From fall to winter, where have the last few months gone? In October, we were busy with garden clean-up and November with organizing year-end and making sure the popcorn was drying down. Great news – the popcorn is dried and packaged for delivery. Look for the popcorn soon. Just in time to enjoy for the holidays.
If you are interested in being a shareholder next year, please let us know. An updated contract can be found here.
From our home to yours, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
What’s Growing On?
Thankfully, we had a nice day to harvest popcorn. It is interesting to see how different the varieties of popcorn are from the stalk size and strength to the ear size to the size of the kernels.
The popcorn ears were beautiful. The strawberry popcorn had the smallest ears, and the blue popcorn had the largest ears. We saw cross-pollination of the white and blue varieties. The boys thought these ears looked like U of M Gopher colors.
Using Steve’s Grandparents corn sheller, we shelled the corn after it had dried for about two months. If it had too much moisture in the kernels, it would not store well, but instead would become moldy during storage and have no shelf life.
After the boys had shelled the popcorn, the jars were carefully filled by our helpers. It was interesting to see how much each variety yielded (produced) and lead to good math application of how much more of each variety should be planted next year to make the yield we would like. We plan on growing a lot more strawberry popcorn as it is a shareholder favorite and since the ears are smaller twice as much needs to be planted in order to yield the same as the blue and white varieties.
Here is the Red, White, and Blue Popcorn that you will receive. We have found that an air popper works great to pop these kernels. Enjoy!
Garden Science
The weekends were busy cleaning up the garden. We shredded many of the plants so that the plants would break down during the winter months. This provides us with a great opportunity to discuss safety with our kids to wear eye and ear protection.
The boys cut down the sunflowers. This sunflower was a nemesis to Sam because the stalk was so big. He had to get a spade to get the stalk out.
As we cleaned up the sunflowers, it was fun to see the different stages that the sunflower was in, from blossom to seed to and almost empty heads due to the birds enjoying the sunflower seeds.
By the end of September, the majority of the garden was cleaned out. We told the boys if we worked hard that weekend, that the following weekend we could do something fun as a family. So we did, we went camping.
We also built and planted a garlic garden. You asked for it. We are trying it and planted some this fall.
In the Kitchen
We juiced some of our tomatoes using the juicer from Steve’s grandparents. We use this juice to make spaghetti and pizza sauce throughout the year and my parents enjoy the tomato juice.
We also made the tomatoes, peppers and onions into homemade salsa.
Sam enjoyed using one of my favorite garden tools to chop peppers for the salsa.
Our chickens are still producing eggs during the cold winter. Let us know if you are interested in purchasing any for $3 per dozen. On another note, the boys are interested to know if you like brown, white or the blueish/green colored eggs the best – what do you prefer? We are preparing to get more chickens next spring and are considering the different breeds that would work best with our goals and consumer preferences.
