First Corn and a Night at the Races

Even though the weather has been bad we have been selling everything we can produce, which is good for business but bad because we haven't been able to save a lot for ourselves to can, freeze or eat fresh. But we have had our first corn harvest and we decided to cream off a few ears for us to put up...87 fully ripe and sweet ears.

We don't spray insecticides or use herbicides on our corn so we usually have the worms at the end of the cobs you have to break or cut off but this year we have had very few and though I wasn't really happy with the germination rate when we planted, the pollination seems to have been very good and we sure cant complain about the taste.

The beard is gone because I start the more advanced Fire Fighter school next week and you cant have beards because of wearing the air packs and needing a good seal and the sun glasses just reflect my optimistic nature! Corn and tomatoes are my two favorite vegetables (yes I know tomatoes are technically a fruit but its my blog) and you just cant beat the taste of fresh corn with home made creamy butter and some salt.

 

We planted an heirloom variety called "Country Gentleman" which is a white shoe peg corn and real tasty but you can see in this picture that the seed co had mixed up some seed because we also ended up with a more conventional variety mixed in..but it all tastes good. This batch we blanched then froze for corn on the cob that we enjoy during the winter.

While we were shucking corn we looked over to the road from the East pasture (the piled up gravel is where I scraped it into piles after the flood with the Kubota and a box blade) and saw critters all over. The barn cat had taken her kittens out for a stroll and they had a blast playing in the remnants of the river that was. We dont want the kittens, we cant even touch the barn cat as she moves in and out and she is wild enough to do you some serious damage (she was carting fully grown rabbits she hunted into the barn to feed her brood). We have tried live traps with all kinds of setups and bait but she isnt stupid and short of shooting them, which I couldnt do, we just have given up and live in peace with them. They own the barn and dont bug us when we go in and in fact rarely see them in the barn but we dont have mice..so...

 This is Holly and our friend Roger...so what do you do when the rain lets up for half a day allowing you to do some work? Why go to the races of course. Roger had some tickets and food vouchers as part of an employee appreciation day and he treated us to an evening at the races at one of the local stock car tracks. This track actually has some lower division NASCAR races and its a really nice facility. Its clean, very family oriented, the food was pretty good and the beer garden had $2.00 beers and great views of the track...whats not to like?

There were several races with varying classes but the late model NASCAR class was the biggest and was a points race. NASCAR driver Jamie McMurry is the local track champion and still returns to race now and again. Rusty Wallace and his family are also Missourians who frequent the track.

This is the Road Warrior class and my favorite. Just local racers with their hoopties tearing up the track.

Some of them look a little rough but they were going flat out and its very entertaining.

Sportsman Class...

Modifieds....and this class was wild with one car getting airborne at one point..

And these crazy 4 cylinder Charger class cars were also a lot of fun. They are mostly stock, they run flat out and because the suspension isnt that great they squeel and slide around corners and bang into each other.

There were several accidents (and one fist fight) with this one being the worst. One driver was transported to the hospital with sore ribs and a bump to the noggin but nothing too serious.

I took this to show the hot dog eating contest, not to show the cute Monster Energy drinks gal in the skimpy top and shorts......really.

Dig this crazy contraption....a jet powered golf cart.

I talked to the owner and driver for quite a while (gear heads like to talk to gear heads) and the jet engine is military surplus but of undetermined origin. He does have a functioning after burner hooked up and he is actually powering a drive shaft to a rear axel. It carries 6 minutes of a gasoline/kerosene fuel mixture and has a parachute on the rear that is more for show.

So during intermission he did a run under the lights and it was pretty cool but he was having trouble with getting the jet to spool up and we never got the thrust boom everyone was wanting but we enjoyed the show

I want.....

 

I will leave you with this for this post: Life is short so surround yourself with happy interesting people and eliminate those people or situations that drag you down. Our friend Roger works 6 days a week, he has had some blows since we moved here but he is always upbeat and we all enjoy lots of laughs and adventures when we get together. Thanks for a night at the races Roger...we had a blast.

 

 





 

First Corn Harvest and Other Happenings Around the Homestead

We have been selectively harvesting corn from our first planting to eat everynight and it finally got to the point where we had to harvest and can. After purchasing a pressure canner, we harvested 140 ears from the first planting and almost all of them were fully poolinated with sweet full ears which was really gratifying as we have never grown corn before and our knowlege all comes from books and the Internet. Several neighbors have had a poor corn harvest and incompletely pollinated ears (they will be missing rows, the kernals are small etc) so I think they way we planted 8 rows deep and in rows about 50 feet long helped. We also didnt use any fertilizer beyond organic compost and some composed horse manure nor did we use any pesticides so we ended up with horn worm on the ends of most of the ears but we just cut those parts off. We decided early on we didnt want to use roundup or any type of weed killer and we sure didnt want to spend all day weeding so we layed old hay between the rows and we intensively planted closer than what was recommended (the rows were just wide enough for me to get a push mower through to keep some of the weeds in check). We still have about 20 or 30 ears on the first 4 rows and the whole second planting to harvest in a week or so....more than enough for us to can and freeze for the winter.

All of the ears were fat and full; very few culls.

They are so sweet we were nibbling on them raw.

The gals shucking the corn, I cut off the horn worms.

Now we have to process them.

We froze 34 ears as corn on the cob following the Ball Blue Book instructions, we took 16 ears and made pickled corn and the rest we cut off the cob and canned using the pressure canner.

It can get tedious and we had to do several batches.

Presto 16 quart pressure canner worked like a champ....but we could have used the 23 quart.

While we were at it, we harvested some tomatoes, added onion, garlic and basil from our garden and popped them into the oven to roast.

Pureed them when they were roasted.

And we had the tastiest roasted tomato soup for dinner.

The pickled corn is in the pint jars and its very good...the whole house still smells like corn.

And while we were out the other day we found this wing backed chair for $68.00' its not an antique but its a nice chair and almost brand new without a mark on it.

We also found this swivel rocker for $15.00; again not an antique but not a mark on it and it just needs cleaning.

At a yard sale on the way home we bought some things for Judy and found these chairs for $1.35 each (we got 4)...not our style but they will due for temp use and the price was right.

We also found this old play bill in the frame for a couple bucks

We both had a long hard day watching the ladies do the canning.