Back to School

Even though it's still 85 degrees outside, summer is officially over for me. Classes started last week and I am already feeling the squeeze of not having enough hours in the day to get everything done. Perhaps having such a relaxing summer was not actually in my best interest, because it has made it that much harder to get back into the swing of things. I guess I'll just have to suck it up and be thankful that I even got into grad school in the first place or else I would have spent my summer under a fluorescent light working for a modern day slave-driver :)

Over my final 2 weeks of "freedom" I finally got around to canning a batch of salsa (with the generous help of my friend and school-mate Christina). My cayenne peppers and Roma tomatoes were slow to ripen this year, probably because we were able to supply them with water on a regular basis this year with the irrigation system, so I wasn't able to make the salsa until much later in the season as compared to last year. I also canned some pepper jelly, but not without a major kitchen catastrophe in the midst of the whole process. I didn't turn the heat down fast enough after bringing the jelly mixture to a boil and ended up with a boil over of molten sugar/pepper lava all over the stove. This quickly turned into black sugar char that is now a permanent feature of my stovetop, fan-friggin-tastic! Oh well, I've been telling Shawn we need a gas stove anyway, I hate those stupid electric ranges (although that particular disaster could have turned into a serious fire had there been flame involved). Here's a shot of my lovely peppers before they got turned into jelly:
As for more recent news, over the past two days we have had very intense rain and there has been significant flooding in our area. Since we live alongside the Haw River, I was curious to see how high it was after the rains had stopped. Shawn and I rode down to the river on the 4-wheeler last night and we were in awe of what we saw:

This field is normally used to grow oats or corn, but luckily it had already been harvested or there would have been a complete loss. And as you can see, our garden rain gauge runneth over (I guess we won't need to water for awhile!) Also, our corn has tasseled out, so hopefully we'll have about 600 ears of fresh silver queen corn in a few weeks!

Hot and spicy!

The dog days of summer are here, and the past couple weeks have been scorchers, which it makes it absolutely miserable to be out in the garden weeding (unless you get out there by 6 am, which is not so much an option for someone who is most definitely NOT a morning person). So I guess it is my own self imposed torture to do my weeding in the 95 degree heat. Sweating is supposed to be good for you, right? I have even managed to avoid getting a sunburn for the most part by being vigilant with the sunscreen, but I did get one of the worst burns I have had in a long time in one of the most unlikely places... lets just say that I need to start applying sunscreen to my backside because apparently when I spend hours bent over weeding, there is a sliver of exposed skin in the space between the bottom of my shirt and the top of my shorts. Not a fun place to have a sunburn! Anyway, the garden is producing veggies faster then I can pick them (I swear if I sat and watched a cucumber for a couple hours I could see it grow!). I planted a patch of "late" corn the first week of July and it has done so much better than out first batch of corn, I think being able to water whenever we need to has made all the difference. Look at how much it has grown just over the past 3 weeks...

I also discovered that we had a few "volunteer" squash plants that randomly showed up in the field beside the garden. It's funny because we lost almost all of our squash plants to insects this year, but these guys seem to be doing great! I call them my "squash surprise" :)


I have already canned my first batch of tomatoes, and would have been doing more of the same this week if it hadn't been for a particularly bad thunderstorm that knocked over many of our tomato plants.The plants themselves seem to have survived, but many of the tomatoes that were on the vine were knocked off, which is very frustrating. We have already devised a better design for tomato cages that should prevent this problem, but obviously we'll have to wait until next year to implement it. This week I also tried a new recipe recommended by Krista's mom called Summer Tomato Pie...I swear it's one of the most delicious things you'll ever put in your mouth! The peppers are loving this hot weather (see photo below), and I had enough jalapeno and banana peppers to make pickled peppers earlier this week(my favorite pizza topping!). Once my cayenne peppers ripen then I can start on the salsa and pepper jelly too, yum!

Adventures with Mom!

