Tag: popcorn

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On April 13, 2015

Spring is here! Trees are blossoming, flowers are popping up everywhere, and the beautiful Cherry Blossoms have already passed their peak. I love this time of year! However, it also means it is time for the work to begin. In fact, many people have already put out some of their summer vegetables, something I am hoping to get to this weekend (writing this on Saturday). If my schedule works out as planned, I hope to have popcorn and some other vegetables planted this weekend. UPDATE: I did get the popcorn planted, but that was it. I hope I can find the time next weekend to do some more.

Perhaps the most exciting news here at the homestead this week has only indirect ties to gardening though. I am now a beekeeper! Don’t be expecting honey anytime soon though, as I don’t have honeybees. This week my first shipment of native bees, Blue Orchard Mason Bees, arrived! Did you realize that honey bees aren’t even native to the United States? Nope, they were imported to the United States from Europe in the early days of this country. Blue Orchard Mason Bees, however, are native to the US, along with many other bees of which you may have never heard. I’ll be sharing more about this in coming posts, I am sure. 🙂

This doesn’t mean I don’t have an interest in honey bees. I do. However, my primary reason for bees is better pollination, and the native bees are better pollinators than the honey bees. Of course, honey bees have the added benefit of honey. For some reason, this reminds me of the chickens. Let me explain. I often say, jokingly, that I whisper to the birds, “It’s either eggs or meat, your choice.” However, I think the better way to think of chickens is as fertilizer factories that control pests and produce eggs as a side benefit. With the bees, they are primarily pollinators, and if they produce honey, that is a great side benefit.

So, how about a few pictures?

First off, this is the kit:

Mason Bee Kit

Here are the bees right out of the box. They are still groggy, but yet they have all emerged from their cocoons.

Groggy Mason Bees

Here are some nice macro shot of the bees.

Male Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Blue Orchard Mason Bee peering out at me.

Male Blue Orchard Mason Bee preparing to fly.

Male Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Blue Orchard Mason Bee and a good view of the tubes

Female Blue Orchard Mason Bee

Finally, here is a shot of their new home, which I placed on the eastern side of a tree in our yard. I might move this to a different location next year, but this seemed like a good starting spot.

Mason Bee House

Rest assured, this is not the last you will hear about Mason Bees. 😀 More to come, perhaps even later this week.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On February 23, 2015

Whew! What a week this has been! There isn’t much happening around the homestead, as we received a whopper of a snow this past week, which was followed by another snow, extreme cold temperatures, and then on Friday night into Saturday we had sleet, freezing rain, and rain. As I write this on Saturday morning, I suspect it is a terrible mess outside. There have been reports of folks roofs leaking, flooding due to drains on roads being clogged with snow and ice, and roads that are in treacherous shape. It doesn’t seem like it will get much better today, as I am expecting the temperature to hover right above freezing all day. By the time this post goes live, this will all be old news though, and we will be talking about the blustery cold temperatures Monday will bring us again. I am so ready for spring. 😀

I am sure many of you looked at the pictures I took, mostly of birds, last week. I also took a few around the house of some monster icicles:

Monster Icicles #1

Monster Icicles #2

Monster Icicles #3

I just went out to check on the chickens, and wow it is messy. The rain is melting some of the snow, and water is pooling everywhere. It remains to be seen how this will be at the end of the day.

Oh! I took a few pictures of my winter sowing project!

Winter Sowing – Peeking Through

Winter Sowing Holes

Even with a slow week around here, it wasn’t without some homesteading excitement though. I received a packet of seeds from Slovenia! These are minerature blue popcorn kernels (seeds). Check out the seeds and the envelope:

Minerature Blue Popcorn Kernels from Slovenia

I know, I know. I am a bit weird to get so excited over popcorn kernels, but I am excited to incorporate this into my popcorn landrace. Aren’t those stamps cool too‽

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On January 12, 2015

Like most of the country, we have been in the middle of a bitter cold spell the last week or so, which has resulted in not much happening around the homestead other than protecting the chickens. More on that tomorrow. Even so, I have been blessed with another surprise shipment of seeds this week, which gave me a bit of a mystery to solve.

