September 22, 2016 Happy Autumn Equinox

I’m back from Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, and the recent site of the Heritage Harvest Festival. I was there to give presentations and do some book-signings. The Festival was really fun. The grounds of Monticello were absolutely amazing. And…would you believe that I forgot to take my camera with me!! So, next best thing was to buy a postcard of the food gardens there (that’s the picture at the top of this post). I have that postcard sitting in front of my computer screen so that it will conjure up all the great gardens I saw there in my mind’s eye.

 

A lot has been happening here on the farm this past couple of weeks too. Above are some pictures of our new Dosatron injector, which I use when I’m watering in fertilizer to the plants in the greenhouses. It’s a really great piece of equipment, and allows me to mix up the organic fertilizer in the tank and then hook the dosatron up to the water line and the fertilizer is automatically added to the water at the designated and appropriate rate. I just water as I normally would and the fertilizer is already in the water. This is pretty huge as far as improvements go around here.

Before I had to use a syphojet attachment to the hose and it would suck the concentrated fertilizer up from a 5 gallon bucket and I would then water the properly diluted fertilizer into the plants. Trouble was that I had to attach the whole set up to each hose in each greenhouse and drag all the equipment from one greenhouse to the next, including lugging 5 gallon buckets full of liquid. I’m getting too old for that much moving of heavy awkward equipment.  The dosatron cost us a very pretty penny, but it was worth every cent in the time and energy it saves me when I have to fertilize the greenhouses, especially in the spring when there are 8 greenhouses full to the brim with plants. I love this contraption!

Our clay pots order arrived from Nebraska. We’ve safely stored them away in our supply barn where they won’t get broken. Now we are all set for clay pots when we need them for the entire year of planting in 2017.

Beki has been working hard to get all the newly planted crops weeded a final time before her work season closes here at the end of the month. Here she is weeding the Pennisetum orientalis crop.

Chris and Beki have been harvesting seed in mass these days as the flower seed crops are all ripening. This is the Mojave Sage seed crop. It is a stunning plant with beautiful mauve-purple flowers. The hummingbirds, bumblebees and other pollinators really enjoy the flowers. The foliage is quite aromatic and the silvery foliage is very pretty when planted in a garden.

My ginger mother plant has decided to bloom and the blooms are fragrant and lovely. This plant has been living on my back porch since May, but now that the nights are cooling off into the 40’s some nights, I’ve moved her into the greenhouses to live for the cold months of the year.

This beauty is Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata). We grow two species of Passionflower, Passiflora incarnata and Passiflora edulis, and both are hardy in zone 5. They grow reliably as perennial vines in the front range of Colorado, even though their native habitat is in the southeastern part of North America. Not only are they excellent medicine plants, but their fruits are delicious, and the flowers are so exotic looking that they never fail to get appreciation from visitors coming into our White Rabbit garden.

Very big news is that my new book, Cattail Moonshine & Milkweed Medicine, has been released and is now available at bookstores and online. You can also purchase it directly from me if you would like to do so (see the Ordering Tammi’s Books page of this website) and then I can sign it for you if you want. I’m so excited about this new book. I hope you will enjoy it!

On October 1, 2016 I will be doing a celebration presentation at Tagawas Garden Center in Centennial, CO called Cattail Moonshine & Milkweed Medicine, followed by a book-signing event. You can learn more about this on the Classes & Events page of this blog. The time will be 11:00am. Tagawas is located at 7711 South Parker Road in Centennial, CO. Their phone number is 303-690-4722. They will have all my books available for this event, including this new book. Hope to see you there.

Last weekend, Chris and I, along with our friends Marc and Joan, had a glorious hike in the mountains to enjoy the fall colors of the oaks, aspens and other plants. Our dogs Molly and Shrek had a great time too. This is the season that is the most fun to hike in…at least that is my opinion.

Talk to you again soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 5, 2016 The Joys & Disappointments of Seed Growing

Greetings,

I have several things to share in this post. The first very exciting bit is that next Friday and Saturday I’ll be presenting at The Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello in Virginia.  If you will be there, I hope I’ll see you at one of my talks, and be sure to say hello.

On Friday at 9:30am, I’ll be giving a talk called Cattail Moonshine & Milkweed Medicine at the Visitor Center. Right after that talk I’ll be doing a book-signing event.

