite type of expression because it feels weird to say, but it's usually like trying to catch brims when you catch one. But I have caught them in deeper. I caught a pretty good size one when I was probably ten. That's the last time I remember catching one. We used to catch them when we were catching turtles. So in other words, we're using dead bait. Yeah, like shrimp there are meaning to catch turtles. No, I'm just saying like if we were catfishing and we were catching turtles, we're also with catching I got cats. Yeah. They they're kind of weird, man. Uh. I mean it's called it's been forever since I caught one of throw sing probably two years ago and used it on a troll line. Are they a uh they're non game species. Is that what you're asking? No? Uh, what do they call like a sign species? It's a good question. Uh, maybe all of them people jumping up on the banks actually worked. I don't know, but there's a bunch of them there. Used to be in Atlanta River when I go down there and fish, and now there's nothing in Atlanta River so there because the flood killed it all. But that's kind of the things that are happening in the fish world this time of year. I mean, I love spawn bass fishing. That's kind of I'm like you, bass fishing what comes to mind when I think about fishing in the spring. But April is basically when everything is shallow, Like I mean, that's when when you go up there and you're bed fishing in April for bass, you're also you also could be bow fishing very effectively, and you know things like when I was a kid, I would always be like guard and then like jump off the platform in the front and run back to back and get my bow, you know. And then uh, towards the end of April and early May, that's when cat fisher ups shallow spawn, and I remember that was the coolest part about um, one of the coolst but one of the cool things about getting out with the lights at night bow fishing is that you get to see the underwater stuff. That's that's and then they would be like thousands of channel cat that were, you know, in that two to four pound range, just going nuts and two ft of water. That's cool, man, a lot of fun man. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's a It's a good time of a year, man, It's a good time of year to uh get out in the evening and cast some worms out there and catch some catfish. Man. Yeah, make you a good fish fry, yeah, for sure. Mixed bag is probably my favorite. That's why I like crappie fishing with menace, because usually you end up coming home with crappy bass and cats and maybe a bar fish if you get your big enough. Yeah, then you put a big depth and bass and cats. That's right, that's pretty good stuff. Well that's uh that you know, that's kind of one of the things we're hypped about with the fish and stuff we were. You know, really the point of this podcast is to kind of just talk about the cool stuff to do in the spring, because, like we said, everybody's kind of recovering from um, you know, the hunting season and whatnot, and really it's nice to get out and have some fun. Not that we didn't have fun to your hunting, but like sometimes it can be pretty tough, especially if you hunt it on into December, unless you're Tyler and you kill big public land bucks in December twenty eighth or whatever it was. But um, you know, there's also this uh what do they call it a thunder chicken out there? Yeah? They do. Yeah, did Uncle Ted make thunder chicken? I feel like Michael L made thunder cheat? Yeah? Yeah, what I thought you were thinking over there. I don't know so, m I mean, Ted might have, but I feel like that was a Michael d. L thing of being. I don't know some some e min a backstrapper. I think yeah he could be. I mean, I don't know what he does the wrist animal, but it eats a lot of backstrap. Um, we uh tiring, are gonna probably are going to embark on some pretty yester Hopefully there's not too much of the sky thunder and more of the roost thunder because uh uh, we're gonna do a pretty aggressive swing. We've been talking about a little bit on this podcast where we hit quite a few states and try to kill some birds. Uh. And I thought about this a lot. If the weather is foul, it could be kind of tough, you know what I mean, if we get it, because in the springtime you might have a run of three or four days that's you know, wet. That doesn't sound like a good turkey, and it sounds like not able to get where we need to get. Yeah, that sounds bad. So hopefully we have some decent weather. Maybe we can do a little uh the opposite of storm chasing, where you kind of go away from the storms or whatever and uh figure out where we can go to be penty. We talked about the fact that we're storm chasing because they're chasing thunder chickens baby. I can definitely see some YouTube titles have anyway. Yeah, so, um, you know, things going well, you know what what uh I got? I had some people that were sending me some stuff and asking today. But I apparently Zack Everyboddy zat Fairball is about to join Team Element. Have you heard this? Well? I saw he had our shirt on it. Yeah, so it was like, hey, I was watching uh you know, I guess th hps uh asciola Yeah video. I call him Astie Elie Eli Yeah, because he was wearing our shirt in there or whatever, and so they were like, see like trying to join the Element. I think he's uh. We got an application of the day from Zach, but I didn't really cameraman application. It was. Yeah, he was really hoping. But I think they're gonna to break his heart. He know how to he doesn't know how to uh do any of that. I don't think he break his nose because it's already been broken. Apparently those acts cold day though. Yeah, I appreciate sport. Brother, if you listen to um, probably not because you're probably turkey hunting. So let's talk some more about turkey hunting. Man. I I can't imagine going right now on turkey hunting. I feel like it's not turkey season yet, but they're probably doing something. You and