A cover crop

 The weather is starting to cool off around here, and I’m starting to crave atole which is a Mexican pumpkin drink. Speaking of pumpkins, my family grows one that has a lot of history behind it. My dad, George McLaughlin asked if I would share an article that he wrote October 7th, 2016,  with you all.

 

“Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin

I received seed for this squash from Rodger Winn of Little Mountain, South Carolina, in 2008 or 2009. I met Rodger on Gardenweb (now part of Houz). I believe he is active in a couple of southern seed conservancies, including the Southern Exposure Seed Conservancy. This is the traditional squash grown in his area. Rodger shared with me that the Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin was popular before mechanization. At that time farmers would plow their fields with animals, plant their corn and a little after the corn got going they would plant this squash on the edges of the field. The corn would mature as the squash got sprawling and, when the corn stalks started drying and dying down, Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin would then go bananas, growing over top of any weeds which wanted to take advantage of the additional sunlight afforded by the dying corn. In the fall, they would harvest squash and pumpkins as they cleared the field. The pumpkin was an important part of their weed suppression strategy, and, its fruit fed both man and beast.

While modern farming methods are not well suited to this kind of combination growing scheme. It still has great potential for people who wish to grow more of their own food in more of a gardening style approach. Here in our part of Oklahoma, for instance, we battle with Bermuda and Johnson grass. These grasses can take a garden over during the weeks that it is too hot and dry to cultivate. But Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin is not only insect resistant. If started early enough, it’s pretty drought tolerant, and it smothers invasive weeds!

The fruit are tan colored, ribbed and recognizably of a Jack O’Lantern shape. They can weigh between 3 and 30 lb. Most seem to weigh about 10 lb. The flesh is deep orange in color and has some texture when cooked. Yet, in the mouth, it seems stringless. Its flavor is good. It tastes about like a butternut squash. The skin is not real hard. This pumpkin would work for carving, though I have never had the heart to waste one by cutting a face into it. Seeds are average in size. They do roast well as snacks.

This squash grows rampantly! One plant could fill up an area about 10X15.’ Sometimes the vines run much farther. One year I grew it under our fruit trees. Five or six plants overran our grape arbor and almost completely covered two peach trees and two or three semi dwarf apple trees. We picked a couple hundred pounds of squash, some of which were still usable at 10 months in storage.

Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin presents the gardener with 2 main challenges: 1) To plant it where it won’t gobble up another crop, 2) To learn to use cooked pumpkin for more than just pumpkin pie! It is what I call a “feel good crop,” in that it’s a good one to grow if you want to get a child hooked on gardening, or if your own gardening ego needs a bit of a boost. It succeeds and does so spectacularly in our Oklahoma conditions!”

These pumpkins are one of my favourite fall crops. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I love to make a pumpkin drink out of them. They aren’t only for making pies.

Here is the recipe for Atole which I referred to at the begining of this post. It’s a great way to make a homemade pumpkin drink:Americanized Pumpkin Atole
*To a blender add:
1 egg
a few glugs of molasses
some sugar (brown or white)
2 cups of cooked squash(pumpkin)
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon of ground cloves
optional – 2 or 3 tablespoons of peanut butter
*Milk (at least a pint)
*Blend this all up and taste to see if it needs more sweetening.
*Pour the mix into a pot and heat until just boiling. I normally pour this mix into a two quart pot and add some additional milk before heating it.
*Serve and enjoy!

An impressive veggie

This past weekend, my dad brought in some cowpeas. Now, the type of cowpea that we grow is pretty impressive looking as well as delicious. The name of what we grow is Georgia Long, and they do get long. We’ve even seen a few reach 30 inches.

The ones dad is holding there aren’t quite that long but they are about ready to finish drying for seed.

