This is the year we fill the orchard! The plants have started arriving, and hopefully we will be able to get them in the ground this weekend (not looking good, so it will probably be next weekend)
I’ve also got plums, northern almonds, and northern pecans to plant in the pasture area. We’re excited to see what pecans and almonds that can survive USDA Growing Zone 6 taste like!
We brought some of the hot pepper plants inside to finish growing (and, hopefully, overwinter) — the first indoor harvest was a dozen “lemon drop” hot peppers.
Anya and I got the orchard mulched today — ten blueberries, three seaberries, three honey berries, a cherry, a fig, two pawpaws, two currants, three gooseberries, and seven raspberries.
We let a number of corn cobs dry in the field to harvest seeds for next year. The kernels pop off the cob easily when they are dry enough. If it’s even a little hard to remove, I just let the cob sit for another few days and tried again. We’ve got lots of super sweet corn ready to plant next year.
I got our autumn orchard planting done — we’ve got ten blueberries, three seaberries, and three honey berries ready to start growing next year. We’ve got another month or so of not-yet-freezing weather; hopefully the plants have enough time to get their roots set in the ground.
We ate some of our frozen corn with smoked pork sandwiches — it’s really easy to overcook the blanched corn!
To make our creamed corn, we roasted the corn over our maple evaporator / grill
Roasty and toasty corn — plus some roasted jalapenos
After cutting the corn from the cobs, we have a huge bowl of kernels
We picked the rest of our sweet corn today — these weren’t the best (or most fully pollinated) cobs like we picked to blanch and freeze. These were all the rest, which we will use to make creamed corn tomorrow. We got two big steamer trays overflowing with corn. Enough that Anya and I called Scott for a ride up to the house after we harvested it. We walked about twenty feet with our two duffel bags stuffed with corn and said “break!”.
We’ve been picking corn and cooking it fresh from the plants — today, we grilled some. Very tasty, but it dries out if you cook it too long.
Now that we’ve got a peanut butter electric fence up, I’ve got some blueberry bushes planted in the orchard.
