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!