On Thursday I received a package containing numerous bags of corn. The name on the package wasn’t entirely familiar to me, though the last name caught my attention. The corn included one I was very interested in, Texas Gourdseed, which happened to be one I have been trying to find. It also included Drought Hickory King, Kaanga Pango (a New Zealand corn), Cascade Maple Gold, and Cherokee White Flour Corn. After further research, each of these were corns that could be used as flour corns, which is something else I had been looking for.

I headed off to a gardening forum that I frequent, and I felt confident after a few minutes of research that I found my benefactor, a very nice lady in California who knew I was looking for the Texas Gourdseed Corn, but there was still a mystery to this: how did she get my name and address? I sent her a message, thanking her for the corn, and asking how she knew my contact info, to which she replied that I had given her that some time back when I was searching for flour corn, and she had been unable to send it then. So, the mystery was solved, and now I have a ton of new corn to plant this year! Woot!

The Texas Gourdseed is one that particularly interests me, and I actually already have a post written on why that is. I will make a few edits to that this week and get it posted soon.

The Kaanga Pango also caught my eye some, as I had never heard of this corn. I am having trouble finding a lot about it out there, but it seems to have come from the Wellington (New Zealand) Seed Library. It certainly looks to be a flour-type corn, and from what I can find on the Internet, the Maori, the indigenous New Zealand people, “historically used corn to making a fermented corn, they ate corn fresh, they make something that looks like a tamale, and they ate a pudding/mush from corn.” That doesn’t tell me for sure they used this corn this way, but it is probable. Again, it seems flour-like to me, so it will go in my flour landrace this year. Here’s a picture of the Kaana Pango Corn:

Kaanga Pango Corn

On another note, the popcorn trials are complete for the year, the results of which I am going to share in a post of it’s own. Despite some challenges in the testing of popping ability, I finally got through all my samples and have a great selection of popcorn to grow for the new year. More to come on that.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On January 5, 2015

Whew, this has been a busy week around here, even though I have been on vacation from work. In fact, I think I have worked more this week than normal, and I can sure tell it. I need a vacation!

Before I get to the accomplishments of the week, let me share a few pictures I have taken of some seed I was sent a week or so ago:

Dutch Brown (Bean) Cross

Harmony Flour Corn

Joseph’s Popcorn 2014

Glass Gem Corn

Unnamed Popcorn from Roadside Stand

All of this except the last picture came from Joseph Lofthouse, who I consider to be one of the premier Landracing Proponents right now. The last popcorn came from another gardener in Indiana who happened to pick the popcorn cobb up from a roadside stand in Kentucky.

The big activity regarding homesteading this week has been the 2014 popcorn trials. Yes, I know it is 2015, but I was doing popping trials on my 2014 popcorn. I am almost done now, and there will be a post later this week or next week telling all about it; however, the most important part is I am happy how well things are popping.

You may be wondering why I am doing the popcorn trials. There will be more details, I am sure, in an upcoming post, but basically I am trying to find which of the corn cobbs pop the best for selectively saving seed. The point being to improve the crop year over year, ultimately getting to the point I am growing a great popping corn that tastes much better than what you might get in the store.

The other big homesteading activity of the week has been garden planning. Our garden is many times larger this year than it was last year, which is going to allow me to do a number of things, not the least of which is have a more viable population for seed saving. I still have a little work to do on my garden plan for the year, but I should be able to share how it looks in a week or two.

