Mark Reed

They still go the food thing around here too but not as much as back then, I don't think.

I miss when you just got in the car and drove on over to a friend's or relative's house without an appointment. If they weren't home, you just snooped around the place a little to see what might be different, visited with the dogs or horses a bit and left what you probably brought with you on the porch, or you just got back in the car and went for a ride, or fishing.

Wow, your corn project sounds pretty much like mine and been at it about the same amount of time. Mine is pretty much settled on large heavy kernels and I also favored fewer rows of kernels as well as a couple other things. This year I have around thirty ears that meet all the criteria and overall, the diversity is wide enough that these ears can start a new semi-stable variety. Is yours a single heirloom that you have been preserving or is it also a mix up of heirlooms?

Pressure canners probably existed sixty years ago but my family did not have them. Canning beans or anything else was done the same way it had been done in times before that. I never knew until now why those beans that had already been boiled hard for three hours had to be cooked at a boil and simmered, three more times, before eating. I don't know it they really knew about botulism, they just had some unbreakable rules about canned goods.  

My mother and grandmother canned green beans in boiling water, sometimes on a wood stove. The rule was they have to be at an uninterrupted hard boil for three hours. If the fire dies down and boiling stops, you have to start over. If you need to add water, it has to be boiling when you pour it in.   I don't recommend it, keeping a big tub of water boiling hard on a wood stove for three hours in July isn't fun at all. I'm glad I know how to do it and really glad we don't have too.

I don't know if there are more or less this year, but I am definitely on alert for them because I encountered a nest in my garden just a few days ago. I'm fairly tolerant of them in general and much more tolerant of their venom than most people. Had it just been me I might have tagged the spot and let them be, but the girl here is allergic, and the cat likes to stick his foot in holes, so they had to go.  

Your saying "they're kind of cuddly for murder-flies" is interesting because these were less aggressive than normal, I never thought about it being a time of year thing.

Maybe there are different strains of them because these were small, I thought at first they were hover flies attracted to where I had spilled water and even walked through them a couple times before they attacked. I'm tolerant anyway of bee venom but theirs was particularly mild, I don't know how many times they got me because they didn't enough of a swelling to count the individual spots. The pain lasted a minute or two and the itch, a couple of hours.

What to do when a yellow jacket nest is in your sweet potato patch? Pour gasoline or spray poison in the hole, ABSOLUTELY not! Shop vac can work, if your tolerant of a few stings, which I am but no extension cord long enough so I went in and got a big pot of water boiling, it worked a charm.  Next day I dug to make sure I got them, rather than causing them to move and I found the nest and a much larger one which I guess is the queen. Now just the karmic debt for murdering the poor things in such an awful way.

Anne Miller wrote:Problem animal and traps might be okay.

Animal do what comes natural.

Big choice, keep predators, nuisance animals or use live traps?

Big choice, do these animals bother your dogs, cats, or crops?

Your choice.

Animals will completely destroy my garden if left alone to do so. I do use live traps but don't always release them alive. This year so far two coons were so miserable looking, nearly bald and covered with scabs and ticks that they were shot out of compassion and the bodies buried deep in the ground. A particularly large and aggressive one was shot on principal and left for the buzzards; it chose the "no I don't want out alive" option. Five more were released over on the state-owned hunting preserve and at least one remains at large. Possibly just two possums have been caught and released on site several times. Squirrels and chipmunks also get a ride to the preserve; chipmunks get a good meal of peanuts and sunflowers and a good drink of clean water beforehand.  

Squirrels totally freak the crap out and smash their faces into the wire until they're bleeding. Stupid squirrels.
Possums just lay there with their mouths open drooling a little bit, hoping you'll go away.
Racoons snap and snarl and make you ask, "you want out of this cage alive, or not". Really stupid racoons.
Chipmunks just chill, give them a peanut and a bottle cap of water and they jump online to shop for a new couch.

We dry them all, sweet and hot alike then blend them together in mixes with varying degrees of heat. Sometimes a mix includes other things like garlic, various herbs or sea salt.

Dennis Barrow wrote:Living here in the mountains of Montana, my favorite wild fruit to harvest and eat is, by far,

HUCKLEBERRIES !

I love huckleberries but have only eaten them one time during a camp trip in the Teton Mountains. We shared a patch for a brief time with a grizzly bear. The bear looked as us, we looked at it and we all went back to eating huckleberries.

My favorite wild fruit where I live are wild black cherries, mulberries and persimmons that have hung onto the tree into winter and basically dehydrated or freeze dried.

Just made a little video about my how my sweet potatoes are doing this year. Hope you enjoy it. Note - I accidentally called my ornamental plants "Ms Bloom" and "Likes to Climb" culinary. If you like sweet potatoes greens, you can eat the leaves, but they don't make big storage roots.