I did some turkey scouting the other day, and we didn't hardly see any turkeys. Yeah, except for one place that it's pretty close to where we could hunt, and I can just almost guarantee you there aren't a many turkeys there when it comes turkey season. You know, it's like that was weird. Well, they're raging in Florida. Uh did you see the video with cul Pepper? You tell me about it? Oh my goodness, Yeah, dude, point blank. And Culpepper is pretty good on a turkey call though, Yeah, I believe it. I'm not the you know them Southern Georgia boys. They all had to like learn how to call turkey is real good. If you hunt Rio's you just gotta make a little I think, at least from experience, she's gotta make a little noise, and they kind of do it. Here's that I don't know. I think that's just a bunch of holy toy stuffy. Is that the elitist down there? They're like, oh, well, these Eastern birds, it's exactly down here in the little country. Down here in the little country, we have these Eastern but you know, unkillable Turkey that the locals. I'll talk to that, but I don't know. I was talking to a a non influencer today on social media you can call them that. It was civil. Yeah. He was one of those one of those uh um rangers, you know, like one of those rader accounts that they have some kind of cool stuff. But they cussed too much. I don't understand why. But uh, he was talking about how like fan in Turkey's is a bad thing, and I was like, hey, for people who don't have turkeys where they live and didn't grow up in it, what does that mean. He's like, well, you can just hold up a gobbler fan to goblu it's far off and they'll just run right in. And scientists have kind of proven that it's a reactionary thing and it's not like I thought. So he's like, it borders on what is ethical. And I'm thinking, so if I want to kill turkey, I need to take a Turkey fan with me. It's what you're saying, you know, I don't uh, maybe you would rather me walk at that bird in the wide open field. But he was saying that the safety issue is kind of one of the bigger things, and I get that. You know, if you're on public land, there's a couple other dudes running around. But at the same time, like, if you're shooting at a fan, you neediot. But there's some idiots out there, so you know, don't be don't don't be a dummy. We had a podcast like that one time, Don't be dumb. But man, that's uh so I'm not above that for sure, because here's the kill him. However, we came y'all, y'all can get all like we'll only shoot strutting birds who are singles or whatever, you know, or like no, if we're gonna shoot a jake in the air, get the opportunity, Oh my gosh, yes, we're hungry. Like that's the thing, dude, Just like people talk about all this ethic stuff and it's like, do y'all not eat these things? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, for sure, I'm not gonna like set a snare for a turkey and let it just die in the sun, you know, because that's probably not a nice thing to do. But they're not legal either, But um, since when are we imposing like these weird unwritten rules on what you can can't do? I think, um, sorry about that. I think, uh, I think there's there is a little bit of this in a lot of different activities outdoors. You got you see the purest of fly fishing. A lot of times you see the purest of or whatever you wanna call it of the kind of stuffy public land hunter guy, um, the lone wolf, the saddle hunter. Yeah, you got you know that kind of thing going on, so that it like it runs, that's right, call we called the monkey method. Uh casey does, actually, but we I think that what you get into, man, is like I think it's okay to say that's the way I do things, but I don't know that. Um, you know, I would think that a lot of these people that hunt vote a particular way. Okay, not everybody, but I think there's a lot of people that do vote a particular way. Right. They do that because they don't want to be told what to do very often, right, But then they want to go tell everybody what to do. When it comes to hunt in turkeys or when it comes to fly fish and stuff. It doesn't logically makes sense. So listen, I don't, I don't. We have Casey and I have to talk on a podcast. Right. We don't always say the right thing, we don't always logically make sense, but there's a time for reproof and correction and try to make that better. Right, And like people that you look up to that are more wise than you can do that for you, right, and you can think about it and go, you know what, that's right. So I'm not trying to accuse these people of being idiots but or not even being logical necessarily, like or being illogical or whatever, but like they just need to understand that, Um, sometimes you need somebody to help you think about something deeper. Right. That's why I have preachers, because you know, sometimes when things go crazy in culture and you're like, man, how should I think about this? It's good to have somebody who uh is paid to read the Bible essentially, you know, to tell you what also supposedly has you know, a little divine help along the way kind of idea. So I mean, but you know, like, and that's in any in any situation though, man, I mean, like, why why do you read books? You know, like if you read books, why do you read books, because there's people out there that may have some kind of wisdom that you don't have, you know, so but yeah, I think that's just what it boils down too, is like people just kind of wanting to tell people what to do. So why do you uh like turkey on tyre? Um? I don't. You don't I like to turkey kill? Thanks? What I like to do? I'm with you. So we have a YouTube video called Hooked that I really got to kind of experience, like the fun of it and like something more than just pulling a trigger. But I think a lot of times the difference in a good turkey on a bad turkey on turkey dies. Yeah, I mean I've I've you know, there's there's some things out there during that time