Well, winter is here

This morning, we woke up to about two inches of snow on the ground and lots more coming down heavily. The temp last night was only 14 degrees F, so it was cold enough that the snow is sure sticking around. Yesterday, we made a trip down to pick up some seeds from our friends, Lynn and Jesse, in Wisconsin. It was a beautiful day although not warm. For the past three years, they’ve been learning the seed growing part of our seed business, as next August, they’ll be taking over Seed Treasures, our seed business.

It was fun seeing the equipment Jesse had found to speed up the whole business. I especially loved the antique hand driven corn sheller. We have a corn sheller that you fasten on the side of a barrel but theirs is way faster and pretty darned cool! You just check out the ears of corn for any bad kernels then toss it in the maw of the sheller, turning the side handle. Out pops the empty cob and the shelled corn drops out the bottom into a bucket. Pretty darned slick. Then there was the fanning device which blew chaff off into a bag, leaving clean seed in another bucket. That sure beats the way I do it, pouring one container of seed into another container, winnowing off the chaff in a stiff breeze. It’s faster and you don’t have to go out in bad weather!

We had a great visit, picked up a lot of seed they’d saved for us, then headed home, a five-hour drive. Fortunately, the weather was great until we got about 40 miles from home. We hit a stretch of near-blizzard snow, with snow on the ground and near white-out conditions. But it only lasted for about two miles, then petered out. Whew! When we got home, there were a few light flurries, but nothing much.

Today, I’m seeding out some more squash. I did the naked seeded pumpkin, Olinka, and some Hopi Pale Grey squash, which is our best seller for good reason. It’s so very yummy, any way you fix it. Will brought in a new-to-us squash, the seed given to us by a customer. It’s a gray, ribby squash named Porcupine squash as the donor said porcupines ate up most of their first crop of these squash and tried to get at them for the many years they’d grown it. It’s a large squash with thick meat. I’m going to bake some up tomorrow to test it for flavor. Not all of the squash are pumpkin shaped; some are elongated. But all are gray and beautiful. I’m really excited to try it!

— Jackie