Then at the same time on Saturday morning, also at the Visitor Center, I’m giving a presentation called The Wildlife Friendly Garden. Again there will be a book-signing event right after I finish my talk.

I’ll have my newest and just barely released book there, called Cattail Moonshine & Milkweed Medicine, and this will be the first time the public will get to see this book. I’m so excited to share it with everyone!

This is the time of the year we are seriously focused on seed-harvesting. We field grow perennial seed for Jelitto Perennial Seed Company in Germany, plus we harvest seed from our gardens to use in our greenhouse potted plant production.

Below is a Desert Willow seed pot. This southwestern native shrub usually only gives us a few ripe seed pods each year, but this year the bush is heavy in seed pods. We’re really pleased about that.

It’s been a mixed year for seed growing. We had a cool spring and then it got super hot and dry. We’ve had a bit of moisture lately and a few cooler days, but the seed crops like consistency (sort of like people I suppose).

They also depend on pollinators in order to produce viable seed. Sometimes we get fooled and think the plants have been pollinated well because we see a lot of pollinators visiting the blooms. We watched thousands of different kinds of bees working the flowers on the Agave plant and we thought for sure we would have a very nice seed crop. Of course the seed pods are about 15 feet or more above the ground, so it’s not like you can check on them to see how it’s going. Sometimes you must just trust.

And sometimes you get disappointed! We had a hail storm last week and nearly every pod got knocked down from the flower stocks. They would have been knocked down before they finished ripening, but as it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered because all the pods were empty. We didn’t have the right pollinators working those flowers to pollinate them correctly and the pods had no viable seed in them. Major bummer!!

So, that is a big disappointment, but there are plenty of crops that are producing well and the bags of dried seed are mounting in the seed room. They will wait here until November when all the seed is finally harvested and then we’ll box it up and ship it to Germany.

This sack has Linum narbonese seed in it.

Sometimes we collect a bit of wild seed to use to start a few plants that we can put into our gardens to have as stock plants for future seed needs. Lizz is collecting some Uva Ursi seed.

And this is some wild geranium seed that we found. I really love this plant, both for its beauty and for its medicinal properties, so I’ll be happy if I can get some to grow in the gardens here.

And we are processing a lot of fruit from the garden this week too. I put up apples, raspberries and blackberries, peaches and grapes. These grapes are destined to be made into wine sometime this week. That’s Chris’ project.

It truly is the harvest season. It is a time to be in gratitude for all the abundance that comes to us from Mother Nature.

With Green Thoughts, Tammi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 28, 2016 Gratitude of the Harvest

This is David Higginbotham. He’s not only our neighbor, but he takes care of the greenhouse heaters and all our plumbing needs here at the farm. You might know him from his business name, Mountain Plumbing & Heating, but did you also know that he is running for Colorado House District 60 seat this November?

David was here on Saturday morning to give our greenhouse heaters their annual check-up before we start running them in September as the night-time temperatures start to go lower. It’s important to have the heaters cleaned, inspected and tested to make sure that they are in tip-top working order. This is important not only to grow the best plants, but to do that with the least amount of fuel used. that is better for the earth and climate change and better for our heating bills.

Anyway, David’s business is about keeping heating and plumbing infrastructure working at it’s best not just for the comfort of his customers, but so that we do the best that we can to address climate change, especially as we transition as a society and a country to clean energy resources and a more sustainable approach to life on this planet. David also supports local and organic farmers, which again, contributes to a more sustainable approach to life on this planet and it’s good for Colorado’s economy.

So, since David was here working on our heaters anyway, I decided to take his picture while he worked and share with you what he is up to in terms of running for our Colorado State House of Representatives. If you want to know more about this, visit http://www.demdistrict60.org . Chris and I are very impressed and maybe you will be too!

Today I took some time to do some garden and orchard harvesting. There was quite a bit happening in the food garden and the heirloom fruit tree orchard, and this is what I picked today…apples (4 kinds), pears, peaches, sunberries, cucamelons, strawberries and raspberries too.

I also picked some peppers, which will become a green chili stew tomorrow. I soaked up the beans (pintos and black turtle beans) and chicos (dried sweet corn), cooked the pork chops we bought from a local farm called Larga Vista Ranch, so I’ll be ready to add some veggies like potatoes, onions and garlic, maybe some carrots, along with the Anaheim chilies. It’s going to be delicious!

Below are the Winter Redflesh apples, which are smallish, tart and have pink flesh. They are so tasty. I think this batch will make some pretty nice applesauce.

