Fall Harvest

The mornings are cold - in the 20's - and the leaves are changing color.

Fall is in the Valley.

We don't think the leaves will be as colorful this season as last - could it be because it was a dry winter and summer?

With the cold frost mornings we had to hurry and bring our fall produce in.

All of the winter squash is now safely stored away.

The popcorn was ready before I knew it - but the crows were on top of the situation. We lost about 1/3 of the crop to those pesky black birds.

This is how some of the ears were when I went to harvest.

The blue corn wasn't has far developed as the popcorn so I had minimum damage to it. The blue corn produce huge ears!

After harvesting I took the husks off the ears, the blue corn we hung, while the popcorn is lying flat on trays in the sun on the porch ....

Today I took some of the ears of blue corn that seem dry enough - the kernels feel like loose teeth - and shucked them, using the thumb to nudge them out, then ground the kernels using a coffee grinder.

One ear of corn made about 1 cup of cornmeal.

I plan on shucking then storing the dried kernels in jars and only grinding when I'm ready to cook.

The popcorn dries harder than the blue corn. But they don't pop right after shucking - I tried popping some last week and just had crispy kernels of corn, today though was a different story.

I air dried the kernels for a week and Yeah! The popcorn popped! It is not as big as commercial popcorn but more crunchy and has a corn flavor. When cooking you can smell a fresh corn scent.

So you know that while I'm watching "Dancing With The Stars" I'll also be shucking corn, blue and pink. There are so many ears to process!

Even though it is cold in the morning, the sun is shining and it does warm up to around 70.

It's going to be a good Fall.