And a lot of the work is so tedious! This year I decided to try to grow dry beans. I seeded 3 different kinds of beans in the greenhouse and only one of them produced anything, the flageolet vert dry bean. I couldn't believe how many pods I harvested! I thought I'd have a gallon of dry beans-at least! Yeah, no. I just finished shelling all these damn beans and I didn't even get a half gallon! They better be the best tasting beans in the history of the planet! And at least the goats like helping me clean up!
Another mostly successful new adventure in the greenhouse this year was corn. Yes, I've grown sweet corn before with limited success, this year I didn't want to just grow sweet corn, but corn for flour. I planted Painted Mountain corn-described as a nutritious rugged beauty-and it seems it has lived up to it's name! I've only harvested it and by the time this amazing piece of equipment comes in the mail (Yay! What a great birthday present-I can't wait to put this to work!), the corn should be dry and ready to go.
I am also getting a grain mill-another amazing birthday present- and even though it's not the biggest harvest this year, the first thing I want to make are tamales, then fresh tortillas...if all this works, I'm planting so much more of this next year!
The breakaway success story of the summer was taters. I never plant enough potatoes and we use about 20 lbs for Thanksgiving alone and that usually uses up all that had grown. This year I tried a number of different varieties and was hoping to grow 100 lbs of potatoes.
Harvesting 150 lbs of potatoes is exhausting, but it's also a really dirty treasure hunt, so it's still lots of fun! The only variety I won't be growing again is Huckelberry Gold-I only got about 10 lbs from these sad plants. Mountain Rose (pink inside and out!), All Blue (guess what color those are inside and out??), French fingerling, Rose Finn fingerling and tried and true Yukon Golds all did amazing this year. The taters this year have been massive and delicious! I've only had multicolored oven fries once so far, but I'm really looking forward to blue mashed potatoes!
Over half the greenhouse is still thriving and I'm battling nights like tonight when the low is supposed to be 25 degrees. All the peppers, eggplants, most of the tomatoes and the remaining winter squash are all covered in frost cloth on top of the greenhouse being shut tight. Hopefully they all make it through these next few days since it's supposed to be in the 70s this time next week!
Today was also a sad day since we had to say goodbye to our buck goat Randy. Randy has been with us since he was about 8 months old and for the longest time was the only other animal that Cupid would not only tolerate but actually seemed to enjoy being around. He is the sire of all our adorable goat kids and that is why he has to leave. We will start breeding his baby girls this year-Gilda will be spending some time with our new buck Rowdy very soon. But Randy will be missed so much. He was such a sweet and handsome fella and now he's going to a new home to no doubt live up to his name there. Love you, Randy!