Next comes the Chestnut Crabapples. These are an old-fashioned crabapple variety that has pretty large crabapples. They are also tart and yummy.

Mind you, our orchard is only in its 2nd year of planting, so these are very young trees. This is the first year we’ve really picked any apples from them. As with most young tree harvests, there aren’t very many apples on each tree, but we’re getting a sample of years to come and we’re thrilled.

Below here is the Blue Pearmain Apple, which is a giant apple. You can see on this saucer that it is quite large. We had 3 of these apples this year on the tree and the poor little tree was pretty weighted down with just those few. These apples will make a great pie or apple crisp, or I might just snack on them when I go hiking the next time.

These were the very first apples that came ripe and true to their name, Early Gold. They are medium-sized and very sweet.

If you think you might like to grow some of these apple varieties, we will have a selection of these heirloom apple trees, plus a number of other heirloom fruit tree varieties, for sale next spring in our Farm Stand store during Open Farm Days. In January, I’ll post up the information on dates and such.

I was also given the most amazing gift from a friend. She invited me to come to her place and pick blackberries. She has quite a large blackberry patch and it is only just beginning to get ripe berries. I was so tickled and grateful. I picked enough for a good-sized bowl of breakfast berries this week, plus froze 4 quarts for later use this winter. Quite a treat.

Our life with cats continues to get more interesting. We have been working with Pal to get him comfortable around us in the hopes that it won’t be too  much longer before he can roam the house instead of being restricted to the bathroom. That’s going reasonably well.

Then yesterday, The black kitten I call Willow was returned to us by the woman who thought he would make a good addition to her home. We thought that was going to happen also, but surprisingly to all of us, Willow didn’t adjust to her home as well as we all thought he would and yesterday she brought him back to us. Now he has rejoined his brother, Pal, in the bathroom and Chris and I are working with both of them to help them learn how to be good house cats and family members.

Chris told his Dad that we are cat psychologists now, and I think he just might be right about that. Quite an adventure we’re having here with our cat friends.

Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you, but on October 1, 2016 I will be giving a presentation called Cattail Moonshine & Milkweed Medicine at Tagawas Garden Center. Tagawas is hosting this event to celebrate the release of my newest book by the same name, which will be in bookstores in early October.

I’ll also be going to Monticello to Thomas Jefferson’s Plantation to speak at the Heritage Harvest Festival on September 9-10, 2016. I’ll be doing the same presentation there, plus one on Wildlife Friendly Gardening.

At both of these events my books will be available for sale and I’ll be thrilled and honored to sign a copy for you if you would like.

Yikes…we’ve just started getting a thunderstorm storm with HAIL, and the power is blipping, so I’m going to close for now. More details about the Tagawas event the next time I’m blogging, but in the meantime mark your calendar if you would like to attend.

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 18, 2016 Sunberries, Kitties, Fragrant Ash Seeds

For the past two garden seasons we have offered plants of an annual sweet fruit called Sunberries and Garden Huckleberries. This year I planted both in my garden and in containers too. I wanted to see how they would perform for me in our climate and also I wanted to speak first-hand for how they taste.

They’ve grown wonderfully for me in both the garden and in  containers. Both plants are producing berries like crazy! Yesterday I picked a bowl of sunberries (the garden huckleberries aren’t quite ripe yet) and we all tried them freshly picked straight off the plant. Lizz said they tasted just green, I thought they were mildly sweet, Beki said they were melon-like and Chris agreed with her.

Once washed, I put them in a baking dish, sprinkled them with brown sugar.

The topping is a simple mix of oats, butter, cinnamon, a tiny bit of cloves, and a little more brown sugar. Then I put the dish in the oven at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. This morning we ate the sunberry crisp with yogurt and walnuts and a few dark chocolate chips on top. It was very tasty!

Both Sunberries and Garden Huckleberries are marketed in the seed catalog as a substitute for blueberries for people who garden in areas like Colorado where blueberries are nearly impossible to grow well. The catalogs say they are nearly tasteless until sweetened and then can be used any way that a blueberry can be used. I actually think they should not be compared to blueberries at all, because aside from their color and size they are really nothing like a blueberry. They should be promoted, I feel, as a sweet fruit in it’s own right. They are quite delicious, but they don’t taste like blueberries to any of us here at Desert Canyon Farm. It probably is true, though, that you could use them instead of blueberries in most recipes, but I think you should expect them to taste like sunberries or garden huckleberries, rather than a blueberry.

