Butterbean Pickin'

Nanny loves butterbeans and has been anxiously watching the two rows we planted. We've been walking the rows together, feeling of the fattening pods. For the past couple of weeks, we've held off on the picking. At last, they're ready.

Butterbeans - at least the bush variety - are a b*tch to pick. They are low to the ground; each pod must be fondled to determine if the beans inside it have matured; there are millions of pods. This makes for slow going come picking time.

Nanny picked part of the butterbeans yesterday morning. She made it about 1/4 of the way up the rows before the sun became too blistering hot and drove her indoors. When I came home from work yesterday, I started where she quit, picked for two hours, and ran out of daylight about 10 feet from the ends of the rows. Between the two of us, we picked five 2-gallon buckets full of beans. There's probably one more bucket-full in that last 10 feet. Not all of the beans were ready; we'll have to do this again in a few days.

The black-eyed peas will be ready to pick about the time the butterbeans finish.

Meanwhile, the tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash are ripening like crazy. I've made all the pickles I need, and Nanny has made a dozen jars of cucumber relish. We're giving the cucumbers away (twice a week) by the sack-full. I spent the past weekend canning tomatoes, and it looks like I'll be doing the same thing this coming weekend.

On Monday, I bought half-a-bushel of peaches from a local grower who had set up a make-shift peach stand on the tailgate of a truck in a parking lot in town. They were fat, juicy, clear-seed peaches, and I brought them home to make peach jam. I should have known better than to commence the process at 6 p.m., but I was anxious to get to them before they ruined, so the minute I got home I changed clothes and started peeling and slicing the peaches. The cooking started at about 7 p.m. By 8:30, the stuff in the pan was still too loose and runny to suit me. I did some calculating: they'd need to cook for at least another hour before they could be put into the jars; it would take at least 30 minutes to get them ready to go into the water-bath canner, and another 30 - 45 minutes to get the water boiling and do the processing. It would be 11 p.m., at the earliest, before they'd come out of the canner. Yuck. I considered taking the pan off the burner, refrigerating the mixture, and finish cooking it the next day, but I remembered those butterbeans waiting to be picked the next afternoon....

So I came up with Plan B: put the stuff in the crock pot on low heat, cook it all night, and put it in jars early the next morning before going to work. Problem solved.

Right.

Yesterday morning when the alarm clock beeped, I rolled out of bed and went straight to the kitchen. I raised the lid on the crock pot, expecting a thicker version of the beautiful translucent gold mixture that had gone into the pot. Instead, I found a slowly-bubbling black ooze.

I turned the crock pot off in disgust, and left the mess where it sat.

It's still sitting there, mocking me every time I walk by.

Tonight, I'm coming home with more peaches, if the peach lady is still in town. And I'm going to put a beautiful translucent gold mixture into some jars if I have to stay up all night to do it.

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It's nearly 11 o'clock at night, and I'm sitting here waiting for the food dehydrator to finish.

Note to self: start early in the morning next time.

I put these tomatoes - 5 trays of slices - in the dehydrator at 11 this morning. The instruction book said it would take 10 - 14 hours. The bottom tray seems to dry faster than the others, and I took a few brittle tomato slices from it about 2 hours ago. Just took out a few more, and consolidated the rest into 3 trays. Some of the remaining slices are almost ready, but some are still kind of mushy. They may need the full 14 hours to fully dry, but they're coming out when the rest come out, regardless. (We'll have them in an omelet in the morning if they're still wet.) The whole dehydrator full of tomato slices is going to result in about 3/4 of a quart bag-full of dried tomatoes.

I tasted one. They are yummy. Very sweet. I used several different kinds of tomatoes - Juliette tomatoes (which are bigger than a grape tomato, but smaller than a Roma), Roma tomatoes, and some of the round variety (Early Girl, most likely). I also experimented with different cutting techniques - i.e., cross-wise versus length-wise (which explains the various stages of wetness, I expect). The Juliette tomatoes, cut cross-wise into Quarter-sized circles, withered up into chewy, raisin-sized knobs. They ought to be good in salads! Cut length-wise, they sort of rolled up into a miniature scroll, about 1" long. They're among the "still mushy" ones. I cut the Romas and the round tomatoes cross-wise. They are almost crispy. They would make a great alternative to potato chips, especially if seasoned before drying. (Doesn't a tomato chip dipped in queso sound good?)

The book says you can grind the dried tomatoes into powder, and add liquid to it to reconstitute it into paste or sauce, depending on how much liquid you add.

I bet squash and zucchini would make great chips, too. We'll know by tomorrow night, assuming there are squash in the garden in the morning.

Varmints

Yesterday afternoon, just before sunset, I went down to the garden to check on things. I'd barely made it to the first row when Nanny hollered from the back door, "Need some help?"

"Nah, I just came to putter around," I told her, but she came out, anyway. She'd already picked most of the ripening tomatoes. They were laying under the cherry tree on a sheet of plywood propped between two sawhorses. When I passed by this make-shift table, I noticed a half-eaten tomato, but didn't say anything. When Nanny passed by it, she said, "OH, NO! The squirrell's already been here!" She said she'd seen him in the garden earlier in the day and had decided to pick the tomatoes before he did. "I guess I just saved him some work," she said. She put the half-eaten tomato in the garbage can and joined me in the garden.

We picked a few squash, some cucumbers, and some hot peppers. As we were examining the butterbean rows, trying to guess when they might be ready to pick, Nanny suddenly pointed behind me and exclaimed, "There's the little rabbit! Keep your eye on him while I get the hammer!"

The hammer? Good heavens.

"You'll never catch that rabbit to hit him with a hammer!" I said to her back as she was running up the row.