Last week my Mom was here to visit and since she is thinking about moving down here in the next couple of years, I think it was a good thing for her to come in mid-July to see just how much she still liked North Carolina when it is 95 degrees and humid every day. She has always hated the cold and weighs in at a whopping 95 pounds (which amounts to zero insulation), so needless to say the heat didn't bother her in the least. We had a great time together and

Preview

crammed a ton of activities into the week she was here. The first night we took her to Ace Speedway which is just a couple miles from our house (you can hear the cars from our back deck on Friday nights, so cool!) and spent half the time watching the race and the other half watching the people... both were very entertaining!
Saturday we went to Reidsville to pick up some canning supplies at Saunders Hardware, which is a fun place to go because they actually still have appliances from the 70's that are still brand new in the box (but with updated prices!) Picture a harvest yellow waffle maker and the original Osterizer blender, brand new...crazy!!

On Sunday we invited Melissa and Ronnie over to shoot skeet...we all had a great time and it was nice to know I can still shoot pretty well after several years without practice. Neither Melissa or Ronnie had ever shot skeet before, and if you've never done it you'll quickly realize it's a lot tougher to hit a moving target than a stationary one, but they were quick learners and busted up a few skeet before the day was over. Then we celebrated our victory over the clay pigeons with some margaritas and steaks on the grill (and turkey brats for me), it was a perfect day :)
Later in the week Mom and I visited the local winery and were quite impressed with their wines! Who'd have thought NC had any decent wines? I am proud to admit that I am finally starting to acquire a taste for red wine (although the full-bodied ones are still bit too much for me). I feel all grown up and semi-sophisticated now...ok not really I know I'm still mostly a redneck...but I can pretend! :) Mom also helped me make garlic-dill pickles with our over-abundance of cucumbers, I can't wait to try them! Right now the tomatoes are only producing a couple of ripe ones each day, but there are a ton of green ones on the vine, so I'll bet next week it will be time to start canning and making salsa, who hoo!!

Who needs rain anyway....?

It is nearing that time of year where I become overloaded with veggies and subsequently give half of them away because I can't keep up with all the canning. Last year we were inundated with squash and zucchini, this year we seem to have too many cukes. Sadly there seems to be a lot fewer options for fun ways to eat cucumbers compared to squash and zucchini...anyone have any suggestions? Actually, I have eaten so many of them that I feel like I am in a perpetual state of "cucumber bloat"... maybe I ought to lay off the cukes for a few days :) Anyway! So here is what my garden looked like on the 5th of June (the day I left for Maine)...


And here it is 2 and a half weeks later on the day after I came home from Maine (many many thanks to Shawn for weeding while I was gone!!) What you can see in the picture is that things are growing fast (especially the tomatoes and corn!), what you can't see is almost all of my peas and many of my green beans either died from the 100+ degree heat wave or got eaten by rabbits, bummer! It's embarrassing to say I have had to plant my green beans three times this year, but I will have fresh green beans dammit!! Also we have had a major infestation of Colorado potato beetles which nearly was the demise for our potatoes, but thankfully we have it under control now with the help of Sevin Dust (not the band).

We have also found an effective solution to the heat/lack of rain problem...it was a bit on the pricey side, but is a one time investment that we will reap the benefits of for years to come. We purchased a large amount of used irrigation equipment from Shawn's grandfather, and now we are able to keep the garden alive no matter how hot or dry it gets without draining our well, yay! We are very lucky to have a farm pond on our property that is currently only being used for fishing, so this makes it possible for us to have a nearly unlimited (and renewable, since it is spring fed) source of water. Since we don't have quite enough pipe to reach all the way from the garden to the pond, instead we fill up a 1000 gallon tank and haul it up to the garden where we hook it to the pump and wala! We have water! The first time we ran it we discovered we can put down 1000 gal of water in about 40 minutes, incredible! I was so excited I was dancing in the "rain" (along with the dog) :) Check it out:


And as for our rabbit problem, well that solved itself once the wheat got cut, now they have no where to hide from their predators, so they seem to be staying closer to the woods these days. And that is fine with me! Here is a shot of the combine harvesting the wheat from our back deck:

The month in pictures

Wow, it's been over a month since I have blogged, which is really awful since I don't even have school as an excuse right now...BUT, even without being in school I have managed to stay pretty busy and so I thought I'd cover what I've been up to over the past month with a photo blog....