Both sunberries and garden huckleberries are annuals, meaning that you will plant new plants each spring. They do well in full sun or part shade and are growing for me with a 4 day watering rotation, which is quite reasonable. They have preformed well in containers and in the garden soil and pests are not bothering them so far, even the grasshoppers which are eating my raspberries, are not eating either of these fruits. I think they are both winners if you want a berry crop to eat fresh, cooked or to freeze. I haven’t made any preserves or jelly from them, so I can’t speak for that.

Next spring when Open Farm Days happen, we will plan to have both of these fruits available again as starter plants. Maybe you’ll want to give them a try.

This is the Two-Inch Strawberry Popcorn that we also sold plants of. I had fun growing these in the garden and I will try popping the corn at some point, but for now I’m just enjoying how beautiful they look drying on my counter.

For years we have hoped for seed on our Fragrant Ash tree in the desert garden. This is the first year it has produced seed, although it has flowered for many years. Now our challenge is to catch the seed as it ripens. When the seed ripens it turns loose of the stem and drops to the ground, and the seeds are ripening at different rates. The challenge comes because next to and underneath this tree is our giant cholla, which we fondly call the Thrasher’s Cholla, and that is a very mean plant to try to find the ash seeds in. Chollas have barbed spines that are long and ruthless and the spines often shed and are lying around on the ground under the plant. If the ash seeds fall onto the ground where the cholla spines are, well…surfice it to say none of us is ready to go digging around to salvage out those ash seeds among the cholla branches.

Lizz and I decided to net the end branches of the Fragrant Ash tree where the seed clusters were maturing, in the hope that as the seeds fall from the branches they will get caught in the net fabric and then we can take the nets down and have the seed safely inside of them. Keep your fingers crossed that this plan works as we hope. The wind has been recking a bit of havoc with the net bags, but so far I think most of them are holding up. If so, we’ll finally have some Fragrant Ash seed to plant.

Cat update: The mother cat, now named Charlotte, and her two kittens have homes. The black kitten went to live with a wonderful woman in town here and the gray kitten will stay with us. His name now is Pal. Charlotte is also here on the farm…she was just too wild to find a good home for. Thanks to everyone who worked to help us find homes for these cats. Well done!

August 5, 2016 Agave, Shrek, Cats, Mountain Seed School

The mother agave has nearly finished blooming now and her flowers are beginning fade as they start to form seed pods.

At the base of the stalk, the mother agave plant is starting to decline. Once the seed is mature, the mother plant will die. But if you notice at her edges are several agave “pups”. These are off-shoots from her roots and they are now growing as individual plants. Agaves reproduce both from the roots and from seeds, which allows them to hedge their bets with higher rates of survival by having more than one method to self-propagate. Pretty cool!

This past weekend, Shrek had his first mini mountain hike since he had his knee surgery 7 weeks ago. It was a very mellow and very short (only 45 minutes) leash walk at Deer Haven, but it made him incredibly happy.

And…tired. After our walk, he and Chris took a little rest in the back of the Mad Hatter mobile before we left Deer Haven to drive back home. I think Shrek is smiling.

On a more serious note, we have sort of a crisis happening here at the farm. A orphaned mother cat and her 2 kittens has been hanging out here for more than a week or so, hunting at the bird feeders (which we cannot allow) because they were so hungry. I finally set out live trap cages and caught the three of them and they are now living in our bathroom temporarily!

I’m asking now if you or someone you know would be willing to adopt the mother cat or the black kitten? Chris and I are adopting the gray kitten. All of them have appointments this week with our vet to get vaccinations, worming and tested for feline leukemia, plus mama cat will be spayed. That way we know they are healthy aside from being skinny (they might be chubby by the time they get adopted the way they are eating right now) and ready to go to their new homes.

As you know, we already have two other cats, Pouncita and Sadie, plus Shrek the dog, so adopting one kitten is all we feel we can really do. We cannot re-release them outdoors here at the farm because outside cats tend to climb the greenhouse plastic roofs and their claws ruin the plastic, causing us to have to recover the greenhouses, which is a whole lot of work and extremely expensive. So, we’re hoping to find them homes.

