The world is turning:
My sweet corn is picked, at least three weeks ahead of last summer’s crop after an unusually cool summer. Not so this hot summer.
It was a pretty good crop, despite the prolonged drought conditions thanks to many buckets of water carried by hand from a dug well near the “hot garden” in the field near the house. The rainy season arrived, but too late to have much of an impact on the corn, except to make the picking of it more urgent.
My new Buddy here at Cathedral Drive Farm has taken to digging potatoes like he was born for the job. But being a German Shepherd I suppose there’s any number of things he might be able to turn his hands to, or rather, his paws. Continue reading
Sauble Beach is one of the most popular beaches in Ontario. In its natural state many years ago it must have been a wonderful sight: sand dunes stretching almost as far as the eye can see in a long, gentle crescent along the eastern shore of Lake Huron, one of the largest of The Great Lakes. Its sunsets are legendary.
By the mid-20th Century the beach and nearby resort community were well on their way to becoming the destination of choice for thousands of summer tourists, easily 25,000 or more on a summer weekend. Some estimates reach as high as 100,000. Continue reading
If I’m looking a tad smug and self-satisfied in that photo it’s because today was the day I started picking my sweet corn crop – and a good one it is too, if I dare say so myself.
All those pails of water lifted from the old dug well by hand and carried over to the corn during the drought appear to have worked; and not a sign of unwelcome visitors in those well-filled cobs of “peaches and cream.” There’s not much more a sweet corn-obsessed grower could want, except buyers of course.
It’s not like I’m on a main thoroughfare here at the end of Cathedral Drive in the most secluded little corner of Hope Ness on the Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada.
So, if you happen to be that reader of my blog in Australia, and think you might just take a notion to jump on a plane and fly here for a feed of fresh-picked, corn-on-the-cob, be my guest. Likewise, you other folks wherever you are, near or far.
Spread the word: Phil’s got corn.
On a Cosmic scale our beautiful little blue-green jewel of a planet is some kind of rare miracle – perhaps the only one – in a vast Universe of unimaginable extremes of blazing hot and deep-freezing cold.
But global warming and the resulting climate change is now in the process of showing the world – that part of the world that’s watching, at least – how delicately balanced and vulnerable that miracle is.
Market gardeners and other farmers know a few degrees of temperature either way during the growing season, and the lack of a certain amount of reliable rainfall – say, at least a weekly centimetre or two, about an inch – can make all the difference in the health and well-being of crops. Continue reading