Poor neglected blog

You would think from the number of posts here that nothing has been happening in the Northview Dairy farm garden. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This year we have had the best garden in years. It sure has been fun to take care of it.


We have had lots of potatoes with more to dig. A certain amount of potato scab and some hollow ones showed up, but they taste incredibly good. Lots of tomatoes, zucchini (although never enough) the best crop of sweet corn in a decade, carrots, herbs, hot peppers, giant sunflowers, a few beans and peas...man we have been eating like kings.




Liz and I have been putting up all we can. We need to get some paper bags for the rest of the potatoes. We would like to get out and pick some raspberries at the pick your own up the road, but time is an issue (there is the reason for no posts...time). Soon we will get a frost and the fall apples will ripen up. Then we will make some jelly I hope. I add cinnamon to my apple jelly, which makes it much more interesting in flavor. This year I am going to spice some with the seasonings you would normally put in apple pie...hopefully resulting in apple pie jelly......imagine apple pie on toast......yummmmmmm.


This summer I have been dabbling in saving seeds. I have always saved 4-o'clock seeds and a few other flowers, but this year I saved lettuce, giant sunflower, and hyssop seeds and am going to try to get some seeds from the vegetable marrows. It was such a great year for the garden that we even got a nice crop of acorn squash out of the compost bin.
I hate to see the season end!

Home again

Petunia Dolce Flambe
I have decided that I like it after all

Came home to a garden gone crazy. Weeds were even worse. I hilled potatoes, cleared a lot of amaranth and lambsquarters out of the hot peppers and picked a bunch of over-sized zucchini.


Froze the latter today after I finished paying the bills. Ended up with four nice gallon bags full. Lots of soup this winter I hope. Can't wait for the sweet corn (if it makes it-we planted pretty late).


Rainbow carrots are coming along good too. I really should plant more of them!

Herbs for Soup

The 17th of June and I am making soup. For the past two weeks it has been miserably hot most of the time. Now it is downright cold and a warm, hearty supper sounds like a good idea. It is too early for much to be ready in the garden this far north, but there are plenty of herbs. I picked chives, walking onions, orange mint, creeping thyme, woolly thyme and lovage (nice since I am out of celery.) One thing nice about fall is making End of Garden soup, with the odds and ends of whatever is left in the garden. However, at this point the garden isn't even all planted.

Lovage, an herb, the leaves of which make a nice substitute for celery in soup

End of the growing season

It is over, done, fini. The corn is crispy now, there is only one bit of water lettuce left in the pond and that is all frazzled around the edges. I have tossed the last tomatoes and discovered to my woe, that my favorite apple orchard is closed for the year. (Already!!) Although most of the garden is finished, a few things are still available for culinary enjoyment. Chives thrive. There is still a pile of parsley next to the porch. If you care for carrots, I have two containers yet. Grapes for the grabbing dangle from a lonesome apple tree.




After a summer of cut offs and flip flops (and walking mighty careful around the edge of the lawn) I have the great pleasure of vanquishing nettles with but one stomp of my high rubber boots. Take that you stinging stinker you...and THAT and THAT and THAT!!



We are far from ready for winter, but it is beating on the back porch door, poking at the windows with freezing fingers and swirling down the chimney in a tizzy....(Out, out damned icicle) Oh, well...spring will come in due time (it says here in fine print.)


Meanwhile the cows will pass up pasture and consume corn silage like this instead...and we will waddle around in boots and bundles of heavy clothes and dream of better days.

Killing frost

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We finally had a killing frost on October 28. Dahlias and cannas have been dug and are drying before going down into the cellar. The little grape tomatoes that we enjoyed so much are mush now and it is time to clean up the vines. I pulled the green bean plants a couple of days ago. There are still small carrots coming along and amazingly we got two yams! Imagine yams in upstate New York.



Now on Halloween we have a guest like this one visiting in the garden pond. Very strange. (I wonder if this is his costume.) He was so cold sitting there in the half sunshine that he held still for a dozen or so photos before finally diving for the bottom.

What do you do

With the hot peppers that nobody will eat? (They wanted 'em....I grew 'em)

(Why decorate, of course)

Still no hard frost

We are still picking tomatoes every day. Late planted carrots are about two inches long and very sweet and succulent. I love the flavor of the rainbow carrot variety.Found enough peas on the tiny late-planted vines to have a handful. I can't believe they actually produced as the plants are only about four inches tall. We also have all the lettuce we could want, although something is eating it...probably sylvilagus floridanus. Or it could be really big, ugly mutant slugs. It is late for a hard frost but not the latest I have ever seen.

I won't say that I am ready for frost, but the air is heavy, humid and unpleasant. A breath of fresh air would be just that.

Amazing grape tomatoes

It has been a bit dry for gardening this summer, although we have had a decent harvest of this and that. However, the most amazing crop has been grape tomatoes from Pinetree Garden seeds. They just keep producing more and more and they are incredibly tasty. I would rate them among the best tomatoes we have ever grown. I keep a big bowl on the kitchen counter and it slowly empties as if gremlins or perhaps borrowers were helping themselves...but, nope, it is just kids and me too. They are so darned good.

2007 Fonda Fair entries from Northview

(Not including cows)

Slendrette or Slankette Green Beans

Purple Cayenne Peppers

Dish Garden

Three zinnias mixed

Arrangement in cup and Saucer

Seed collecting time

...is just beginning. So far I have a large number of lovage seeds and a few cardinal climber seeds. I am not sure just what I am going to do with the lovage seeds as I have a huge plant and it is perennial, but surely someone can use them. Can't they?

There is just no such thing as enough zucchini, despite urban legend to the contrary. We have perhaps nine plants and we eat the little squash as quickly as they appear. Cooked with a couple of the little bulblets from the top onions, a clove of garlic and some baby carrots they are delicious. When the beans come in the mixture is even better. We also make a dish with squash, rice, sausage and cream of mushroom soup, which appropriately seasoned and topped with extra sharp cheese is a family favorite.


I need to plant more carrots though and soon. It is just so hot that going out and getting dirt for my half barrels is a daunting task. Still......