For starters, I have been working as a TA for an online course called "Principles and Methods of Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology" (a mouthful I know!) It's actually a course I took a couple years ago as part of the Certificate in Field Epidemiology program, so it's nice that I am already familiar with the material. I don't have a photo for this one, but who wants to see me sitting behind my laptop in my pajamas anyway? :) To make up for the lack of a photo, here is a fun outbreak investigation game that I find very entertaining, so if you're bored here is something to keep you occupied for 10 or 15 minutes (after you finish reading my blog of course!) http://www.mclph.umn.edu/watersedge/

I also got to spend almost 3 weeks in Maine visiting my family and attending weddings, we lucked out and got some great weather (almost 90 degrees in early June, wow!) so that meant my sisters, Dad, and I got to do a lot of fishing at his camp in Belgrade... and I was even brave enough to take a dip in the lake (I think the ice had only gone out about 6 weeks prior!)


On our last day at camp my Dad and I were fortunate enough to get to see both of the bald eagles that live on the lake, it was an incredible experience! Gotta love the magic of camp!

Allison, a childhood friend and the daughter of friends of my parents who I have known since I was 5, got married in Biddeford on June 7th...her dress was lilac colored...I am so jealous!!

EJ, a friend from college who was also dubbed as an unoffical third roommate our freshman year at UMaine, got married in Windham on June 21st. I also got to see Emily, my "official" roommate freshman and sophmore year, and her husband Ryan at the wedding. I can't wait to meet their new baby Lizzie next time I visit!

During my visit I also got the chance to visit with one of my closest friends Barbie and her husband Sean and also two of my friends from elementary school Jessica and Lisa (I hadn't seen Lisa in over 14 years!!). My Mom and I picked out my wedding dress while I was in Maine too, but I can't show you those pictures, it's bad luck!

What's that smell?....oh... it's me

As I was making a futile attempt to clean out the grime from under my fingernails, I realized that my black fingernails were a symbol of my favorite kind of day, a day spent getting completely and utterly filthy :) Here is my recipe for the perfect day: start out with sunscreen (on such a perfect spring day I knew I would spend every last second outside), then add a lot of dirt and sweat from weeding the garden (holy crap where did all these weeds come from all of sudden?), then add gear oil (time to find the source of the leak in the rear axle), and top it all off with some DEET and fish slime (we only caught a couple brim, but it was still a blast). And as a added bonus, tonight is the NASCAR all-star race...what more could a girl want?? :)

Seeds of wisdom

One of my favorite things about gardening is watching my carefully sown seeds start to sprout. It never fails to amaze me how you can stick a tiny dry little seed into the dirt and a week or 2 later there is a beautiful little plant growing in it's place. I understand the science behind it, but for some reason, even after our very successful garden last year, I still feel that I don't really know what I am doing and that there is no way all the seeds I planted will actually sprout. This year, when 90% of the green beans I planted didn't come up, I knew it was my fault for somehow not planting them right and that I was a failure as a farmer. Shawn told me that it was becuase we had so much rain in the week after we planted that some of the seeds may have drowned, but I was skeptical...how come the corn he planted on the same day came up just fine then?? So on Tuesday I decided to swallow my pride and try to replant all the green beans. As I dug up the dirt in the row, I discovered that Shawn had in fact been right, I found many of the seeds I had planted, and they had sprouted and even had some tiny leaves, but they were yellow looking and they had never breached the surface becuase they got stuck under the hard crust of clay that builds up after hard rains, and so they drowned...poor little things. Sad as it was that there was a mass drowning in the garden, I still felt happy becuase I knew that it wasn't directly my fault, it was just the damn weather, again! And I also realized that the reason the corn didn't drown was becuase it had already come up before the several days of downpours came. OK, so maybe I'm not a failure after all... but won't be sure until I see my new set of green beans come up, keep your fingers crossed!