A beautiful day with much cooler temperatures. It sure has a feel of fall in the air when the morning temps are in the 50’s. Some leaves are starting to turn, some are falling. I think it was too dry for some of them. We had 6/10 of rain the other week that greened things up just a little some places, probably mostly weeds. At least that’s what is growing in the yard. A lot of silage has been chopped, some corn stalks don’t have any ears on.
One of our producers sold his cows, since he won’t have enough of crops to see him through the year, and prices high. We can see his point, he was our biggest producer, so we have even less milk to process now. It just means in 9 months we’ll be short on cheese.
This week I took 3 days off for canning / freezing. Last Saturday evening Rufus and I picked corn at my brother-in-laws, put it in the cooler till Monday. Crystal and I started on it. I called sister-in-law Lorraine to see if we could have 2 girls to help, even if one just baby sits Jeremy? Lorraine said she’ll bring them down. When they came around 10, they ALL came to help. Lorraine and her 4 girls, plus the 2 little boys. We had it husked in no time! Martha (almost 8) stayed to help while the rest went home. We cook the corn in a big cast iron kettle over a wood fire. You can do a big batch at a time. After it boils for 10 minutes, we put it in big tubs of cold water to cool. To cut it off, we use a creamer, a wooden board with a cutter and little “spikes” on that scrapes it off. We like it better than whole kernel, but it must be made in the microwave or double boiler, as it burns easily. Everything is done outside, including the cutting off. It makes for easy clean-up. The cobs go in the wheelbarrow, take a bucket of soap water, brush and hose, wash everything off, and done! No messy floors to wash up, counters to clean. We did 55 quart that day.