Anyway, the Georgia Long bean is one that my family originally got from a Seed Savers Exchange member from Missouri back in 1987. Here’s a short story that my dad wrote about this cowpea, “I received seed for this variety in 1987, from a Seed Saver’s Exchange Member in Missouri.1
Right away, my wife Jerreth and I shared some seed of Georgia Long, with her grandparents in Salem, Illinois (southern part of the state). They grew it every year from then until at least 1997. Grandma passed away in 1995 and Grandpa’s health was so poor, that in 1997 he presented me with a bottle of seed and asked me to keep it going from him, as he couldn’t garden any more. He had forgotten that we had given the variety to them originally. While growing this “bean,” Grandpa planted about 20 feet on tripods and had so many that he absolutely couldn’t eat them all. He would put out his surplus on a picnic table in the front lawn and a sign advertising free green beans! (I still have some of the 1996/1997 seed, in the same bottle. It tested out at nearly 100% germination in 2007!)
We lost our seed sometime between 1988 and 1992, when we lived in a very high cold rain forest in the Mexican state of Puebla. Life was too unsettled to keep seed going, and most of our heirloom varieties were not suited to that climate. We got more seed from Jerreth’s grandparents in 1994, and grew it until 2000, in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, in an irrigated desert environment. It did very well in the desert. This variety likes heat and tolerates white alkali conditions.”

An older gardener who was in his 80’s that my Dad spoke with some years ago, said he though these cowpeas might be the same as Yardlong.

Any way you cut it on the history of this cowpea, I know that every year, we enjoy harvesting this impressive cowpea, and definitely enjoy eating it over the winter.

Fall harvest: just a few things.

Sweet potatoes uncovered.

One of the things I love about the fall, are the things we harvest at this time of year. My family eats a lot of sweet potatoes and we use squash and pumpkin in a sweet creamy drink called atole. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of that, but here’s the recipe:

Americanized Pumpkin Atole
*To a blender add:
1 egg
a few glugs of molasses
some sugar (brown or white)
2 cups of cooked squash
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon of ground cloves
optional – 2 or 3 tablespoons of peanut butter
*Milk (at least a pint)
*Blend this all up and taste to see if it needs more sweetening.
*Pour the mix into a pot and heat until just boiling. I normally pour this mix into a two quart pot and add some additional milk before heating it.
*Serve and enjoy!

I also found this lovely lady’s blog about atole which does have some pictures. It could be a day or two before I next make it and I just discovered that since I’m not in the habit of snapping pictures of my food, I don’t have any of that. Any way, enjoy her post on it. She gives more recipes as well for more types of atole. : http://www.lacocinadeleslie.com/2012/10/atole-de-camote-sweet-potato-atole.html

Pilloncillo cones by the way are similar to brown sugar and we found that we can substitute brown sugar instead of trying to slice or sliver those cones. (On a side note, I was a pilloncillo cone thief as a kid. My poor mama was always wondering where the cone ran off to. I’d eat the whole thing and be a bit sick, if I didn’t get caught.)

We eat sweet potatoes with brown sugar and butter, or as atole, or just as is after baking them. Some of them are sweet enough to eat just as a snack.

                      The above picture is of our sweet potato vines.

Winter Wood

Preparation for winter

I inhaled the wonderful smell of the woods today. I could hear a chain saw near by. Most people at thins time of year aren’t necessarily thinking about how they are going to stay warm for the winter. My family though heats with wood on our homestead.

Every year around September, we go into the woods as a family and we find trees that have died during the year but have not rotted to the point of not being good fire wood. Dad is really good at taking down dead trees that are still standing.

Cutting up a tree that had been taken down after he found a dead tree.

Mom and I will haul the chunks of wood that are small enough to load by ourselves. Dad will work a chainsaw and the maul to split the wood down to a manageable size for Mom and I.

Getting ready to haul a load back to the farm.

The freshly split wood is one of the best smells in the world, followed by the smell of a good wood fire when the weather has gotten cold. We use elm wood to keep our fire burning all night long and we use pine, maple or anything small and dry. Pine of course smells heavenly when that goes on.

Oh, one last thing! Just like when we are gardening, we find some interesting finds. I found this grub which I hadn’t ever seen anything like it before. This is an Oak Borer grub which eats the oak trees.

The voracious oak borer grub.

Since we had dead stumps left after our dead trees, I opted to let this guy go in a stump so he can eat the stump to his little grubby heart’s content!