Speaking of gardening, can you believe it will be time to start growing some cold weather crops like peas in just a couple of months! Wow, how time flies! More to come on that too.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On December 29, 2014

Wow! I logged in today and noticed it has been nearly a month without a post! Needless to say, the last month has been very close to chaotic continually, and what little time I have had has been spent on living, not writing about living. 🙂

Despite the chaos, I have had a pretty productive month or so around the homestead, mostly in planning for the upcoming gardening year. By next week I should be able to share the plans for my garden for 2015, which will be a very different garden than any I have planted before. You have already read of the Back-to-Eden style gardening change that has been made, but I am also planning on a much wider use of companion planting this year in order to get the most out of the garden. More to come on this soon.

I was pleased this Christmas to get a few new yard tools that I have been wanting, including a pole pruner, a pruning saw, and pruning shears. The pole pruner is the only one of the three I have used yet, and it did great. We have a couple of pecan trees on our property, and one of those has branches that stick out above the power lines coming into our house. Twice since we have lived here those branches have caused and issue with our power after a winter storm and both times cost a considerable amount of money to fix. I was able to safely trim the branches back for the most part where they didn’t extend over the power lines. There is still one troublesome branch that is just a bit too high for me, but I may try to trim it back using a ladder on a warmer day.

The other pruning tools have a more interesting purpose. I plan on pruning back my three fruit trees this year: two apple trees and a cherry tree. I have been learning quite a bit about pruning, and I think I am ready to give it a shot. More to come on this as well.

Finally, I have been blessed to already receive numerous seeds for the next growing cycle. Today I am hoping to take some macro photographs of the seeds to share their amazing beauty with you. Who would have thought a seed could be beautiful? Just wait and see!

Oh, did I already say finally? Hmm – I have one more thing. 😀 First, let me begin by thanking those who saved babyfood/small jars for me. They have come in so handy. Several of you have asked what I am using them for. I grow popcorn, and I selectively save the seed from the popcorn in order to grow better popcorn next year. In order to do this faster and better, I need a controlled environment for the popcorn so that I can ensure all the corn has the same moisture ratio. Moisture is a key component of popcorn’s popping ability, and if I am going to truly save the best each year, I need to be sure the moisture is the same during the popping trials, which commence soon. So, here is a picture of the filled jars:

Popcorn Jars

Even though I have enough of these for this year, I still need about 300 more jars, so if you or someone you know is feeding a baby babyfood, I would love to have the jars. Even better are pimento jars or any other jar that holds about 4-6 ounces. Bigger or smaller also work, but I don’t want anything larger than a half-pint.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On August 25, 2014

One of my favorite things to do, usually, is walk through the garden in the morning. I love the cool of the morning, the dew on the ground, and the quiet. It is a real source of enjoyment for me. However, I do NOT like walking through the garden at 7:00 AM when the humidity is high and the temperature is already warm. Unfortunately, that happens sometimes, and Saturday was no exception. I knew I had some work to do in the garden, and I was so hoping for a cool morning, but alas, that was not to be.

The tomatoes seem to be on their last leg now. The plants are looking quite haggard, and the tomatoes themselves are not even as appealing. In fact, the chickens were able to dine on several of them today.

The corn is getting most of my attention this year, and today I harvested several ears I hope pop well, as I would love to get their coloration worked prominently into the popcorn seed. Let me show you four of them:

Look at this beautiful white kernel licked with flame-like colors!

More of the flame-licked colors on this cob, and I love the variety of colors.

I am confident this one has some glass-gem corn mixed in with it, and I like it. I love the greens – they are a rare treat in my seed stock.

More flame-licked colors. This one looks a lot like some seed stock I saved last year, which I am sure is what has pollinated all of these. I sure hope this pops well.

Look at that last picture a little closer. See the red kernel just to the right of the middle? See the spots? I wonder what they are. If you look at the one below it, the purple one, it has the same spots. Even so, these kernels are things of beauty!

Believe it or not, we have a winter squash plant that is growing like gangbusters! I doubt anything will come from it, as it has yet to set fruit, but it was a late starter, and it happens to be the only winter squash I have that survived the squash bugs and squash vine borers. I sure would love to get some seed stock from it.

