The first posted of many talks you can hear at South Georgia Growing Local in February:
Description of the talk: A presentation of my experience growing, eating, selling various lesser known edible crops
of the coastal plain. I will try to include as many of the following as I can get to in my allotted time slot (not necessarily in this order): Asian yard long beans, bananas, black walnuts, bunching onions, cactus pears, carambola Continue reading
A nice May evening at the pond with dogs in boats.
Except it was December.
Gretchen posted these
facebook pictures reposted below; click on any small picture to see a larger one.
See also a few more pictures
by jsq.
-jsq
In 2008 they bloomed in March,
in 2011
they bloomed in late February,
in 2012
they bloomed in late January and early February,
in 2013,
they bloomed in the middle of January,
and in 2015, some are blooming in late December.
A couple of days ago, the sweet odor of Jessamine at the gate was overwhelming
on Christmas Day.
Does this seem right to you?
-jsq
Forest primeval
She never saw a moon she didn’t want to photograph.
Gretchen got some much better pictures with a real camera and a tripod; see her facebook page. There were dogs there, too, but it was too dark for the cameras to see them. Here are a few more pictures from my phone. Continue reading
Gretchen and I burned some woods the last couple days. Here’s why we burn: longleaf pine unharmed, while small trees of other species (slash and loblolly pine, an especially oaks) are weeded out by the fire.
Click on any picture for a bigger one. -jsq
Got to turn that big old crank
Got to spin that flywheel around
Got to shell that red kernel corn
So we’ll have some grits and corn meal.
Here’s the video:
Gretchen Quarterman, Shelling red corn
Video by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms,
Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 November 2015.
-jsq
Small, growing, ripe, picked, and now Gretchen is fermenting them: native Scuppernong Muscadine grapes (Vitis rotundifolia).
Very tasty!
Corn smut a delicacy? Well, if truffles can be, why not?
Jill Neimark, the salt, 24 August 2015,
Scourge No More: Chefs Invite Corn Fungus To The Plate,
One evening last July, Nat Bradford walked along rows of White Bolita Mexican corn at his Sumter, S.C., farm, and nearly wept. All 1,400 of the corn plants had been overtaken almost overnight by corn smut, recalls Bradford, who’s also a landscape architect. The smut, from a fungus called Ustilago maydis, literally transforms each corn kernel into a bulbous, bulging bluish-grey gall. It is naturally present in the soil and can be lofted easily into the air and onto plants.
Smut is considered a scourge by most U.S. farmers, and it goes by the nickname “devil’s corn.” Just one discolored kernel typically renders an ear completely unsellable….
Yep, that’s the way we’ve usually considered it. But keep reading: Continue reading
