The year started with the planting and preparation of 1200 blueberry plants. Then it was on to the fields. Well.... field. We have only one relatively flat area on our property. The blueberry field took up two of the five acres. So three acres of roughly flat untilled soil awaited us. The field had been in hay / grass for as long as folks around here can remember. Last year the yield was more grass than alfalfa. It would have been time to replant either way.
The spring rains came. And came. And came. More rain than the soil could use. More rain followed by more rain. It rained almost every other day for a couple of months. We are now over 13 inches of rainfall above our average for the year. That's more than one third of our total average. But I digress.
The rain made it very difficult to till the soil and get the crops in. And then the machinery troubles began. Well, only one machine. Our trusty, handy dandy, wonderful John Deere 2210 with the JD 450 rototiller... the machine that we use to till the soil.... the tractor broke. And it wasn't a little break. It broke bad. It would cost more to repair it than the tractor was worth.
Time delay. Tractor hunting and researching. Finally settling on a JD 3720 with a nifty JD 672 rototiller (a full six feet of tilling power!). But we had to wait three weeks. More delay. Spring was fast escaping. Our wonderful neighbors to the rescue. They let me borrow their tractor to till. It was time to plant. Finally.
The popcorn went in last. (I was waiting for the seeds). I measured, marked, and dug for the little seeds. 20 rows. 20 long rows. They came up fast. So did the grass. Which would succeed?
Remember this? I was weeding and weeding in July. Hoping to keep up and ahead of the weeds. Hoping to give the popcorn a fighting chance. I was close to giving up that day. The weeds were so plentiful.
It survived! It thrived. The weeding followed by some grass mulch left the soil between the green stalks clear. They tasseled and grew. And corn developed.
I harvested this past weekend. The stalks were brown, bent and the ears listed toward the earth. The local raccoons and other critters took their share out of the middle. That's to be expected when one doesn't put up the electric fence. But there was plenty for us. I took buckets and buckets of popcorn ears down to the basement for drying. In a few weeks the beautiful hard, but not quite dry, kernels will be stripped off and tested in a pan. Then to packaging and labeling for Christmas presents and spring markets. Hand sown, hand weeded, hand picked and harvested, hand dekernelled (what do you call the process of getting the kernels off the cob?) and hand packaged. Lots of love in these little kernels.
"Pop! Pop! Pop!" I can hardly wait. Perhaps this year we will string popcorn for our Christmas tree. Our popcorn. Sigh.... and Smile.Today's Journey Joy: a fine harvest of golden kernels
