The Great Potato Spiral
In the spiral, starting from the center: German Butterball, Canela Russet, and Kennebec potatoes. Behind the spiral there are some Irish Cobbler potatoes in rows and behind those there are a few onions.
And that is the meager start to the field fence.
Been busy…be back real soon like
Pumpkins & Potatoes
(Not pictured: 1 Black Futsu Pumpkin + 3 Butternut Squash already cooked)
In light of the multiple Squash Vine Borer infestations and my lack of knowledge and skill this is still a pretty good haul. The ones pictured here weighed a total of 143 lbs so the total was about 150 lbs…which is about my weight in winter squash.
17 Long Pie Pumpkins (these are the long cylinder ones, they turn orange after you pick them!)
4 Black Futsu Pumpkins (these are the round little green ones, they should be black but they didn’t finish maturing so far as I can tell)
12 Butternut Squash (the tan bell shaped ones, very tasty)
4 Blue Hubbard Squash (the ugly ones, the smallest is still green and is likely not to be edible)
Total yield: 37 Squashes and Pumpkins. Not too bad. Next year will hopefully be a lot better. I’m planning on adding many other varieties and trellising most of them. I’d like to get a 50 pound squash floating six or eight feet in the air…should make for a cool visual effect.
That’s 125 pounds of Nicola Potatoes. Unfortunately I severely neglected these potatoes. Planting was still worth the effort and expense due to this unexpected crop (I thought they would all die). These make the best roast potatoes I’ve ever had. Next year I’ll be sure to plant more of these…and to take care of them!
Foolish Fox
Went out first in the morning to check out the garden and I noticed what I thought was the cat acting strangely. Took a closer look and there was a fox staring at me. I told it to go away but it didn’t. I looked around frantically and picked up a splitting maul and went to go get the fox. I rethought that quickly on account of the fox behaving so oddly so I ran up to the house and grabbed my .22 rifle (Marlin Papoose) and ran back chambering a round. I went up to maybe twenty five feet from the fox and we stared at each other for a minute or so. Then it turned as if to leave and I shot it:
Unfortunately due to the strange behavior and possibility of rabies, and the fact that I hadn’t had any caffeine, I decided not to take the pelt. Oh well, there’s plenty more where this one came from. I saw a gray one yesterday running across the yard so I ran after it while drawing my pistol but alas it was too quick. I think the one I shot may have been the one chasing the cat. There have been a number of missing cats from the neighborhood the foxes are the likely culprits. This one though will never again eat a kitty dinner:
(Squirrel) Meat and (Russet) Potatoes
Well, I shot, killed, cleaned, and fried this here squirrel:
Dang delicious! I’m gonna have to get me many more of them little rodents, big fan of that fatty acorn fed flavor.
I salted and peppered this one before rolling in a mix of flour, mustard powder, and red pepper flakes before frying in butter. Potatoes were from the garden and made excellent potato chips. Butter worked very well for frying the chips too.
Gave some of the squirrel to my brother who liked it as much as I did, and two out of two cats also said it was very tasty. If you haven’t tried squirrel yet I highly recommend it as it is high quality meat at a price that can’t be beat.
The August Garden
The shortest of the fence posts are about 10 feet tall. The corn in the back right of the above photo is taller than that in the picture. As of today it’s over twelve feet.
Morning glories are doing well. They are just now beginning to bloom.
The garden gate worked as I intended – open it and you get smacked in the face with corn.
I unfortunately had to quit smoking cigarettes as they lost their magic, but I added this ash tray for those who still enjoy the cancer stick buzz.
This baby Black Futsu pumpkin unfortunately died. Perhaps one of it’s siblings will live.
This is a volunteer sunflower – not even four feet tall – but it has pretty flowers.
That’s a Long Pie Pumpkin. The plant sadly has been attacked by a fungus if I’m not mistaken, and it looks as though I may lose it. At least I have at least six other plants of the same variety!
One of these things is not like the others!