of year where it starts to warm up that or it's buggy, you know, it's snaky. I know one time we were, um, we were sitting We're out in West Texas. We're hunting birds, uh, and we worked all I mean we're like getting into like the eleven o'clock hour. We worked all morning on this this gob and he's just kind of in loaf mode and he like works his way strutting in all the way. I mean, I'm telling you, it took an hour for this bird to get to us. And he gets to like forty yards and he's just when you just see him, you know you can shoot. Well, I mean, I don't know. It wasn't me shooting. I don't know, like it whatever range it was, he didn't feel comfortable with it. And we're videoing so as me and Cody and Wade and um, we're sitting there and that bird is just, you know, still just hanging out loaf and strutting, not coming in, and uh, all of a sudden, like this bird is like, I'm like thinking we're about to shoot any second, and Wade just rolls over. I thought he fell. He just rolls over and then gets up and takes off, running a couple of steps, and I'm like, what the world bird takes off like? And uh, he points down to where he was sitting and he said, I've been watching that ryneldsnake come towards me for the last five minutes and he just got two closes finally, So that ruined that hunt. But you know, that's kind of like that's a part of it that's like not my favorite, you know, And we haven't dealt within a ton, but I have. I have bailed off in the morning off the side of a hill in uh Turkey Country after hearing turkeys, you know, get after it. And it was kind of chilly that morning, and I'm talking I was one step from stepping around on a completely coiled up rattlesnake. Looking around me. It was real cold. He wasn't rattling, so you know, your step is like real well placed that way, it's like on top of him because you're gonna you want to be full on size fourteen like a cow pandi. I literally I told Cody, it's like the hair on back of my neck raised up, you know. And I told Cody, was like, I think I'm done for the day. You can follow me. So we were walked around when, you know, and I was like, okay, I'll follow you. But we got some new snake boots yeah in the mail the other day. Yeah, yeah, I know, we got Yeah, we're gonna be able to just be snake proof on this Turkey feel How hot do you think those things arena, because they're like they're like rubber boats. I don't know, You're like they're built like a rubber boat I've I mean when I used to trap for a living, I wore snake seven three up, so right, yeah, yeah, I just feel like those. I feel like those have a little more ventilation. I don't know, I'm gonna try for sure. I was just kind of thinking about that. I just kind of thought about I forgot that we had those until just now. So that's good. Yeah, I know, yeah, you know, I did worry about it. You can just lead the way. You know, who doesn't have snake baits? Eric Eric oh Coming said name, yeah that guy. Um, we're gonna travel a lot for turkeys this year, which is gonna be a little bit different. Uh. Every state has different regulations, masks, yeah, yeah, all kinds of day regulations. You know. Uh, it's weird how we went on that big scouting trip the other day. We hunted this guy didn't didn't have luck at either. Um, and uh, you're out in the woods and you and I and whoever that we kind of see here and there. You know, we didn't see a lot of people, but like you kind of forget that anything's going on, and then you go to truck stop. Yeah, and everybody's like bug eyed behind their third Team masks and it's like, what you need to turn TV off? Yeah, that's what I mean, really, dude, because we also live in a town that has never worn masks, you know what I mean. And so like I walk into Brookshires sometimes and be like, oh yeah, and I and I I used to wear my mask in there for a while because old people we didn't know what was going on for a long time. But now, I mean now it's just there's probably about people wearing masks in there, and I'm just I'm at the point where I think, you know, it's just I don't know. We're just in the political podcast, but we are saying I can tell you this, the mask thing is just not something we're used to. I ain't to tell you who it was or what, but I was around a medical professional the other day who's uh m, highly respected in their field and they were like, I'm over it. So, uh you can probably find someone on every end of the spectrum on that, But it's a personal choice, just like about near everything else. Yes, you know, and I like to keep you that way. Don't tell me what to do. I'll smack you up. Joe oh Man, Big Brothers gonna get us now for sure, we'd say we want to go and tell you I can. I can sing a song, And when I go to YouTube, it's like the third one down the list, it's weird recommended. Yeah, I pretty much. I'm gonna make two things with turkey. I'm gonna make fried turkey breast strips, and I'm gonna make pizzole or pezzoli or whatever out of legs and thighs. It's so delicious. But I kind of want to be adventurous. But is there a reason to, you know, like I do, I would suggest, especially if we come back with more than two birds or so, especially the there's a recipe for tomato braised turkey legs in Jesse's book that is bad to the bone. I mean it is bad, dude, is I mean it is like I can't tell you how tasty it is. It's so red and it's just like all the this, the collage and everything just sticks to your mouth. What is it? Italian inspired? Mexican inspired? Like? What? What's? What's it? Got? Go? What is it? It's kind of like an Eastern European kind of Italian inspired. Maybe I probably speaking wrong in this, but it's got a lot of limon in it. Um and he puts it over Ah, what is it? Um? I put it over mashed potatoes, but he had some he uses some kind kind of different. It's not like rice, but it's kind of like rice. No, no, I don't think so. Uh. I feel like it starts with a pea. I cannot think of it. But