There's a Learning Curve

 So, yesterday I made  two dozen big fluffy onion rolls and, getting ready to freeze most of them, realized that I had no freezer bags. 

"Never fear," says I. "I'll use my whiz bang FoodSaver and vacuum seal those rolls!"

Oops. Vacuum sealing smushed them flat. An elementary grasp of physics should have told me this would happen---but I don't have an elementary grasp of physics. What I have are six flat breads.  

  

Oh, well, at least they'll fit in the toaster.  The other eighteen, I simply heat sealed. But it occurs to me that if I had frozen  the rolls first, I could probably have used the vacuum function.

Always learning . . .

 

Squash Blossoms

 

 

 

 

Little Bouquets

Hearing from a reader who's enjoyed one of my books is like being given a little bouquet. One I'll always remember was when Pat emailed to say that she'd started reading my book and then they had company and she had to keep disappearing into the bathroom to read a few more pages. It still makes me smile.

Another was the lady who told me that she and her sister hadn't spoken for years but after reading  Under the Skin, she called her sister and now they chat daily.  I really loved that.

Just yesterday, Christine Taylor sent this to a mutual friend (Kaye Barley) who then forwarded to me :

"I was thinking about your posting that a review is the best compliment. I haven't got a review in my head but wondered if you could forward this to Vicki Lane as my compliment.

 I started Vicki Lane's The Day of Small Things and was so  astonished by the first chapter that I wrote a poem:
 
 AFTER READING A PARAGRAPH I COULDN'T HAVE WRITTEN

 It makes me sad
how close I am to gifted
 but not enough.
 I hear the stories. Yes! Yes!
 I know about that!
 I've seen the pictures, places,
 vivid as--what?
 The lines aren't in me.
 The fever is there to tell you
 so you'd know, so you'd do something.
 This is all that comes:
 Stop the wars. Stop the wars.
 Stop the wars."

Thank you, Christine -- that's a lovely bouquet!

 

Assorted

 

The Other Side

These pretty deer were ambling across the road as I headed to town on Friday -- they were in no hurry and I was able to get these pictures through the windshield. But that's not what I'm here to tell you about. The nice pictures are to beguile you while I talk about the other side of our usually rather idyllic life on the farm.

Early Friday morning John had gone down to feed the chickens and I was getting ready for an appointment in Asheville.  From down at the lower place I heard gunshots. Now this isn't as alarming as you might think -- it could be a varmint of some sort was in the chicken house, a neighbor doing target practice . . . but  I called John on his cell to find out what was up.

He was breathing heavy when he answered and then I got the full story. The Jersey bull that we purchased back in December had tried to kill him.

Now dairy bulls are notoriously bad tempered and we had known this. In fact, Tammy of Fairlight Farms had also warned us. But this bull had been reasonably amiable and we wanted to use him to breed Silverbell and Marigold and Clover  in hopes of another Jersey heifer. And then we would take him to market..

As of now, Marigold and Clover are bred and recently the bull had been getting more and more difficult to deal with -- breaking through fences and being a general nuisance. On Friday morning when John was feeding and watering the chickens, the bull was hanging about and generally acting menacing. John wanted to move him and the Jersey Girls to another pasture so he went to get a bucket of feed to toll them through the gate. And since the bull was acting weird, he also got his pistol.  Sometimes a shot in the air works to warn off  critter,

John was leading the cows toward the gate when the bull charged. Pushing through the cows, ignoring the bucket of feed, he hit John squarely in the chest, knocking him through a board fence. John says he was lying there on his back, looking through the broken boards at the bull who looked as if he was ready to come through the remaining board and finish what he'd started.

So, still on his back, John reached for his pistol. Those were the shots that I heard..

This was such a narrow escape. If the bull had knocked him down out in the open pasture, things could have been quite different.   As it was, John escaped with nothing more than some spectacular bruising and the job of getting the 1200 pound corpse on a trailer to take to the landfill. 

Life on the farm -- not always idyllic.

 

More Wild Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Now -- Glass Gem Corn!

So, you may or may not remember that back in the spring I did a post about some of the stuff I was planting in the garden, including this really neat Glass Gem Corn. I had only nine or ten plants and I've been keeping an eye on them, waiting impatiently for the corn to mature.  

The corn stalks didn't make the size of my other corn -- some are downright puny. But unlike my sweet corn, these stalks each had two or even three ears -- small ears 

I've been concerned that something would get them before I did and yesterday I saw that the deer had moved in. Deer had been nibbling at the sweet corn and now that it's all harvested, they made a  move on my precious Glass Gem corn, the vandals! 

So, in a pre-emptive strike, I picked about half the ears -- those that were almost mature.

Maturity is signaled by the cornsilk drying up and turning dark brown -- I picked some that were only dark-ish...

And, oh, the fun of carefully pulling back the shucks to see what the corn looks like!

Amazing colors!

This is one the deer chomped on -- but look at that turquoise shade and see how some of the kernels at the top are parti-colored!

One ear was just beginning to show some color; another was yellow and white, and another (probably very immature) was pure white.

I think that they gain color as they dry -- we'll see.

There was one puzzzling aberration --I wonder if it's a throwback to the ancestor of corn -- teosinte?

 

Talk about delayed gratification! I'm sure I appreciate this corn far more than if I'd just mail-ordered a few dried ears.

In any event, I have some of this gorgeous corn safely drying in my corner cupboard. I'll use some as decorations and save some for seed. If any of you want to give this a try next year, perhaps I'll be able to share (if the deer leave me a few more ears.) But only here in the states -- I think that most countries have stringent regulations about sending seeds.

How does is taste? I did a taste test on one -- at the stage when sweet corn is juicy and, well, sweet, this was dryish, gummy, and very starchy. I'd say that this is a corn suited for making flour or feeding critters.

Or, of course,  for blogging about.