The dread Squash Vine Borer – a beautiful red wasp-like moth as an adult, an ugly horrible plant killing maggot-like villain as a juvenile. I’ve killed at least thirty of these things this year, and I lost two plants to them. I may lose most or all of my squash in the end as these bugs slow down the plants. In order to kill them I do open plant surgery, using a razor blade to cut up the stem until I find the little things and then I pull them out and squish them. Then I cover up the wound with moist dirt and hope for the best.
Roadkill: It’s What’s For Dinner!
A friend happened to hit and kill a pheasant partridge with his automobile and was so kind as to bring it to me. He even cleaned it for me which was most enlightening as I had not done a bird yet.
I brined the pheasant in a sage-maple syrup-sea salt mixture, roasted it stuffed with an apple on top of roast potatoes+apples+sage, served on top of Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard. I found the pheasant partridge to taste like very good chicken. The potatoes, sage, and chard came from the garden and the apples came from a tree my grandfather planted many years ago. A delightful dish that makes me want to take up bird hunting.
Fence: Part 2
To finish the fence I used a bunch of rusty nails to attach sticks and saplings to the log posts. I can’t use a hammer competently to save my life, but I got it done!
I learned some valuable lessons finishing the fence, including that riding a ladder on a rapidly falling 12 foot log while quite thrilling is not my idea of a good time.
I ate wild mushrooms and lived to blog about it!
Nature called me out to behind the garden and there suddenly I noticed
WILD OYSTER MUSHROOMS!
I double checked the Interweb to be sure, but there are no poisonous lookalikes on this continent so I went ahead and fried them and ate them. The taste was most certainly “oyster”, but without the ocean taste that I love about oysters. Next time I’ll put them in a stir fry or something, by themselves they were a little too strongly flavored even for me. I harvested a little over a pound. This was my first time foraging for mushrooms – thank you to my mushrooming friends for the inspiration!
Heatstroke is a life-threatening condition that occurs when your body temperature reaches 104 F (40 C) or higher. Heatstroke can be brought on by high environmental temperatures, by strenuous physical activity or by other conditions that raise your body temperature. Whatever the cause, you’ll need immediate medical attention to prevent brain damage, organ failure or death.
If you have any of the signs or symptoms of heatstroke, seek medical help immediately. Heatstroke is a medical emergency. Do not try to treat it at home.
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Well, yesterday I rented a sod cutter (and a cargo van to move it) to prepare the field garden. It was a nice 360 pound beast, and the cool rainy spring had become unseasonably hot – high 80s/low 90s with high humidity. After an hour I was overheating but I was determined to get as much done as I could, so I kept pushing which wasn’t too hard since a strength of mine is the ability to endure extreme physical discomfort. After another hour the damn thing stopped working and I went to the house, having a little trouble figuring out how to get there (it ain’t that far and I know the way very well) and got my brother, who is a small engine guru & genius, and he got it started again complaining that I was speaking abnormally rapidly and that I was overly disturbed. I I decided to wait until it cooled down to continue and went into the basement to cool down. That worked really well and after a while I had my brain back.
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I had thought I was only experiencing the symptoms of heat exhaustion as I had no physical symptoms, but late last night I did some research and found that three of the symptoms of heat stroke are disorientation, confusion, and agitation, meaning I was actually at risk of severe bodily andor brain injury andor death. I got dang lucky that I stopped cutting that sod when I did, I was probably within a degree (F) of brain andor organ damage.
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After it cooled down I went back and couldn’t get the damn thing started, so I pulled back up the hill. Then I got to the rocky part where it was steepest. I couldn’t pull it up that bit, couldn’t push it up, so I ended up turning it sideways and picking up one end and push that up the hill then the other end. This entire time I kept trying to start the damn thing. Got it up the hard stretch and my brother finally returned, reached over, adjusted the choke real quick like, and gave it one lazy pull on the starter and it started right up. Now I still got ~4200 square feet of sod to remove by hand.
1. Don’t rent power equipment – it most likely won’t be maintained properly.
2. I do not get the physical symptoms of heat stroke – my mind will go and my judgment will be gone and I will put myself at severe risk (the one other time I had heat stroke I also had no physical symptoms, but I did see angels carry me as I walked). When I get too hot it’s time for me to take a break.
16wildacres 