Sweet potatoes are a new crop for me, and even though I grew some last year, I cannot remember for the life of me when to harvest them. I think it may be after the first frost, but I need to look it up. I am so hopeful that I have a good crop of sweet potatoes. I grew purple and white sweet potatoes, which taste very similar, though the purple ones are generally more dry. Even so, I enjoy them.

Usually at this time of year I am not yet thinking about next year, but it sure is on my mind this year. I think it is because I didn’t do such a good job getting the garden out on time this year, and I am hoping to redeem myself a little next year. 🙂 It won’t be long until I start planning. Until then, I have a few other projects I am working on which I will be sharing here, including a homemade smoker and a homemade dehydrator.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On August 18, 2014

It is Sunday morning as I write this, and there is the most terrific claps of thunder going on outside. Though I enjoy being able to go walk in the garden as soon as the sun is up, a great thunderstorm is very high on my list. Oh, I just checked, the rain is falling hard now too – wonderful! My garden will so appreciate it!

Speaking of the garden, I decided to harvest as much of my popcorn and flour corn as I could yesterday. I don’t have very large patches of each, so I need to do what I can to prevent spoilage, and though neither was totally ready to be picked, I was afraid this rain might cause some mold or mildew issues. Here is the harvest so far:

First Corn Harvest of 2014

I was not surprised, but yet a little disappointed to see the cross-pollination in the Cherokee White Flour Corn. Some of the kernels are purple and yellow, which is no doubt from my popcorn. I was frustrated to find them both maturing at the same time, which happened to be at a point I was unable to bag them to prevent the cross over. With the Cherokee White Flour Corn, this is almost irrelevant. I can easily see what is crossed, and I will eliminate that from my seed stock — wait, that is not true. I will save some of the purple kernels for a special project next year — to see if I can get a purple flour corn, but that will be very carefully monitored.

The challenge I have is the popcorn though. With it being much shorter than the Cherokee White Flour Corn, I am confident there is much cross pollination there, which may mean I lose most of my popcorn for seed from this year. That sure is frustrating, but I will chalk it up to learning.

I did harvest one ear of Cherokee Gourdseed Corn as well, but it was definitely not ready. The ear had evidently been hit by something and was broken off though, so I felt it was better to go ahead and harvest it. It’s now drying with the rest of them.

Regarding the Gourdseed Corn – these are the oddest cobs and kernels! The husks are so tightly wrapped on the cobs that it is a real chore to pull them off, though I suspect that will change some with time. The kernels look like old man teeth though! Even so, it is supposed to be a great flour corn as well. I don’t have a good picture of one yet, but I will be sure to share one later.

I harvested the largest crop of the year of tomatoes yesterday, which happened to be about half a bushel. Most all of them were Chocolate Stripe Tomatoes, which have become one of my favorite for taste — right up there with Cherokee Purple Tomatoes. They also make a beautiful tomato juice. Look at this beautiful basketful!

Chocolate Stripe Tomatoes

One other interesting tomato I have this year is from seeds saved from a tomato purchased at Whole Foods. The tomato was advertised as a Cocoa Tomato, a variety I cannot find anywhere, so I presume it is a marketing name only. Anyhow, it was a great tasting tomato with great color. Those I am growing are very similar in size and color, but they are much less juicy than the one I purchased, which suits me fine. These tomatoes will make excellent tomato sauce tomatoes or drying tomatoes, which is a nice addition to the garden.

Speaking of all this seed, I am an avid collecter of seeds with history. Even though I landrace some vegetables, I also do what I can to preserve heritage crops too, and I would really appreciate leads to any rare or known Native American plant seeds, especially those with ties to the Chickasaw or Choctaw Indian tribes. Most lists, such as this list of Seed Varieties for Native American Gardens have limited selection, though I know that is due to limited information.

I so enjoy the fall weather, but as the days start to shorten, a part of me gets a little sad knowing the gardening for the year is slowing down. There is still plenty of time left, but in another two months it will be time for the ground to rest for a while and for me to start planning for next year.

365 Days of Me