"No, but I can FLING it at him," she hollered over her shoulder.

Fling it at him? I looked at the rabbit. He was crouched beneath the tee-peed green bean rows. I had visions of that hammer hurtling through the air, taking out the green bean supports and levelling everything else in its path. But Nanny meant business. "Let me see if I can at least run him out where you can get a clear aim at him."

"I've got the hammer," she said from the end of the row where we'd earlier hammered a tomato stake. "Shoo him up here."

Shoo him up there. Right.

I probably don't even need to tell you that we did not nail the rabbit with the hammer. He zigged and zagged all over the place, and then, when we thought we'd finally run him off for good and had put the weapon away, we saw him dart from beneath the butterbeans and make for the woods. Truth be known, Nanny could not have coldly bludgeoned that little bunny any more than I could have done. She later admitted this. "But I could have scared him really bad," she said.

We finished our work and started back toward the house. I glanced at the tomatoes on the trestle. There was another half-eaten tomato in the pile. Mr. Squirrell had probably had a good laugh from his vantage point on the table, watching us chase the rabbit while he enjoyed another juicy tomato.

I gathered up the remaining tomatoes, brought them to my house, and laid them on my patio table to finish ripening. We have squirrells around our house, too, but I counted on our cat, Lucy, to keep them at bay. So far, so good. If they make it through the night, tomorrow I will slice them and try drying them in the food dehydrator.

Mmmmmm...!

The first picking of great northern beans happened yesterday while I was at work. As soon as I got home, Nanny called and said that she had already cooked them, and that I should come get some for supper. I hurried across the road with a bowl.

I'd never had fresh great northern beans, only the dried kind. Nanny had cooked them only with salt and pepper for seasoning(no bacon or ham). Man, oh man...they were delicious! We had them with some of Nanny's cucumber relish, meat loaf, baked sweet potato fries, and sliced tomatoes. Mmmmmmmm...!

Nanny think there'll be one more picking. I wish I'd planted more. Next year, I'm doubling the great northern bean crop!

Uh-oh....

Nanny stopped by my house today and said that she has picked a bucket of cucumbers, a bucket of tomatoes, and a bucket of squash. (Guess that rain helped, huh?) Based on prior experience, these buckets could be anything from 1-gallon ice cream containerd to 5-gallon tubs.

Looks like I'd best be laying in some canning supplies. I have the jars and the lids, but no pickling spices. My water-bath canner sat outside on the patio all winter and rusted; I'll need a new one. I want a food dehydrator to try on the Juliette tomatoes. (Someone once gave me one of those things, back before I started gardening; I probably moved it from cabinet to cabinet for a few years, then chunked it.)

You might know that this would happen when I am busier at work than I've been all year.

Since the rain, the squash seeds I planted over a week ago have sprouted. I'm seeing little stuff with red stems in the row where I planted the beet seeds, so maybe they're coming up, too. No sign of the #(@!*&% carrots, yet. I hear they take a little longer to sprout.

Two of my tomato plants up and died. They just wilted, as if they'd been cut. I heaved them up and tossed them over the hill, tomatoes and all, for fear of blight. Let's hope they didn't start a trend.

Whoooo-wee, it's hot!

Last Sunday, the husband and I hitched up our little camper and towed it to Alabama, just south of Birmingham, for a few days of R & R. It was a good trip, but the weather was hotter than blazes. It rained every day - just quick showers, enough to turn the place into a steam bath. Every time it would rain, I would think about my garden and hope was raining at home.

We came home yesterday. This morning, I went to the garden. Nanny had been picking tomatoes and cucumbers all week and had a few jars of relish on the counter to show for it. The butterbeans are blooming up a storm, but we still don't have much of a crop of anything. It rained here on Thursday; maybe that will help.

The seeds I planted last week - squash, carrots, and beets - still haven't sprouted. I noticed that some large animal or some small human had walked on the "hills" where I had planted the squash seeds. I do believe that Madison may have done a little gardening while I was away.

My sister learned about a greenhouse that was giving away tomato plants, and she brought some to me. They are unusual varieties that bear fruit that's striped, or some color besides red. I'll be setting them in the ground this afternoon, after the sun goes down.

Check-Up #3

This weekend, Pop-Pop said, "It's time to start planting your fall garden."

I said, "Ok. What goes in a fall garden?"

"Carrots."

"Ok. What else?"

"Don't know. Never grew a fall garden."

I stopped by the garden center on Tuesday. An attendant showed me a list of fall garden plants. It didn't excite me much. However, I did buy a few packs of seeds: carrots, beets, lettuce, and radishes. I also bought some seeds for some cool-looking squash, but I don't recall the name. The package showed a smooth, round, yellow fruit, and the instructions said to harvest it when it grows to the size of a billiard ball. Sounds easy enough. It's probably a summer squash, but there's probably enough warm weather left to grow it.

I planted the carrots - a "regular" carrot, and some short, fat ones - and the beets. I'm not sure that anybody in the family actually likes beets, but, hey...I had empty space. I'm also not very confident about the carrots. This will be my third attempt at growing carrots. So far, I've not had the first seed to sprout, much less had a harvest. Thinking my soil might be too hard, I dug a big bag of spaghnum moss into the row. We'll see if that helps.

Overall, I'm not yet very pleased with the way the garden is producing this year. We're getting enough tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash to eat, but not enough to preserve. The green beans have run up their canes like crazy, but they have barely bloomed. As usual, the hot peppers are making lots of pods, but the bell peppers are coming slowly. Pop-Pop says that everybody is complaining that their gardens aren't producing well. They are chalking it up to a cool, wet spring, late planting, and recent lack of rain. I am hoping that things will pick up as the summer progresses.