Monday, June 30, 2008, 21:59
Strawberry Jam
Randy and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary on Saturday by going to pick strawberries. A friend of ours has a sizable patch that needed to be picked.
Boy, do we know how to live, or what?
We ended up with five 5-quart pails of strawberries. There's just nothing like fresh strawberries. I'd hate to think how much that many strawberries would cost in the grocery store. Then again, the strawberries you can buy at the store do not compare in any way to strawberries that are fresh-picked.
It was a lovely day Saturday -- warm but not hot, with a breeze out of the west, and a few puffy white clouds that occasionally developed into little thundershowers with light rain. While we were picking, it did start raining for a while, but the rain was short-lived and only a few drops.
To tell you the truth, we could use some rain. We ended up getting 6/10ths of an inch on Friday, but we are now entering the dry-weather pattern that we have been experiencing for the last four years.
Our oats field is starting to head out, and I kind of hate to see that. It would seem to me that if the oats heads out when the stalks are short, the stalks won't grow too much after that, which means we are not going to get much oat hay out of our field.
With hay selling for anywhere from $4 to $6 a small square bale, we need all the hay we can get for the horses. The problem is, with corn prices being so high (over $8 a bushel) anybody with land and the inclination to plant crops has put in corn. Hay is hard to find.
Anywho -- we spent the afternoon on Sunday hulling strawberries and washing them. I froze 14 pints and made 10 pints of strawberry jam. The jam and strawberries are going to taste wonderful when the temperature is below-zero next winter.
If the economy keeps going the way it is, we may be living on homemade jam and homemade bread next winter. I suppose it could be a lot worse. And with any luck at all, we'll still be able to afford butter for the bread . . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
Sunday, June 29, 2008, 02:31
Nipped in the Bud
It seemed like a good idea at the time to plant giant sunflowers along the edge of the garden and in the middle of the garden to provide shade for those times when it turns hot and dry.
Actually, it *was* a good idea.
Unfortunately, the deer have thought it was a good idea, too.
One evening this week when we took the dogs for a walk along the oats field, Randy and I noticed that two of the sunflowers had been nipped off.
"Deer must have been looking for a little treat," I said.
"Must have," Randy said.
Little did I know.
The next day when we went out to the garden -- the whole row along the end of the garden had been nipped off.
The day after, the deer started on the row in the middle of the garden.
All that is left of our giant sunflowers, which had grown to be about a foot tall -- is just stems sticking up in the garden.
And we don't have any more giant sunflower seeds.
Seeds, I have figured out, are also one of those things that have been shrinking. The seed packets are more expensive than they used to, and I find that I am lucky if there are a half dozen seeds in the packet.
That was certainly true for the bushel gourd seeds I bought. There were six seeds in the packet. And only two of them sprouted.
This year, I am going to save as many seeds as I can from whatever grows well in the garden. That way, I won't have to spend so much money on seeds next year and then only get a half dozen in the packet.
From past experience, I know that the way to check seeds to make sure they are viable is to put them in water. The seeds that sink to the bottom are viable. Then it's a matter of fishing out the floating seeds, draining off the water and then drying out the seeds and storing them until next year.
But that still doesn't solve the problem of the deer nipping off the giant sunflowers.
A neighbor of ours has informed me that I am not allowed to walk through his woods with my dogs because he wants it as a "deer sanctuary." There are at least a thousand acres of deer sanctuary around here. And I haven't noticed that dog, human and cat activity have kept the deer away from our garden . . .
LeAnn R. Ralph