Corn harvest

Today suddenly felt like fall, cloudy and cool. I doubt if summer has given its last hurrah. Terry says the heat returns next week. Meanwhile, we took advantage of the pleasant day to work outside. Terry spent some quality time with his weed whacker. Hilda and I picked the two rows of corn that mature 10 days faster than the rest.

The corn harvest from the early varieties, minus what we'd already eaten

We sat on the downstairs patio and shucked the corn. The earliest variety was “Sugar Buns,” at 72 days. This was the first time we tried growing it, and it may be the last. The cobs were small, and many did not get pollinated on one side. Also, a lot of them had corn borers and/or earwigs. Ewww. The other early variety, “Bodacious,” matured in 75 days. The ears were beautiful, long and full. Definitely worth growing again. As Hilda and I shucked the corn, we tried to remember what bodacious meant. She thought it was a southern expression for extra large. I had a sense that it sometimes had sexual connotations, but I wasn’t confident enough to say so. What would that have to do with corn, anyway? So Dictionary.com says the first definition is southern, meaning “thorough, blatant, unmistakable.” It also has three slang definitions, “remarkable; outstanding,” “audacious; bold or brazen,” and “sexy, voluptuous.”  Still not sure what any of that has to do with corn. Remarkable, perhaps.

When we were done shucking, we had two trays of corn and a muck bucket full of leaves and silks.

The corn ready for processing

We blanched each ear, cut the corn off, and packaged it into 9 bags for the freezer. There are still six rows of corn in the garden. I think we’ll have enough. This is one of our better years for corn.

We picked a few ears of other varieties just to check on it. They were deemed too immature to freeze. The chickens really enjoyed them, though. Everyone loves corn on the cob!

The Baltimore orioles are gone. The hummingbirds are still around. I got a picture of this little fellow sitting on the weather vane we brought home from Uncle Dick’s.

Hummingbird riding the horse's tail

With their breeding season long over with, the tom turkeys are starting to hang out together. First we saw a group of 5 and a group of two, but now we often see all 7 together. They remind me of the old guys that hang out in McDonalds every morning drinking coffee. Harrumph, harrumph.

Five toms hanging out together

We worry when we see them in the river birch. There seems to be something there that they eat, possibly caterpillars, but they are getting quite close to the grapes. We will be covering the grapes with netting soon so we don’t lose the whole crop.

Three toms dangerously close to the grapevines

The broilers don’t seem to be aware of how big they are getting. Five of them were trying to share the same dust bath today. It didn’t look awfully comfortable.

Five broilers, one dust bath. The one at the top looks like it has two heads, but one belongs to the chicken behind him.

The last time my brother came to visit, he told me that he had never been able to get a crispy pie crust unless he used a particular brand of ceramic pie plate. I went right out to a high-end kitchen store to get one. It turned out the store was going out of business, so I saved 10%. This weekend, I used it for the first time, and the general consensus was that the crust was crisper.  

Peach pie in the ceramic pie plate

The pace of ripening tomatoes has picked up. We wait so long for the first tomato, and in the blink of an eye, every flat surface in the house is covered with them. One more blink, and they’re gone until next year. Time to live in the moment.