Big Melon

I wish I could claim this huge cantaloupe as my own, but it didn't come from my garden. 

Alycia's parents have a friend out in the country who's a retired farmer and grows corn, pumpkins, and some of the biggest cantaloupe I've ever seen. 

It's larger than the bowl of peppers and Japanese eggplant that we picked the day before.   

I couldn't come up with anything in the kitchen that was of standard enough size to be able to compare this monster melon to.  The best thing that I came up with was this egg carton, which seemed more than capable to demonstrate how large this gargantua-melon really is.  

Big melon, circumference larger than my large knife.  It was quite tasty too, even though it wasn't organic.  If I buy fruits and veggies I prefer to purchase organic, but if it's free?  Well, I can't be too choosy. 

It's that time of year when things are coming in fast and furious.  We processed a bunch of tomatoes to turn into pasta sauce. Along with our giant melon, peppers, and eggplant we have a shopping bag full of fresh picked corn and sack of apples. The corn and apples were courtesy of Alycia's parents, they're phenomenal providers of produce. 

Family Visit

We've been busy preparing for the upcoming school year here at the Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes homestead.  Back-to-school prep and harvesting the late summer bounty in the garden was work enough, then we had family come for a week to visit!  My sister, brother-in-law and my two awesome nephews, 2 and a half, and 8 months, all visited last week.  It was great to see them and we had a blast, but I'm still recovering.

Our awesome little nephew Jacob will be the focal point of many of these pictures since he's pretty cute and all.  Plus you want to see a little kid trying on cowboy hats and hugging people, not me.   

We took every opportunity to tire out the little tyke, including having him run up the dyke wall.  For the record, no they didn't roll back down the hill.  Cookies surely would have been tossed. 

We picked corn near Cavalier, North Dakota.

Alycia and Jacob posed in front of the aquarium at the local Cabela's store, always a must see for folks from out of town.  

And Alycia got to spend some quality time with awesome little(r) nephew James.  It was a very good, but tiring, week. For childless folks like Alycia and I, it was quite an assignment keeping up with two vigorous youngsters.

500th Blog Post

This is our 500th blog post. In my noble quest to come up with something memorable, worthy of a 500th post, I struggled for a week and came up with...nothing.  My usual writing technique that involves drinking several cups of black coffee (Raven's Brew - Dead Man's Reach) and waiting for the magic to happen just didn't pan out this time.  Each passing day brought more angst as every idea seemed less and less worthy of such a milestone post. 

We've got the typical litany of excuses too.  School is right around the corner and Alycia and I are making all the requisite preparations whilst battling the back-to-work-blahs (I know, I know, we've had the whole summer off while you've had to work, so I know exactly where I can go shove it).  Family is coming today for an extended visit, so we're preparing the house and grounds for a busy 3 year old and searching for activities that will tire out a busy tot and entertain out of town guests.  All the while the garden keeps producing and we try to keep up with canning and freezing and pickling and weeding. 

Now for a self indulgent look back at our humble origins. To be honest, I never thought back in 2008 that I'd write this much or for this long.  I look back on my first post with a feeling that borders on mild embarrassment.  Heck I'd barely figured out how to post pictures at that point.  In fact the digital camera that I received as a present that year is still in use as the official Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes camera.  The camera, like me, has definitely seen better days.

The "Gluten Free Girlfriend" who initially requested blog anonymity (thus the original eponymous moniker) has not only become a writing contributor to our blog but has also received a long overdue promotion to Gluten Free Wife.  I have pictures to prove it, see below.  She was a humble grad student when we first met and now she's about to go up for tenure. 

It may sound cliched to say that we've come a long way, but we have, literally and figuratively.  North Dakota is one of the last places I ever thought I'd move, but we've made a lovely home here.  There's happy dogs scampering about, thunderstorms, homemade jam, lots of chuckling, snow days, and an overwhelming feeling of contentment.  Fun stories are even more fun when you have people to share them with, so thanks for being part of Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes, reading and being part of the fun.

Raspberry Currant and Blueberry Currant Jam

It's been a busy stretch here at the Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes homestead.  We made Homemade Strawberry Jam last week and completed the jamming triumvirate this week by making Raspberry Currant jam and Blueberry Currant jam.

Alycia visited a friend a couple of times who has extensive raspberry bushes in their yard and picked about 6 quarts of berries each visit.  We froze some of the berries and used our trusty Raspberry Currant Jam recipe to make the rest into jam.

But before we made our jam we had to harvest our currants.  We "currantly" (in case you were wondering, yes you should be laughing now) have four, two red and two black, currant bushes producing berries with another two that should be online next year.  The red currants taste better, but the black currants have more pectin and in order to balance them out to get the right flavor/pectin relationship I usually go 50/50 red and black currants.

Here's one of our red currant bushes, loaded with berries.  It took Alycia and I less than an hour to harvest all the berries from both bushes. 

Alycia harvesting berries.  I picked them too, just pausing to snap this picture.  Between the strawberries, raspberries, and currants Alycia was quite the busy little berry picker this summer.  I'd like to think she's getting pretty good at it. 

Here's the some of the proceeds of our currant harvesting.  Enough for several batches of jam.  Luckily we had lovely jam making weather, unseasonably cool and breezy, so it wasn't such a terrible chore for me to labor over a hot stove for hours.

We have about 50 jars (mostly half-pint - and they couldn't all fit in the picture) of  various jams occupying the pantry.  Knowing that we have a years worth of delicious homemade jam makes me pretty dang happy.  Our next posting at Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes is a pretty special one, our 500th. 

