Some Chard, Gnadenfeld Cross OP, And LOTS Of Rumi Banjan Tomatoes!

Last two days I have been just mentally going over what I am going to do Saturday and Sunday.  I finally decided that I am not going to do gardening.  Or at least not for most of the day.  The freeze we had back on September 14th really screwed the pooch as far as much of my planned late summer processing, wiping out most of my big garden’s annual crops.  Oh well.  You move on.  I am going to move to a 6 day work week with the office because I can get all of the food processing done, until deer hunting, in just the weekday evenings and Sunday.

I still have not processed chard.  It is huge, sweet, and we have been making pasta sauce from it for immediate eating.  Every plant comes up close to your waist and just a half dozen stalks, chopped, sauteed’ with tons of garlic in olive oil, and then the chopped leaves added just at the end, folded into the mixture with some basil, then served over noodles and topped with grated cheese is so good.  <smile>

That was yesterday.  Today when I got home I did a pot of red sauce.  Well, maybe yellow sauce would be a more apt description.  The Rumi Banjan tomatoes are one of the few really bright spots in my tomato production still.  The cooler temperatures, lack of rain for nearly two months, and diseases and stresses of the earlier parts of the year have not taken any negative toll on the plants.  I did a good sized pot of just those, with a few late season Terhune tomatoes thrown in to give it at least a little bit of color.  Once eaten there was a few meals of sauce left over and it all went into freezer containers for winter meals.  I have another quart of just seed pulp fermenting again and I will end up with plenty of seeds to distribute of these.  Maybe I will have the kids pack up seed packets to sell.  They love doing those kinds of things.

Another thing happened this evening.  I noticed in the front yard in the pile of squash sitting out there that I salvaged from the clean up remnants resulting from someone’s off-road excursion into the tomatoes and squash 2 weeks ago that the other melon I pulled out of the garden, from Michel Lachaume’s Gnadenfeld cross, had turned orange, the skin seeming translucent.  Hoping that this meant it was ripe, Phoebe and I took it out onto the deck with a knife to see what we would get.This one was not quite as big as the first one, and now I regret cutting into that one so soon.  This one was sweet, and oh so good.  The girls and I sat out on the deck, just cutting slices and eating it until it was gone, and this time I enjoyed it as well.  The juices were just dripping down our chins and I messed up one of my office work shirts.All that is left of that melon plant now is rinds, a couple hundred seeds, and the memories of sweet wonder as we ate that last one.  I am thinking I need to grow a large patch from these seeds next year.  They are heaven, and if I had a lot I could can them straight up like syrup, or cut them into chunks and freeze them.

Phoebe is going to go to the office with me tomorrow.  I already have about 4 hours of appointments with people who cannot reasonably get into the office during weekday office hours so it will be a productive day.  Afterwards I will take Phoebe for a swim at the Y and then we will head down to the Red Wing gardens to stay over night.  I had forgotten I had a lot of watermelons down there.  Not sure if they really are any good after the freeze they had, but at least I should be able to salvage the seeds from the melons.  I am going to take her on her first squirrel hunt there too.  She is finally big enough that she can use the short-stocked 410 shotgun and she is gung ho to be the one to fill the pot up for squirrel stew.  Will have to see how that goes.  If it does go well, trust me, there will be photos.