If you think you might be interested, you would need to be close enough to Canon City, CO to drive here by appointment to see if you would like to adopt one of these two cats. These cats have had hard lives already! They need good homes where they will be cared for and fed well and loved for all of their lives as part of a family. If you think you are this family, please call us at 719-275-0651 during the hours of 8am -7pm Colorado time. We need to find them homes, but we will only let them go to loving good homes.

Speaking of babies…these fawns are triplets, which doesn’t seem to be a very common thing. We see lots of single fawns and twins, but this is the first time we’ve seen triplets in 20 years here. We’re enjoying their visits, usually in the early morning hours.

I also want to let you know about the Mountain Seed School event that will be happening in September just outside of Canon City. This will be an amazing experience for people who want to learn all the ins and outs of saving and storing seed. Here is the link to the information. I tried to copy the flyer, but I didn’t have any success, so you’ll just need to click on the link to get all the information about this event.

Mountain Seed School

We will be hosting those attending the Seed School during one morning when they will visit our farm to see how we are growing perennial seed crops here as part of our farm operation.

Enjoy your weekend and I’ll be writing again soon.

 

 

July 29, 2016 Stitching Retreat, Grandmommy, Wild Turkey Feather & Fawn Twins

Hi There,

If you are wondering if I fell off the planet, since it has been so long since I’ve written, the answer is not quite. I have been away from the farm though.

It’s been over two years since I went on my own personal stitching retreat, but last week I did just that. I packed up my needlework, several good reads, some wonderful music, my hiking hat, and off I went to Willowtail Springs in Mancos, Colorado, which is my traditional place of preference for my stitching retreat.

Willowtail Springs is a private property where you can rent a cabin on a small lake and be treated like a queen for however long you stay by Peggy and Lee Cloy and their staff. Willowtail also happens to be a non-profit nature preserve which hosts residencies for those doing art, writing, photography and other creative passions. I discovered this place many years back and I go there whenever I’m in need of rest, relaxation or a creative place to work. I rent the “Garden Cottage” cabin and it’s glorious! Check out their website at Willowtail.org

Normally when I go on stitching retreat I take my very large stitching frame with a massive project on it and work on it for several days straight to my heart’s delight, but this year I made a different plan.

Above is a basket that belonged to my Grandma, who we all called Grandmommy, and it was her stitching thread basket. When she passed over it came to me and I’ve enjoyed making some beautiful stitching projects using that thread. However, I’ve never sorted through the basket and organized the threads, so on my stitching retreat I emptied the basket and sorted all the threads into color groups. I also discovered in the bottom of the basket a leather thimble and a small piece of paper with directions for making all types of fancy stitches. Since I know that Grandmommy knew these stitches like the back of her hand, I’m guessing that piece of paper must have been quite old and something maybe she used as a young woman beginning to learn to do hand fancy needlework. What a treat to discover these small bits of her life hidden away in the bottom of her needlework basket!

After I organized all of Grandmommy’s threads, I began a simple needlework on a pair of old printed pillow cases. The stitches on these pillow cases is nothing special or unique, but what is, is that I’m stitching them completely with Grandmommy’s threads. They will be a tiny piece of Grandmommy’s life memories each time these pillow cases get used, and that will make them extra precious.

This stitching retreat was very special because as I stitched away, I was filled with memories of Grandmommy. It was the best way to spend time.

I took a morning while at Willowtail to go to the visitor’s center at Mesa Verde. I’ve been to Mesa Verde many times and this time I had no plans to walk in the National Park, but I wanted to shop for some interesting books. My experience is that National Park Visitor Centers are excellent places to find interesting reading that you won’t find in most regular bookstores. This trip was no exception. I came home with a field guide to Anasazi pottery, a book on traditional Indian foods, and another one on the Navajo people. I am enjoying them very much.

As I was about to get in my car, I looked down to find a wild turkey feather. Since wild birds is another favorite passion of mine and I enjoy watching them very much, I was quite pleased to find this feather. I took a bit of time to research what wild turkey feathers symbolize and I discovered that they symbolize abundance and fertility.

Yesterday morning I looked out my kitchen window right at dawn and was pleased to see a doe and her twin fawns getting a drink in our deer drinking trough. Between the poor light and the screen on the window, the picture isn’t good, but it is fun to see them all these same.

Following my stitching retreat, Chris, Shrek and I made a fast road trip back to Lincoln, Nebraska for our niece, Gracie’s, wedding. It was so lovely! It was also extremely hot in Nebraska with high humidity levels. It made me thankful to live in Colorado where it can be very hot, but without all that humidity it still feels ok and it cools off at night. Yay for Colorado weather.