New Reader Welcome - Caley's Kitchen Garden

Our long standing policy here at Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes is to personally welcome all of our new readers/subscribers.  Remember these are only people that publicly follow (this deliberately does not reward those who are too ashamed to admit they read this blog) and are listed as part of "My Awesome Readers" on the left hand side of the blog. Click on the "Join this site" button to add yourself.

With that we welcome Caley from Caley's Kitchen Garden.  Her site is described as "where humor meets potatoes" and I'd kindly agree with that assessment.  Caley's blog is a mix of great information with honest gardening stories, recipes, growing tips, and entertaining anecdotes.  It's also refreshingly honest - one of those few garden blogs that actually admits to the occasional gardening failure.

Even though we do our best to keep track of all our new friends, please let me know if I made a mistake and missed you in our personal welcome parade!

Marshall County (Minnesota) Fair

This past weekend Alycia and visited the Marshall County Fair in Warren, Minnesota, about 45 minutes Northwest of us. Along with the Pembina County Fair and the Grand Forks Fair, this completed the fair trifecta for the summer. The Marshall County Fair was outstanding, the fairgrounds and buildings were all well tended and obviously cared for, and there were some great food stands and exhibits.  We'll certainly be going back in future years. 

We immediately started off on the right foot when we'd barely gotten out of our car and saw these three strolling on over.  They were some manner of fair ambassadors and before Alycia could even ask the lady she said "sure you can pet her, she loves people". 

Midnight (this was the tiny ponies' name) didn't seem to pay any mind to Alycia, at least until the lady slipped Alycia a tiny pony cookie to give to Midnight.  Suddenly Midnight wanted to be friends.  I think Midnight and Tito would get along pretty well. Where's the picture of me and Midnight?  Sadly there isn't one.  Even though you don't run across tiny ponies every day, Alycia never asked if I wanted a picture with Midnight.  Sad face...

The livestock barn had a big pen of baby chicks and it was a "help yourself to pet the baby chicks" kind of thing, so Alycia picked one up.

This is about the cutest picture I could dream up.  Alycia in her red sunglasses holding a baby chick.  

There were baby ducks too, they were super cute as well.  Their feet looked too big for their slender little bodies.

There was a horse washing station (not automated/mechanized).  Sadly we had no dirty horses to wash and couldn't participate, but they did let us watch, which made me feel like a weirdo, so we moved along.

The 4-H club had an extensive snack shop set up as a fundraiser, and it seemed downright rude not to contribute, so I had some home baked pie.  Peach cream (outstanding) and Apple (very tasty) with a hot cup of coffee.

Here's the requisite shot of Alycia next to a tractor.  Note that this tractor doesn't have wheels, it has big tracks.  It was cool. 

The fair grounds were adjacent to the Settlers Village and had a large collection of old buildings and museum stuff.  We perused through on the way out and checked out some cool old items.  This was Alma Lutheran Church built in 1893.  I took this photo just for my big sister who doesn't see too many churches named after her. 

Homemade Strawberry Jam

It's been a strange couple of years here for strawberries.  Typically in late Spring/early Summer there are a multitude of advertisements for U-Pick strawberry places in the local section of the newspaper.  Last year we dutifully checked the paper every day and by mid-July realized "I don't think there are going to be any strawberries to pick this year", and there really weren't.  So last year, we had to GASP! go without homemade strawberry jam for an entire year. 

Being without homemade strawberry jam for a year was sad, but we did have our awesome raspberry currant jam to help fill the void.  This year we decided to not only look in the paper, but also be a bit more proactive (this was a new sensation for me) and search out U-Pick places.  After some telephoning around last weekend, Alycia embarked on a strawberry picking journey of great importance. 

Strawberry fields, not quite forever, but close.  The hooded and cloaked figure in the distance is Alycia's Mom, who met Alycia at the fields and picked berries of her own. 

Only $8 bucks for this bucket of berries. 

Alycia picked all these berries.  Many met their fate in the jamming pot, others were consigned to death by freezing. 

It started to rain just as Alycia was leaving, which was really good timing.  There's an old Icelandic saying "a soggy berry picker is a sad berry picker". 

Your intrepid blogger and jam maker topping berries and preparing the jam ingredients. We made 16 jars (mostly 1/2 pint) of delicious strawberry jam. Winters in North Dakota are pretty long, and anything that helps you get through it, like delicious strawberry jam, really helps. I'll post the jam recipe and pictures of the finished product in another post. 

Bee Balm (Monarda) - Finally!!!

I planted a couple of different bee balms three years ago.  I didn't plant them the first year until mid summer, so I wasn't really expecting anything from them that first year other than pushing out a few leaves and surviving the winter.  They happily obliged.

Last year I anxiously awaited the proliferation of iridescent blooms that I expect from bee balm.  And I got....nothing.  All they did last year was grow to a height of 12-18 inches, their growth seeming to stagnate  by mid-summer.  Summer ended and I hung my head in shame at what I perceived to be yet another gardening mishap/failure/miscalculation/bad idea.  But this year I've got blooms, modest blooms, but blooms none the less.

 Bee Balm (Monarda)* - Coral Reef

Bee Balm (Monarda)* - Purple Rooster

* Please note that all plant identifications are a "I'm pretty sure that's what this is" and may not stand up to the scientific rigor of the blogosphere.

These aren't really all that impressive, I've seen much more incredible looking bee balm specimens.  But considering I've been waiting 2 plus years for this, I'm quite proud of this modest showing.  And next year should be even better.

I'm sharing my pictures with Tootsie for Fertilizer Friday - you should check out her amazing blog.  Along with her blog, there are some great gardening blogs every Friday, chock full of pictures of great blooming things.