anyway, it's it's like a it's like kind of a starchy kind of thing. So I always just put it over like potatoes, mashed potatoes or whatever. It's pretty good. It would be good over white rice too, I think really good. White rice is pretty good. It's so good, yeah, so good. Yeah. Whenever. Last year about this time, we were all, uh, just hunkered down because of COVID and we just had a baby and eating my mother in law's cooking. She makes white rice and spam a lot. It's good. It's just spam with fried spam and white rice. Yeah, a bunch of spam and college and probably not the healthiest, it's not, but it's so tasty. It is so delicious. Not as good as turkey, though, we'll give it damn much. Yeah. I need to try that a little bit, man, And uh, I don't know. Cassie's like, oh, we can make turkey breast, uh sandwich meeting like you were not putting my turkey on a sandwich. You know, it's way too good for that. But there is part of me it's like, man, it would be nice to have like some smoked turkey or something. I guess you could do it like in a barbecue application. Maybe it would be Um. I feel like you could dry it out real quick. I know my growing up, Uh, my grandma tried to make like Thanksgiving in Christmas turkeys out of turkey to be shot at the deer lease and it don't work like a like a pen raised turkey. They dry out real quick. So what we know so far it works really good. So I probably don't deviate too far off of that, and they're delicious deer or turkey. You're chicken fry that mug and some strips. There's a reason why the best chef in Texas still claims that his favorite way to eat anything is fry. Yeah, well, I can't wait, dude a whole if we slay a bunch of birds. If y'all were in this for the outdoor talk, that section has officially ended. And we're about to really nerd out and there will be a little in the outdoors in there. And quite honestly, uh we we aren't experts I mean of this, but maybe you learn a little something or maybe your interests will get picked a little bit. But I think we're gonna talk a little bit about our closet favorite springtime activity, truly closet because they've been growing someone closet. Uh. It reminds me of the South Park episode or Tom Cruise is in the closet. Yeah, I have seen that in a long time. That's an old one season three because they have like a they had like lawyers look at their episode every once they're done with it, every week to make sure that they can say the things they say. Yeah, I don't know how they get away with some of it. That's all just particular wording. I think. Isn't it funny? Yeah, yeah, it is funny. Actually, I haven't watched you a long time, but they were pretty funny all day. It was good stuff. But we're gonna talk a little bit about gardening and maybe a little bit of uh fruit tree stuff, propagation whatnot. Tyler and I both have a intense, deep burning desire for tomatoes. We love some majors, and I got my seeds in the dirt. Finally today, my the company I ordered from, I'm not gonna trash them because they seem like nice people, but uh, I'm not gonna give them any promo either. They order for somebody different than normal, uh, because they had a lot more varieties that I was interested in, some of the more like heritage types and stuff like the heirlooms or whatever, and uh, just some of the harder to get stuff like there's a sand Marizano that I wanted to try this year for paste tomatoes, um, and uh, you can only find that in some places. But anyways, I placed some order and got an email back confirming everything, and they were like, well, uh, you know, please be patient. We get a lot of orders right now, so you know, once your orders ship will send you email whether. Well. I'm patient for like two weeks and finally I was like, Okay, if this is back order and you're never gonna send it, I need to I need to refund and order somebody else or something. I call and they're like, oh, you never got that. No, I haven't got that. Can you please send it? To me. She's like, yes, yeah, absolutely, we'll get it out today. If you end up with two of them. If you don't mind, I mean you don't have to, but if you don't mind, can you just return to send to them. It's like, yeah, I don't want to rip you all off at all, you know, just get that sent out. So I give me tomatoes in the dirt. Well either way, I would have liked to have them in there like three weeks ago, and it didn't happen. I had mine in the dirt before the freeze. Then the freeze came, and my tomatoes they lived, most of them, that's good. And then I put them in the sun for two days and baked them into submission again and they are back to lie. Dude, they are hard to kill. Their back to life, and and I didn't know if they were gonna make it back to life. And so I planted seventy two more pods. Yeah, and so I yeah, I have I got mine from I'll give him promo. I got got mine from Baker Creek Heirlooms and from Secret Seed cartil. Then you've got some crazy stuff. Yeah, and I got mine. Um, I got a few from Johnny's just because they had some on sale, and Kyla was like, I'm gonna get some fall stuff. Of course, she bought a ton of stuff for a fall garden, and we didn't plant a single thing this fall, which I tried to tell her. She did go out there and uh kill everything. Yeah, thank you. It's pretty easy. But yeah, so I've I've got a bunch of little baby plants right now, and I wish that they were all. I wish they had all been planted before the freeze when I did, and just I had a place to put on but I didn't have any place to put them. The reason they froze is because they were like in my r V and my RV um. I thought I was gonna be able to get propane and they sold out real quick profane and so like they ended up freezing. I brought him to the took them to the lodge and finally but anyway, yeah, so I've got like, I got a bunch of different kinds. But the one I'm most excited about, Um, there's a bunch I'm really excited about. But there's one of