Last night I and my girls shelled popcorn. We were going to be meeting a friend, and making a trade, the next day (today) and a third of the popcorn was a portion of what we were trading.
Another part of the trade was rutabagas, so Patti, Nell and I were out at the Ness farm early this morning to grab those, and glean whatever else we could find that had not frozen out, as well as harvest the cabbages still out there.
Rutabagas like a cool, long growing season. If you count cool weather, well, then it was a long season. Rutabagas were one of the crops that did exceptionally well this year, and I wish I had planted a lot more of them. This next year, I am going to secure seed early, in greater quantity. We had one 50 foot row, but they are a good storage, and trade item, that my kids love (they won’t touch turnips, though, go figure) which if we are going to keep having short hot seasons, with a lot more cool/cold on the bracketing ends, are a good thing to be growing.
Cabbages are going to have to be processed down into kraut soon.
After heading home, cleaning out the car enough to be able to fill it with produce, we headed out to Young America’s crap fast food joint for ice cream, which is half way between where we live, and the friend we were meeting.
He loaded up our car with 300# of various apples, and 100# of potatoes in exchange for the popcorn, rutabagas, some squash, bags of flour corn, pizza sauce, jelly, and a few seed varieties of beans. Have to be completely honest: he gave us the much better part of the deal, and we appreciate it.
Driving home, I realized that we are finally hitting fall peak colors here. A bit late this year, as well as sporadic. Some trees are bare, having dropped all their leaves, with others still green, but some striking colors still showing.
This evening, it has been getting the kitchen ready to process apples, and shelling corn. Nell wanted us to shell the few jet black cobs we were able to recover from the raccoon-ravaged patch planted from the single black ear saved from a couple years ago.
We picked out the off-color kernels, being a few lighter blues, and some reds.
Ended up with about 800 kernels dark purple enough so as to appear black. Enough for a decent sized grow next year.
