Beautiful Corn You Can Count On

This wasn't a good year for our sweet corn. We have had none to sell and only a small amount for our own eating and that from one bed that was planted from seedlings started in the greenhouse. All the direct seeded corn germinated at such low rates that Joel tilled it under and planted cabbages. That said, our flour corn, Painted Mountain, did great. This is the shortest season colored grinding corn available. Not only does it make great corn meal but it is BEAUTIFUL.
Harvesting it was like opening christmas presents. We kept saying, "Look at this one!" It comes in a wondrous variety of colors, reds, dark pinks, orange, marooon, blues, teal, green, yellow white, speckled, spotted. Joel's favorite is one that's a mixture of maroon and orange, mine is the ones above in blues, teals and greens with a touch of pink.
Joel tied them to strings which will hang in the house to dry. They make a beautiful fall decoration as well as potential cornbread.

Pumpkins

With all the rain and the cloudy days we have been worried about whether or not our winter squash and pumpkins will mature before we get our first frost. The plants are so huge and lush that it is really hard to see what is going on in there but I poked around in the pumpkin patch today and found several nice orange Neon pumpkins and one white one sitting on top of them. Looks like there'll be something for Halloweeen.

Fall

I love fall and this poem evokes the season so beautifully.

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river shallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Placemats in Greens and Blues

I have had a couple of lovely days weaving and weaving. I finished a batch of placemats in blues and greens and a bit of yellow and tied a new warp of reds and purples and oranges onto it. I am about to hem up the placemats so I can take them to the Farmers Market on Saturday. The basket of rag strips above was for a runner that I made on the end of the warp. Hopefully this evening I will get the fringes twisted on that.

Fall

Well, fall is really and truly here. I've closed down the booth at Roche Harbor, Labor Day is over and the market will start slowing down. Things are ripening in the garden. We may not get much from our outdoor tomatoes, but the ones in the hoophouse are in full production. And the fall brassicas are looking good. They don't mind rain and cool weather. Above is a Calibos cabbage plant. It's the only pointed red cabbage we know of. Only one seed company carries it so Joel is growing his own seed. When one of our favorites becomes scarce we know the time has come to do that.