Marrow Man

When your pumpkins don't grow, but other vegetables do,

We found this cute little blue-eyed blond sunbathing in our flower bed the other day

Haunted mornings

This fog seems to be keeping first frost at bay. It is as if the earth has its feet in different seasons now, one firmly planted in summer and the other slipping over the edge into fall. We get freeze warnings and watches every evening, but so far, at least down here by the house, it hasn't frozen yet. Days the temp goes up near 70 and the sun is like a comforting beacon. It feels good to go outside and soak up the warmth.




Alan, our resident fisherman, is catching the gold fish from the garden pond for me....one by one. They are ellusive little beasts and don't seem to want to join us in the house. However, the past two winters I have kept them outdoors with a heater in the pond. First winter the heater failed and all but one froze. Second winter, heater worked fine and they all wintered over only to succumb (all but one again) to bacterial infection caused by stress in the spring. Enough already. We have a twenty gallon tank and a ten. They can join the guppies and the Betta and see if that works better.




We keep harvesting more sweet corn even though it is getting kind of tough. I am glad Agway keeps a record of whatever variety we buy because whatever this stuff is it is really good.Ike knocked a lot of it down but it is still easy enough to pick a couple of dozen ears in a few minutes. Tomatoes are ripening nicely. Some year I will realize that one or two plants of each cherry tomato variety is enough. I think I planted about ten currant tomato plants and discovered that even if you eat all you can stomach every time you go to the garden there will be hundreds (and hundreds) left. The grape tomatoes from last summer volunteered and produced well too. Never thought I could get sick of tiny tomatoes, but there it is.



Wish I knew more about harvesting sunflower seeds. I have been cutting the heads one by one (when they get low enough to bonk me on the head when I am digging potatoes....they remind me of giant showerheads. You wouldn't think it, but a sunflower head can deliver quite a thump). They remind the blue jays and chickadees of lunch counters. As we speak a whole flock of jays, silent all summer, are careening around the house, shrieking and beeping and barking.....I'll bet they are scarfing seeds up in the garden too. They will be welcome as soon as I get enough seeds saved to grow more next summer... I am hoping the ones I am picking are ripe enough to dry and plant. Some of them are the most amazing deep purple color...which rubs off on your fingers if you pick out seeds. It amazes me how much of our produce never makes it in from the garden. They are sure tasty.

Can you guess what this is?
NYV probably knows.

Amazing vegetable marrows

Last winter I won a small contest on MySpace given by a guy named Jesse. Jesse grows and sometimes sells seeds from giant plants. He was kind enough to send me seeds for sunflowers, sweet basil, watermelon, amaranth and vegetable marrows. We got one marrow early in the season, then the plant went wild, sending vines thirty feet or more in several different directions. As the vines were threading themselves through tall grass on a steep bank behind the house we didn't pay too much attention to them.

Yesterday there were serious frost warnings out. Liz and I spent much of the day picking, covering, and moving tender plants. We also began taking down the plantings in the garden pond and continued the absurd saga of trying to capture the gold fish to bring them inside (they seem to like it out there).

Just for the heck of it I clumbered around on the grassy bank to see if there were actually any marrows out there. I was so amazed to find these that I hollered loud enough for Liz to hear me from the house. She came out and dragged them down the hill for me and here they are.




Vegetable marrows are a sort of a vining zucchini-type thing. Big as these are....and they are the size of watermelons...they are still tender to the fingernail test. I am kind of nervous about eating them....but aren't they cool?


***Update: I cut the neck of the little one up and put it in a potato, bacon, corn and squash casserole I made last night. It was okay but the regular zucchini had a much nicer flavor.

Corn

The past week has been an epic journey of corn for Liz and me. The boss planted ten pounds of sweet corn last spring.





I swear every single kernel grew and a lot of stalks produced two ears. You already know how we kept the raccoons out of it. Every day except a couple when there was just too much else to do the two of us picked and husked corn.

Boiled it.

Cut it off the cob.

Stuffed it in bags.

And then into the freezer.

We did over 180 ears today, but most days around 110 was enough to use up the time we had. Today may be the last as it is getting a little tough...not bad, but we have two and a half freezer shelves full and we are sending a beef tomorrow.




Here is a short video of Hurricane Ike buzzing through. Pretty mild compared to what he got up to in other states....just a big wind here.

Corn

A Teri chicken...isn't he a cutie? And tame as a kitten (thanks Teri)

The sweet corn is finally ripe...... and there is a lot of it. Thousands of fat, golden, ears, row on row, as uniform as peas in a pod. It is tasty too.( I know because we ate a LOT of it yesterday.) Posting may be a little on the light side as Liz and I endeavor to freeze enough for winter......we like corn....we really like corn. This may take a while.

We started yesterday afternoon and got a few packages done. I even did some after milking last night. I am happy to report, (while still somehow maintaining a certain level of tastefulness), that a time-honored method of raccoon prevention seems to be working. Every day, all summer, while we were milking or the guys were working on our assorted broken down tractors and machinery, when nature called they were called to duty by the evil motherperson.

Make like a dog I told them. Mark the boundaries of the corn as our territory. Tell the thrice-damned varmints where to get off. I repeated the story of Farley Mowat and the wolves and the tea pot in Never Cry Wolf.....And like the yeomen they are, they rallied despite certain misgivings on their part (they are after all guys and although the corn field isn't exactly a porch, it is an outdoor venue). I am sure they got tired of hiking up to the corn patch but there was little complaining.

Nothing else has ever kept the coons away and they got most of our corn nearly every other year. It was like a desperate race trying to beat them to our crop. This year there are a few bird ripped ears, but no coon damage so far so I am real thankful for the menfolk. It was kind of above and beyond the call of duty. Wish us luck today.......