Peppers, persimmons etc.

I haven't written a post for so long--at first it was because there wasn't much to write about other than adventures with Mairie forgetting where the milking paddock was located.

(No baby cows yet--it turns out that I counted wrong when I was figuring out their due dates.  They are actually due in October and November--oops!)

But most recently, our new baby was born nearly four weeks ago, so we're both relieved that the cows won't need to be milked so soon.  Needless to say, I haven't been to the farm for awhile.  Ethan's been doing the chores tout seul all these weeks.  All I've gotten are rumors about how things are going.

I am going to try to go out tomorrow for the first time to seed some rye and clover along the grazing lines.  It will be nice to be out there again.

Supposedly, the cows have been in the garden and the jungle of weeds has been finally conquered.  Ethan pulled the last of the peppers out of there before they were devoured (I can't believe they ate the hot peppers, too!).

That made it possible to dig some sweet potatoes--so for the first time ever we have enjoyed home-grown sweet potatoes!

Last year the sweet potatoes had a tragic end--all 100 little slips--from a gopher tortise who would get into the garden (he had built his hole right through the fence), despite all kinds of barricades I built up for him.

We have also been enjoying persimmons from the tree in our yard.  The trick, we have found, is to pick them slightly green and ripen them in a bowl of rice.  We learned it in Diamond Village from a friend.  It keeps the animals from getting them first.  They are the astringent persimmons, so they have to be glowingly orange to be edible.

Another garden victory was that although we got only a very small amount of dent corn from the garden this year--unfortunately a lot of it was moldy from all the rain--I actually made use of it.  I shelled it and ground it in our corn mill and made some pinkish corn bread.  We still have a few more blue and purple cobs--they are all the same kind of butcher corn, but it comes in many different colors.

I hope we can grow a bunch more next year.  I still feel bad that all of last year's dent corn got devoured  by weevils before I got around to doing anything with it.

It was a pretty color when ground, too.