So what is growing on the farm right now? Most things have gone away with the summer heat... but not THESE things!
YUM! One of our favorite summer veggies is OKRA. We love it fried of course, and then there is okra and tomatoes, and boiled on top of a pot of purple hull peas... YUM! This variety of okra is called "cow horn". Most regular varieties of okra get very tough when allowed to grow over 6-8" long... not these. Some pods DH picks are 12" long and still tender. That means that just a few pods produce a huge pile of chopped okra. Note how tall the plants are... DH is 6'1" tall and they are way over his head! The only down-side... the deer love okra too. DH had to install an electric fence to keep them from eating it all before we got any of it. We have given away bunches and bunches of okra this year and will have plenty more for a long time to come, because it will keep producing until frost.
Another bounty from the woods (actually, from a vine growing up a pine tree in the edge of our yard) MUSCADINES! I LOVE them! I think it is because they bring back childhood memories for me.
My PaPaw would load us all in the back of his truck and we would cruise through the game reserve looking for muscadine vines. He would just pull the truck right up to the limbs with vines hanging and we would stand on the hood and roof of the truck to pick the fruit. Now understand, I was much smaller then, and that was when vehicles were made with lots of sturdy metal!
There just is no better jelly than muscadine, but my favorite thing is just to pop them in my mouth and eat them fresh. In the past we have not gotten many from the vines here, but since we now have PJ the guard dog (yeah, right... she might LICK you to death, but she certainly won't attack) it seems the possums and coons have not raided our muscadine vines this year. However, if one falls to the ground, PJ eats it! She is such a fruity dog... she eats the pears that fall from the trees, and she also ate the figs that fell.
So that is the latest scoop from the farm... have I flung a craving on you for okra, peas, and muscadines? Life in the country is good!
Kat
Good morning, Kathy. It's been too long since I've dropped by. Your blessings are abundant and those pictured look so good. I love the simplicity of the okra flower (we had fresh okra from our garden with supper last night). The muscadines look divine...what wonderful jelly they will make. We have the golden variety ready to squeeze the juice for jelly in the fridge.
ReplyDeleteI hope and pray you continue to be blessed richly and that you recognize every blessing for what it is. God is so good!
I love the flower of an okra plant! Your beautiful plants put my puny ones to shame. I don't have but a few though because my kids were helping me weed and pulled up many of the okra plants before I knew what happened! Oh well, I've enjoyed the little bit of okra that we got from our three remaining plants!
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