Sorry it has taken me a bit to get this updated. Has been a busy week.
Corn has been coming in. My old truck is covered in cobs drying down. The backseat of my car is full of bags of cobs. The tables in my house are full of squashes, melons, corn, tomatoes, peppers, and in the evenings I have been shelling various kinds. On Saturday Phoebe decided she wanted to spend the day helping me, and help me she did. We worked our way through the small amounts of Wamneheza and Painted Mountain flour corns.
The Wamneheza was gifted to me by a member of the Dakota Sioux whose family has grown it for generations. It really is a beautiful flour corn.
Painted mountain is another beautiful flour corn, and Phoebe and I worked our way through the cobs. For both types she shelled the ends and the misshapen cobs (which are not saved for seed) while I chose and shelled for seed for future plantings.
Once done with that we headed towards the Minnetonka garden, with a quick stop at David’s to take insect damaged ears to the chickens and to pick up eggs. David had collected eggs that morning, but in just the time since then the hens had given up 5 more eggs which we brought home after feeding and playing with the hens for a bit.
The Minnetonka garden gave up this monster tomato, which really is a bit of a mystery. It is a large orange sport tomato, coming from a branch of German Pink Heirloom. Taste was fair, though was not a proper assessment, being that I did not let it finish ripening. No time. Just processed it down with the rest of the tomatoes I picked from the garden. I did save seeds though. You never know. These sports, when they do show up, can give you a whole new variety. Maybe it would have ripened to red. Oh well. Maybe I will grow it out next year and see if it is a stable variety.
When I was making red sauce I went through, set up all of the fermented seed on drying plates, and put all of the dried seeds into labeled bags. Not getting a lot of quantity of any specific kinds, but plenty for my own purposes.
Just to throw in here: The picture above is the best cobs from a popcorn I grew in my backyard this year which I received from a friend whom some of you know as Grunt (Dan) which proved to be quite variable. He calls it Dark Autumn Delight, and most cobs are a shade of red, with a few yellow ones thrown in. Half of the cobs appeared to be a cross type of strawberry popcorn which honestly I am not interested in. The longer ears which matured first are the ones I saved for seeds, and the rest are simply being shelled for popping this winter.
On Sunday Claire joined me for a day down in Red Wing. The weather gods threw a hot day at us and temperatures made it up into the 90’s. She was a real trooper though. We checked out all of our deer stands with her uncle Matt (my brother), trimmed all of the shooting lanes, and then harvested Iroquois White Flour corn, Dakota Rainbow Flint, and tomatoes. Tons of corn. I walked the rows, picking and peeling back the husks to check the ears. Ones that were not perfect I completely stripped the husks off while the ones to be saved for seed I left the husks simply peeled back. For 5 hours Claire worked out there with me, hauling armloads of corn cobs to piles she sorted by type and seed or food. We took a break for dinner with my parents, then afterwards headed back down to the field, hauled it all up to the car, stuffed it in, and made our way home.
The Iroquois White corn was just starting to dry down, so only the earliest ears were picked. There will be a lot more of it this next weekend. The Dakota Rainbow Flint was nearly all picked. This table represents the rejected cobs which will just finish drying on the deck and then be shelled and saved for making cornmeal and corn flour this winter.
thanks.very good blog and very good share.