the most excited about. It is called It's like KURTI Bouf Jerusalem, and it's like a hard shaped tomato that like I think they average like a pound. They're giants and they're like kind of like a like a deep rose, kind of almost like some purple in there. But that's what it looks like. But I'm pretty interested in those. Did you uh getting green zebras um? I got no green tomatoes. I got some green ones, but they're all they're all like cosmic or whatever, striped, you know, they're not There aren't any pure green ones. I don't think. Yeah, I got I had some in my car and then my cart was like seventy bucks for seeds, so I decided to kind of would let down to half you know how that goes. And uh, I didn't end up with the greens. I don't think I might. I still buy more seeds later. We might should just do some seeds swapping of what we got and it's like, hey, you want some of these? So the thing the thing about the Secret Seed Cartel is they only send you like their packages are like ten to twenty seeds. And so like with my two plantings, some of them I have gone through. Which one did I plan today? One of those ones I planned today was that way? I feel like it was maybe the tropical sunset I planted today. It might have been not many in two cherry tomato seeds or tiny tiny you don't just think about come up, I know, you don't think about it until also you start planting them, like when you're eating it, you're like, oh, yeah, whatever. Well then I planted black brandywines and their seeds are like the size of a pepper corn. You know, it's a giant did I'm interesting those for sure? When you said that the other day, I um, I don't know. I like I have some, you know, different kinds, so we can definitely just trade like the those I think those secret seed cartels like we're sent from like France. It's cool. Yeah, yeah, they have like France address on them or whatever. So yeah, dude, those Mediterranean countries, which France really isn't because but the same hime of climate, like they're serious about the gardening over there. Yeah that's what those sam Marsano. That's like that mean didn't the tomato kind of originate over there? See? I think the tomato actually is a North American thing. Really, Yeah, dude, I thought all these all the tomatoes traced back to like France and Italy. Maybe you're right, but I thought that Italy didn't have tomatoes until the Clumby Exchange, And I thought that was one of the always kind of the funny things about Italian food is it's people think of it as being tomato bay To based, but it's actually usually cream or uh, you know, all of old based was originally what things were Italian food. But I could be wrong. But I think the night shades are specifically North American. Um, but I might be wrong about that too, So I don't know if anybody knows more about that than me. Let me know, you probably do. Um, But that's Uh. I'm also excited about my Kellogg's breakfast. Uh, what's the what's the deal on those? What are they supposed to be? Like they're slicing yellow tomato. They're just supposed to be really good, like eating with a fork. They say, they say yellows aren't are They're hard to find good yellows. I've heard that, so I from what I understand that yellows are not. They're like mild usually and so like, uh, there's one, I got one yellow It's called buttermilk. Falls, and they said on the website that they were like, this is one of our favorites year and a year out out of all tomatoes not to yellow. So I was like, interesting, I'll try this. I want enough tomatoes to make a tomato pie. That's what I want to do this. Yeah, yeah, that looks real good to me. I think it's kind of like I don't know if I've ever had a tomato, but it's like it's pretty good. Man, you'd like it. I think I'm sure I would. It's like inside out pizza with a bunch of sauce. Yeah, but uh not as like um A lot of times tomato sauce and stuff like tomato is kind of the base and then where a lot of flavor comes from. This the basil and all that stuff in there, like tomato pies kind of accentuate the tomato flavor. And uh, I thought that was because really, what you're doing is you're taking, to me, it's almost like sun drying them right where you concentrate flavor. You're doing the same thing in tomato pie. You're baking it for long enough for some of the liquid that's in the tomato to evaporate and then you're concentrating flavor. So pretty excited about that. That's cool. I I just love eating them with salt and pepper. That's like one of my favorite snacks. If I can just do that and diet on that on summer, I think I'll be ab. Dads talks about you know, being our age, and we used to go a big Gordon as a kid too, and he said that one summer he just was, you know, building a house and just eating cucumbers like crazy. He said he lost so much weight because you know, even even if you lather them and ramps dress and you can't gain weight on a cucumber. Cucumbers getting me pretty bad ingestion. Yeah, you know they make a burpless cucumber that's supposed to help with that. Yeah, a lot of the cucumbers out there nowadays are burpless, and it really is a real thing. It's kind of weird they developed that. That's weird, dude. You start looking at some of these fancy seed websites and uh things that you're like, okay, there's pickling cucumbers and they're slicing and cucumbers. No, there are three thousand different varieties that you can plant and do stuff with. You know, it's like people go crazy about this stuff. Like you'll have somebody who's just like a cucumber savant, you know what I mean. It's just like they just know all about him. It's like, which I'm that way about figs right now. At least I love figs. You know, We've got figure I am. That's what something I've grown in the closet. I've had those in the back room back there. Uh. I've had the heater on back there keeping that thing around seventy eight degrees and somewhere around the thirty five percent humidity