Now that we’re back at the homeplace and back to work, we’re trying to get caught up. It’s a lot to do, but we’re working at it. We’ve had the wonderful company of our other nephew and niece with their two daughters visiting this week, and today M’lissa was here visiting from Denver. A lot going on.

Agave Update

The agave plant is nearly finished flowering and we hope it will begin to set seed soon. I’ll try to remember to take a picture for the next blog post.

The evening grosbeaks are here now and their sweet peeping chirp is very nice to hear. We heard a bob cat moving on the farm in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago…a treat and a gift to be able to hear these kinds of wildlife. There are groups of half-grown quail, and a family with a batch of very tiny baby quail, scurrying about in our gardens and yesterday, along with today I noticed a chipmunk foraging underneath the bird feeders. This isn’t really chipmunk habitat and in 20 years here we’ve not seen one here before, so maybe this little one is just lost or perhaps he/she is going to make its home on the farm. Time will tell.

This is Tawny, who lives at Willowtail Springs in Mancos, Colorado. This kitty is in charge of guest visiting and making everyone smile. Tawny does that job very well.

 

 

 

July 13, 2016 Bees in the Agave, The Mad Hatter, Pouncita

Meet the Mad Hatter, which is our new (to us) delivery vehicle, and no it’s not really a mad hatter, it’s a Honda Element. I’ve given it the name “Mad Hatter” because somehow it reminds me of the Mad Hatter in Alice Through the Looking Glass.

This was its maiden voyage as a Desert Canyon Farm plant delivery vehicle. It will hold about 45 flats of plants, so that’s not too bad. Our old mini van held 60 flats, so this isn’t quite as good, but it is good enough to do the job. And…it’s so much fun to drive!

Lizz and I had a meeting on Monday to start planning our propagation needs (seeding, cuttings, root divisions and the like) for spring 2017. We really have only just passed this year’s busy season for the greenhouse, and already we are beginning to work on growing our plant inventory for next spring. Oh my…I think there used to be a slow season, but that seems to be less and less the case as each year passes.

Well, anyway, the photo above is white prickly poppy, which is a plant that we grow from seed. I cannot buy organic seed for this plant, so we grow some plants in our gardens here at the farm and then harvest the seed ourselves. You can see the gorgeous white flowers, and then there are some oval-shaped green seed pods. The seed won’t be ripe for a while, but we’ll be keeping an eye on it so that when it’s ripe and ready to pick we can do that. Once the seed is cleaned, we’ll work towards growing those white prickly poppies for next spring’s Farm Stand store.

This morning I went out at 6 am to start the irrigation water in the flower seed field, and as I was walking back to the irrigation pump I passed the agave in the desert garden. I know I’ve been talking a lot about this plant, so you’ll have to indulge me as I talk some more about it. Look at all those bees!!!

They were coming and going from the flowers like a freeway system, and they were inside the flowers, on top of the flowers, under the flowers…all over those flowers! A couple of hummingbirds also checked the flowers out, but they didn’t linger. I guess agave nectar isn’t as high on their list of desires as it is for the bees.

I’m not sure how tall this flower stalk is now, but I would guess it is about 18-20 feet tall. There are still flowers that haven’t opened yet, so I think it’s blooming period is going to be very long indeed.

Agave have been used as food, to make fermented and alcoholic beverages, as a sweetener, to make twine and for other fiber to weave into hats, clothing and the like. Rope from Agave fibers is even used as part of the apparatus in the pulley systems that move elevators up and down tall buildings. These are amazing plants to say the least.

I hope we get a lot of viable seed from this plant so that we can grow  baby Agave paryii to sell in the Farm Stand store. It truly is a very special plant!

Pouncita has been scowling at me tonight. She is 20 years old and completely in charge of the entire household. She tells us what to do, when and how she would like things to be done, and if you don’t listen and follow instructions properly, she will give you an ear-full of scolding yowls. She is a tough old gal, but so sweet and loveable. Most of her hours these days are spent sleeping or finding a warm place to hang out. Old bones don’t like the cold even in summer. Pouncita has lived with us since she was about 4 weeks old. She is one of our dearest four-legged friends!

My container of sweet corn is covered in immature ears of corn. It won’t be too much longer before we’ll have some delicious sweet corn with our meal.