The first real winter snow possibility is on the horizon here. There is a winter storm watch, with the professional prognosticators indicating, as much as 4″ of the white stuff greeting us on Wednesday morning. I guess we are as ready for this as we are going to get, while there are still a good number of things I would like to get done in the meantime.
I still have carrots and rutabagas to get into storage. They are all fine and still firm, but they need to be transferred from the front yard where they are packed away in the shade, to the basement. My right leg and back have been pretty good to me the last few days so I am feeling a bit more brave about dealing with them, though I will only do some of them at a time since there are stairs involved in the transport of them.
The only real active foodstuffs in the gardens at the moment are the heartier herbs, kale, and celery. The kale I am going to leave right where it is. I cannot believe I never grew kale before as we have enjoyed the stuff tremendously. The Russian Red kale is about 40 inches high, and the Dwarf Blue Scotch kale is about 30 inches high. Last night I substituted chopped Dwarf Blue Scotch kale for peas in a venison stroganoff dish. The caveat I made to it was that I added it at the very beginning when I was sauteing the garlic and shallots in butter and olive oil. The only family member that turned their nose up at the meal was Baby Vi, who is being a bugger about weaning. Everyone else enjoyed multiple helpings.
I have, just in the last few days, started shelling corn. I did get enough of the Iroquois White Flour corn for fresh seed, but the accidental destruction of the plot by Lance, when his equipment broke while harrowing, left me with no opportunity to further select for anything. Pollination was so poor, and weeds so prevalent, that even the best ears will only give me 30 or so worthwhile seeds. The popcorn did much better, but still not as well as it would have if our bodies had been fully functional. For all of the plants we had, only 3 showed yellow kernels this year. Cob length and size was more uniform, with most 5-7 inches in length. I am pretty decided on doing plantings of corn by hand next year so that I can more closely regulate the density of the plants. The equipment Lance has is fine for large scale planting, but the spacing of the plants is sparse enough that inter-cropping with squash or pumpkins would work well if not for the harrowing between the rows. The Victor Kucyk 2175 we have been growing and further selecting grew well in that way again this year.
I ended up with a few melons that were phenomenal stand outs regarding both taste and size. Still having fun selecting from the crossed seeds a friend gave me some years ago.
The Baby Vi C. mochata is still a great producer, fantastic tasting, with incredible storage capabilities. I still have 3 from last year which have kept just fine at room temperature in the kitchen. The seeds I plant next year will be from those specific fruits even though I saved seeds from this year’s crop as well.
I am still shelling beans, and I need to finish that up soon. Not a lot left to go, and considering how much I lost to animals at both the Minnetonka garden, and the Ness farm, I am pretty happy with the results. I had my first stable growing of the Hidatsa Shield/Dragon tongue this year, which was a pole type with fairly wide and long edible green pods. Seeds are long and white with a tan mottling on the eye side of the seed, 7-9 seeds per pod. Fantastic tasting when young (before any seed development) and still happily consumable in the more advanced growth stages (up to small seed development).
I grew another one that came from a incredibly prolific single plant with black seeds . That one was only second year generation, and from the only black expression from the cross.
The pods were mostly green and slender, with a few yellows and some green with purple streaking. Still a very prolific climber and producer. The real common traits within the beans themselves were the solid colors with black eyes to them. Pods are shorter, with 5-6 seeds in each.
I only got ones grown here at home, which is a bit sad, because I had a half dozen planted at the Minnetonka garden down to only one seed of each one (kept so I could check if they came back true to type) and if I want to give those another chance, as I said, there is only one seed each of those.
So, for now, there it is. Even if we had not been dealing with all the various physical issues I would consider the gardens a rousing success. The season was not without some losses and disappointments, but nothing we could not live with. There was plenty for us, and hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of surplus we distributed to others.
This next weekend is the opening weekend of deer season, and my brother Matt has volunteered to hunt with me, down at my parent’s B&B south of Red Wing (see http://www.roundbarnfarm.com/ ). Patti will drop me off there Friday night, and if everything goes well, we will be spending the early part of next week getting a lot of meat put away in the freezer.
Then, finally, we will be done, with just the wait for the earliest seed starting in late January. The one bit of rest we do get here.
