Today’s picture is a look across the soybean field just before harvest. The plants are all dried and crisp and the beans are nearly falling out of the pods. Had the sun shown brightly, the field would have nearly glowed with its yellow-orange color. The only crop that is even more awash in yellows is the wheat harvest but that will not come around again until next June.

Since I try to be curtious to those without high speed internet connections, I am posting a very small image of what I saw and what I tried to capture. For those slurping down network bandwidth like a stranded cowboy who stumbles upon an oasis, feel free to click on the image to get a better view.

For the record, most crops were good this year on the shore with special not for the snap beans. The feed crops (corn and soybeans) have all been good as well as tomatoes, sweet corn, and the aforementioned snap beans. The potatoes were OK too but not to the extent of the other notables.

The tomato harvest is an interesting process. The amount of control tomato growers now wield is both impressive and scary. The soil is bermed over a drip irrigation line and then covered in reflective plastic. The plants are poked through the plastic. The plants will eventually grow so large and so heavy with tomatoes that they must be staked and bounded by string lines on either side of the plant rows. The growers provide all water and nutrients through the drip irritation lines. It is to the extent that the farmers would not mind if it never rained as any natural water complicates their calculation of feeding. The tomatoes are planted in zones within a field. A zone is as big as can be harvested by the crew of migrant workers in one or two days. A crop manager visits the field when it should be close to picking. He picks about two bushels of green tomatoes at random; cutting them open and checking for readiness. Finally, the pickers arrive on old school buses followed by large trucks that will hold all of the still firm green tomatoes. Once the pickers are done with a zone, the water and nutrients are “turned off” and a few days later the plastic is removed. It takes less than a week and the bare rows wither and die - leaving all remaining tomatoes to rot in the fields. The pickers harvest a zone just once. A week or two later, the grower returns with the truck equivalent of a flame thrower which have a large propane tank and drives between the rows and burns the leaves and scorches the stock and many remaining tomatoes.

image credit: based on an internet image but otherwise unknown … still hunting for the source

The only damage - besides a roaming trash can and a topped canoe - was a rather large tree branch. While all bets were on damage to the hollowed out tree in the front yard, it was the big Sycamore out in the field that lost a large top branch. The branch is probably 10″-12″ in diameter and came from the very top of the tree. Zen recognized it was out of place but otherwise was not affected by it’s existence.

We’re back in for the second half and have our fingers crossed that we have seen the majority of Hanna. High tide is in an hour so that may bring a different kind of excitement.

This year taught me something new - water is not a ripe fig’s friend. The last three weeks of a fig should be warm and dry. This lets them sweeten naturally. Figs do not ripen once picked so timing is everything. What is happening is the figs are absorbing all the water they can and we’ve had plenty of rain. The figs are literally bursting  from too much water. They just don’t know when to say “when”.

I’ve been picking what I can, trying to gauge if they have enough natural sugars. Last year I made Fig Nut bread. This year I am trying to dry the figs with a food dehydrator. It takes a full 24 hours but the figs are drying and the results are very good - although a few don’t have enough sweetness for my taste. The picture shows fresh whole figs, a couple cut in half to show the insides, and some dried figs. Most of the dried figs are like chewy candy. <yum>

I did the math and the food dehydrator is doing a great job but it’s not as “green” as I need it to be given my farmhouse project. I think the best use of the dehydrator is to start the drying process with some other method - one existing system that has a log of waste heat, and then finish with the dehydrator. Last year I tried using the dashboard of my truck but that assumes we have hot weather - which for the last week I am happy to say it has been cooler than last year. Also, drying in my truck attracted fruit flies which was not a welcome experience inside a closed vehicle.

My computer equipment generates warm dry air so I think I will work some solution that puts all my computer equipment together in a series and somewhat enclosed with the air flowing all in one direction. I should then be able to have a series of racks at the output of that warm air. There is a perfect place in the “home office” in the new farmhouse since all the equipment will be clustered together with the warm air collected by the ventilation return vent. All I will need to do is build the drying racks in-line with the air flow. Should be a fun project !