range for the last two months. And I got some good looking pigture. He's going right now, cool man. Yeah, that's a that's on another level either. Easy. Yeah. I mean, I'm just saying like, I don't know, if I had a house, I could probably do that, but I just feel like it's so not something I could do right now. Yeah, I mean, if I didn't have a house, I wanted done the figs the way I did with the propagation from a non house perspective. If so, But yeah, it's probably not. You're probably not too weird. Figs are easy, man, Like it's I'm still pretty weird. But like if you, like I wanted to get eccentric about you know, for Simmons or whatever, well then you gotta deal it with like your apples, you know, which isn't really regional for us, but you have to deal with roots talks, bench grafting and doing all the stuff to make sure they work where figs like literally you stick them in dirt, make sure they don't get over watered, and make sure they stay warm enough and they're gonna sprout and make new trees. Like it's really cool to be able to work with stuff that. I mean, anybody could do this, man, Like, you don't have to do forty five of them like I did either, you know you can do four or whatever. And I'm running on about nine success right on rooting success. So I feel pretty good about it as a first time propagator when it comes to figs, And it went pretty well for me. I think I just looked into just gonna plant them all around. Yeah, now I'm not gonna plant all those I got all those cuttings so that like I would make sure and have at least one work. Well, it went really well, so uh, I'll probably you know, only the one of each variety, um, maybe two, depending on which varieties that are. I'll probably pot uh a lot of them and just do some taste tests and see how they do. And they're climbing around here and stuff, and you kind of go from there. But it looks like the tomato came from the species. This is according to Wikipedia, the species originated in western South America and Central America, and the Aztecs took them to Europe. So I'm guessing in Europe is where they like, that's where they did all the genetic diversities and cross breeding and stuff like that. Yeah, that's why all that stuff traces back to France. Yeah, exactly, they got real serious about its about their food. They just didn't And they have royalty over there in those countries, so like like the royal like there are places over there still that like and these are royal people that have like people that keep gardens and do cross breeding and there's lots of work. Is to make this one tree maker for the apple thing is that way in Great Britain. There's like some gardens over there that are famous, you know, and these people are like, you know, they're one job is to make sure this apple tree lives, dude, and when that dies, like that's such a sad day for everybody. Then day I can't imagine, you know. Um. But yeah, and what were people in Europe eating? Because the potato is from South America. Corn is from the America's Um, I'm guessing that there was some type of squash that was from Europe. But uh, a lot of squashes are from the America's tomatoes. Like you're running out of the things that we eat, you know what I mean? Are y'all just eating root vegetables and you know, greens. That's no wonder the Dark Ages happened, you know what I mean? Like for it's bad, dude, for real. Man, I don't know in peppers right, well, I guess peppers might be Northern Africa, northern. I thought they were from Mexico or something like. I don't know. I might have to look that one up to They're not shade as well, so I don't but I know playing that a little bit. Nightshade is just a family of plants. You can look at anything that kind of like if you look at a tomato plant, a pepper plant, um, uh, a potato is actually not shade as well, um, tomatos um, egg plants. They all like in their plant form, kind of resemble each other. They make these bushes with like lee, um, I'm sorry, well leaves that are kind of arrow shaped and flowers that usually hang down and have five or six points on their petals, and they're usually pink or yellow or why. I always think of night shade as being a toxic it is, yeah, yeah, and in fact, like, um, there's you know, some level of toxicity to a tomato. If you ever, if um, you're a person who has slightly sensitive skin, you go out and mess with tomato plants, your fingers will kind of get tingly. That makes my my eggs ama o nuts whenever it's too many season Yeah, it hurts, but it's worth it. Peppers are native to Tropical America. Traces of pepper fruits have been found in prehistoric remains in Peru and Mexico. Okay, okay, so that's not with African man. Yeah, crazy Central America was so powerful. Yeah, Collie, it's nuts. Uh yeah, I don't know. That's cool though. It is because dude, imagine the implications of like, I know that the world is trying to cancel Christopoper Columbus whatever. I don't care, but like the idea that the Colombian Exchange is like it changed everything, man changed everything. There weren't hot, there weren't pigs in the America's you know, like, Wow, I saw a pig today fishing. I saw that down are drinking in the water. Huh. It looked like it had right off the boat. This boat just dropped him off. Chris dropping pigs, Chris. Yeh, it's nuts man. Okay, So what kind of what kind of figs do you have back there? Uh? So um so much. I think they're cool. I look like to eat them. But I don't think I like tomatoes any less than I do figs, you know what I mean. But the barried entries pretty low, and there's all kinds of rotis and it's kind of easy to mess with, you know. I can spend five minutes a day on figs or less, you know, if some days only have to mess with him, And um, I'm interested to see. Because we back up growing up, you shouldn't think I like figs because I didn't really know how to eat them. Like there's a particular time when it's good to pick a fig, whereas