Painted Mountain Corn

'Maybe the most beautiful food we have ever seen' according to: Allan Jenkins of the Guardian

Ours wasn't sown until June and isn't ready to harvest but it is growing well. Who said corn needs a good summer? The pictures show ours from June to September. What is nice about corn is that it is a staple you can process at home with a grain mill and make things like plolenta and corn bread and tortillas without a lot of technology. The oats are a different matter but more about them anon.....

Maca

Maca is a root vegetable from the Andes, renowned for its powers as an aphrodisiac, homone sorter-outer for women, a stamina enhancer and miracle adaptogen. I first heard about it from Sara of 'Sarah's Choice' who I met at the AGM of the Organic Trust last year. We were sitting beside each other at lunch and got chatting. I tried it and it did seem to have some good effects. So, I ordered some seeds from Horizon herbs. They have grown slowly throughout the summer, and one has set seed. They are not the most photogenic of plants.

The largest roots about are about 1" in diameter.

Some of the yellow maca plants have red tubers but most of both the red and yellow plants still have greeny yellow roots

Plant setting seeds. Seedlings are visible in the bottom left

Bitter Gourd

These nasty little vegetables taste like poison and are capable of destroying a perfectly nice curry. I first came across them in the Philippines, where you never knew where they would turn up, and all meals had to be studied carefully to make sure they weren't lurking under the rice. I don't know why I tried to grow them this year because they really didn't want to grow here, any more than I actually want to eat them. I forgot they were there, and found them today amongst the scutch at the edge of the tunnel. I might have to eat one if it gets bigger than a jelly bean. They're good for you.

Bringing in the sheaves

We brought the sheaves of oats in today, in a short window of fine weather. The rest of the field was combined and the oats are now being dried in various places, some in our barn. We didn't get there in time to see the combine, and didn't stay long enough to see the straw baled. The threshing of the sheaves and the party that goes with it will be the next phase and probably the most fun.

Battered bottle gourd and fried green tomatoes

This is what we had for Supper. The green tomato seeds were brought back from France, last year, by my friend Bridget. The variety is Evergreen and they are sweet and tasty inspite of their colour. This year she brought me back some buckwheat flour, which was the base of the batter.

I didn't think Bottle Gourds would thrive outside, but as I had a few plants too many for the polytunnel, I tried them in a gap on the bean trellis. They love it out there, however, they have refused to climb the strings I put up for them and persist in smothering the beans. I had read that they were edible when small, and came across areference to battering and eating Lagenaria while blogging.

Oat harvest

I mentioned the Bantry CSA in a previous post. Well, today we harvested the first acre with scythes. The weather made using the reaper and binder impossible. The cut oats were tied into sheaves and stooked. Lots of tea was drunk and we are looking forward to the threshing. The rest will be combined.

Perennial wheat

I got this perennial wheat from the Seed Ambassadors when they visited here. It was bred by Tim Peters. I don't know much about cereal growing and sowed it in spring. It didn't produce a crop the first year but did the next. It was hard to harvest as it didn't all ripen at the same time and I was busy so I shoved a bunch of it in a bag and tried to persuade other people to grow it because I couldn't even work out how to thrash it. It looked good during the winter sending up new shoots, but most of it died in the spring. I rotovated the patch and sowed peas in it. One plant came through, I don't know whether from a seed or an old plant. As a reward for its persistance I harvested the peas around it without disturbing it too much. I harvested it yesterday, although some of the heads were quite green, more of them were getting mouldy.

I was surprised how big the seeds were.