September

It is hard to believe summer has come and gone already.  As a farmer and grower, I look at this as a growing season that has passed.  Most things did very well this year.  The Cherokee White Flour Corn did excellent.  We are hand harvesting this and will continue over the next couple weeks.  Ears average 10-11" long with ears going to 16" long.  This was planted thru a 2 row planter this year in 30" rows and seed spacing was approximately 14" apart.  This is very tight spacing for such a large open pollinated corn and it did quite well.  I have seen very few barren plants (no ears) and we had no stalk lodging!  There is an occasional "nubbin" ear which is actually 6" long.  These are sorted aside and not used for seed but will be ground into flour.Our bean crop was also excellent this year.  We have been picking most evenings and drying in the greenhouse.  The other day I took a walk up thru the field to an isolated small patch where we grew out a new winter squash, Miami Green Spotted.  This is a Cucurbita Moschata, very similar to the Choctaw Sweet Potato Winter Squash.  I will be cuting one of these open pretty soon to investigate the quality of the flesh and to hopefully make some pies with.  I love growing members of the c. moschata family, these have an excellent flavor and squash vine borers do not bother them.  I also grew a small patch of Candy Roaster Winter Squash, a member of the Cucurbita Maxima family.  These are squash vine borer magnets!  It seems only one in 3 plants survive long enough to produce fruit.  These are the most popular winter squash in the Appalachian mountains and originated among the Cherokee.  Anywhere in eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, etc, you can stop at a farm stand and you will see Candy Roaster Squash.  The only crop we had a failure with was our late sweet corn, it just turned off completely dry after mid July.

Although we are busy harvesting, we are also working on updating this website.  We hope to have online ordering by December.  Payment will be thru Pay-pal.  You do not need to have an account with Pay-pal to make purchases with your credit or debit card.  As always, you can mail in orders with a check or money order as we have done in  the past.

As a reminder, the annual seed swap and get together at Bill Best's in Bera will be held  Saturday October 5, 2013.   Starts around 9:00 a.m. and goes thru early afternoon.