like a tomato, once it mostly gets red, it's pretty much good. Like a fig, you let it ripping on the tree and they only let it go a little bit longer, and like once you get it and it's perfectly ripe. Oh my goodness is crazy how good they can be. UM and figs have an interesting story to UM and Biblically, figs are mentioned a whole lot, I mean from chapter three on do you hear about fig trees? You know, Um, Jesus curses a fig tree on his way into Jerusalem produced no fruit? Yeah? Or is that the one? Is that story're talking about? That probably is so he I'm I need to whip out the you know, John here or whatever. They're not all it's not in all of the uh, the gospel accounts, but it's in one of them, I know for sure. And maybe it's Luke because it's a humanity kind of oriented thing. I don't know. Anyways, I'm pretty sure before Jesus goes in and is welcomed as a king, you know, on Palm Day Palm Sunday we call it, not really Palm Sunday. But anyways, enough of that, Um, he goes over and has this strange account where he curses a fig tree um and it's like, man at it. And I don't know if it's it's a it's a weird deal. I'm not saying Jesus. Jesus is pretty weird, honestly, I think it's okay to say that. You know, he's pretty kintercultural guy, but like it's a it's an intriguing thing. But anyways, figs are mission throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, and uh, they are not like any other fruit. A figure as an inverted flower, so it's uh, pretty much like before you see a flower bud or before you see it bloom. Rather, that's what a fig is. And all the flower stuff is on the inside and you're not actually eating like a fruiting body per se. There's seeds inside there, but you're actually eating a flower when you eat a fig. And then there's two flavor profiles and figs like major flavor flavor profiles. There's honey figs and there's berry figs, and they taste quite a bit different. And then within those there's different categories as well, and just different figs that do different stuff. Uh, everything that grows a common fig, which means that it is a porphanogenocarpet I think is the right word uh, which means that it will produce fruit without being pollinated. Um. You have Sampedro type figs and uh um Smyrna type figs also, and both of those require a specific wasp to pollinate the fig tree to make new figs. It's not like a peach tree out here that any little fuzzy, little uh flying crater can pollinate. Like fig trees take a specific species of wasp to pollinate them, which we don't have here, so we have to only grow commons. So those those wasps are native to um like Saudi Arabia, Mediterranean area, all in there, but they can't survive our cold temperatures are are hot temperatures here. They can survive in southern California, and they have the fig wasp in southern California. In northern Australia, those are the two places they've been colonized, and there you can end up with random wild fig trees like out wherever that are producing a new variety of fig that no one's ever tried. It's kind of cool, but yeah, so nerd oubt central right, there. There you go. But I didn't mean to make you glaze over with what does what does Smyrna? What does that mean? Smyrna figs um. I'm assuming it's kind of referencing back to like the town of Smyrna, which I think is on one of the Greek islands. I'm not exactly sure on that, but Smyrna figs uh, Smyrna down there's a fig tree down there too? Is it really? Yeah, it's so coincidental, But there's a fig tree out in the middle of a pasture in Smyrna. Yeah. Um, I'll show it to you sometime. It's cool. It's old, old. How do we get it? How do we get the figs out of there's no fins uh so uh publicly public access, I guess um. So Smyrna figs require a wasp to produce any fruit. San Pedro so in figs, there's two types of fruit. Each season, there's brabas and there's main crop. Brabas grow on last year's would main crop grows on new growth from this year. San Pedro's will produce a braba, but not a main crop without the wasp. So like there's species like Desert King is like one of the big ones out there. That's a san Pedro type that you can get like figs early in the year off of them because they produced that braba crop. Um, and then Smyrna's are like kind of the traditional fig that has to have the wasp or whatever. Yeah, it's crazy, man, because the fig is like, um so, okay, this is real nord doubt. Okay, I'm sorry, but I was on one of the fig pages on um Facebook the other day and this Italian guy was talking about like some history about a figures. Like that's real cool man. You have any documentation or whatever, like you know, documentaries or whatever. I can watch or read about this stuff. It's like, uh, d m me your email, so send him email. This guy's from northern Italy. He's a professor over there, and uh he emails me this book. It's like a it's p f G or whatever. What's it. I don't know what the right thing is, but d F PDF yes, sorry, Uh that's right, yeah um pdf. Sorry it's getting late. Um. But it's a book of nothing but fruit trees and it's all an Italian and it's all illustrated and it's from the eighteen nineties or something like that. It is the coolest thing. I can't really that showed it to you yet. I'd show it to you when you get off of here. But it's so cool. And so it's all in Italian and it shows all these Italian figs and stuff and along with um all types of peaches, apricot, cherries, all this stuff that is so cool, and all the illustrations are like old school, you know, like pencil drawn stuff. It's real neat. I don't even know what I was talking about with that. Whatever. Figs are cool, Yeah, that's what it was. Um. So, figs are actually only native to like, um, the Fertile Crescent area, and then because they were so easily propagated, it's one of the things that like when people, um, we're moving, like, they would take fig cuttings with them because they could. They knew they could just go stick them in the dirt wherever they went and they would have food that year. Because figs are unique in the fact that they you can, you know, the first year you plan them, they fruit, whereas like a peach tree, you know, takes a couple of years to mature. The contrary takes twenty years, you know whatever. So um like there's these specific basic kind of top figs, like a red Iraqi and stuff like that that are from or there's like a what is it is a red Jordans or something like that too. Anyways, they're like all figs that are kind of older top figs. You know that species been around for a long time. I guess it's all the Thames species. Sorry, but that varieties around for a long time, and then as you kind of go western around the Mediterranean, they start hybridizing and mixing up, and then you get all these new varieties and stuff like in Italy and France and all this stuff. So it's kind of kind of like the tomato thing. It's kind of cool, man, Yeah, it is, man, it's cool. Like I one of the things I liked about when I was buying tomatoes, like looking at um the like there's some kind of lineage and some of them, you know, and like, you know, these these people are like getting you know, these different varieties from Sometimes they get them from like you know, a a guy that's kind of a well known tomato. Oh, there's two or three of those in the figure roll too. Yeah. Yeah, and they're one of those names pawns, you know, like there's got a guy in France. Everybody. Yeah, there's uh, there's some of that going on, and then there's some that like there's one that I bought called Goose Creek. I forget that the actual story behind it, but it's something along the lines like, um, there was a slave lady who like came over and uh was like transferred to North Carolina or something like that maybe or South Carolina, Goose Creek area of one of those Carolina states, and she carried the seed in her pocket the whole way through like that slave trade deal or whatever, and carried the seed and kept that seed going or whatever. It's supposed to be a really great tomato. It's just kind of a basic red tomato, but it's supposed to be really tasty. And I was like, man, that's that's so cool, like that they they know that some of these things are coming from you know, these different areas or different different countries or whatever, different royalty families, you know, whatever. It's just it's cool, man. So I got a bunch of different kinds, you know. I got some cool stripy ones and got some tasty ones, and I got some small ones, and I got some uh some for sun drying as well, which I'm which I really love sundry tomatoes, so pretty excited about trying to dehydrate those. And I bought four plants at pods feed Story the other day. They're super sweet, one hundreds, which I haven't seen in a few years, and I'm really excited. That's a hybrid um. I don't know a whole lot about it. I just know it's one of my favorites because it produces some Jillian tomatoes and they're But from what I understand, you have um heirlooms and hybrids, and heirlooms you can say to save the seeds off of, and hybrids you can. Yeah, I think it's a hybrid. Yeah. They're so good, Like, dude, if you they're around, they're not oblong, and if you cut them in half and put them on a trisket with cheese, you cannot. They're like find a bit a little smaller golf ball. Yeah they're they're not. They're actually smaller. They're really small, like tiny che there. They're like cherries. Yeah, they're like a cherry tomato. But they produced. They put off so many tomatoes. I mean I've got a I had, like I think I had three of them one year, and I went and picked one day and had like, um, oh, what's the I'm blanking on it, like, uh, the thing that you would put food into wash and the water goes through calendar. Um, sorry, it's late. I had a like the biggest calendar we had, like overflowing with tomatoes, man with the with the super sweet one hundreds. So it was it was a good, good pick. Yeah, dude, I can't wait, and I don't we can't be that far off, like especially since we got plants in there in dirt already. Like it's from flower to like seventy days after that, right that you get ripped tomato. We're gonna get a flower by the end of April, I hope. So it's gonna be close to you. I feel like we're a little late getting our stuff around. I'm gonna go buy some plants, are you. Yeah, because it's a regular general generalized beef steaks hard to beat, and they make a lot of tomatoes, so I'll probably get some of those. I just bought seeds for the specialty stuff. I was interested in you know. So yeah, me too, you know, but it's exciting. It's deciding time of year. I know, we're not white tail hunting, which is what a lot of y'all are zoned in on. And I know that none of you all are listening now, but there's just out about random plants for a long time. We might just start a different podcast that's just you know, called like plant Nerds or something, and let just do that at another time. But appreciate you all listening. If you are, get out there and enjoy whatever it is you can get outside. It's a great time of year to be outside with your family, just you know, everybody doing the same thing together, enjoying good weather and uh hopefully uh cooking and eating some stuff, whether it is of the vegetable variety or of the meaty variety. Either way, sometimes when you eating tomatoes, it kind of crosses line. They're like they're pretty neat. Yeah, but I hope wherever you are in this world, things are thawing out in spring and starting to spring. Because it's sprung around here pretty good. Well we were gone, dude, is like it's green. It just took two days. Man. Yeah, I know, it's crazy, and hopefully we don't get any late frosts because I would love for all of my plums and everything to survive. So uh anyways, guys, remember that and remember this is your element. Live in it.

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