Fruit, herbs, and water

I was surfing around on the web last week and I stumbled onto this website http://www.theyummylife.com/Flavored_Water#EmbedRecipe_251.  These waters sounded really good so I had to try to make a few myself.  Strawberries are now in season and blueberries or Saskatoon's will soon be in season so they would work perfectly in these waters.  Also with it being so hot it can be hard to drink the amount of water you need and these concoctions spice up your water, making it easier to down the water.  They aren't sweet, but take on the flavor of the fruit or herb. 

Directions

Supplies needed: 2 quart pitcher or jar with lid; muddler or wooden spoon

General formula for whatever fruit/herb combo you desire.
1. If using herbs, add a sprig of fresh herbs to jar/pitcher; press and twist with muddler or handle of wooden spoon to bruise leaves and release flavor; don’t pulverize the herbs into bits.
2. Add approx. 2 cups of fruit to jar/pitcher; press and twist with muddler or handle of wooden spoon, just enough to release some of the juices
3. Fill jar/pitcher with ice cubes.
4. Add water to top of jar/pitcher.
5. Cover and refrigerate for up to 3 days.

The kinds I tried were a strawberry chocolate mint, lime cucumber, and a citrus water.  For the strawberry chocolate mint I used strawberries and two sprigs of chocolate mint.  For the lime cucumber I used a lime, small cucumber, sprig of lemon balm, and a sprig of rosemary.  For the citrus I used  an orange, lime, lemon basil, and orange mint.  I was going to use lemons in my waters, but the grocery store was sold out of lemons.  My favorite water was the strawberry one.  If you are wondering where you can get the herbs from, I sell herbs at the Pineridge Farmers' Market.  The website gives other waters you could try.

Lorissa

Gardening Lingo

I love taking pictures and during a conference a speaker suggested telling a story or making a timeline using pictures.  This spring I have been taking pictures and posting them on facebook.  As I have been posting them on facebook I realized that gardeners have their own lingo and most people probably don't understand what we are saying.  Below I will list some Penner Pumpkin lingo and techniques we use.

Milk jugs-  We use these in our garden at the beginning of the season.  We love going into our garden as early as possible, but there is always the weather to work around.  One way we have done this is by using milk jugs around our plants.  We fill them up with water and put them by each plant.  The theory is that during the day the water will heat up and at the night the heat will be released.  This keeps the plants from freezing.  Also if we plant stuff out in April we make sure the plants can stand cold nights (so we don't plant out tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc).  We seed our peas, and plant cabbage and potato plants.

Black plastic-  We use this both in our greenhouse and outside in our garden.  We use plastic to keep the weeds down.  Also it keeps the plants wetter and it provides a bit of heat to the plants.  This year we put down plastic on our entire pumpkin patch.

Floating row covers-  This is a special cloth that keeps heat in and keeps bugs out.  This allows us to plant earlier.  Our cabbages like attracting bugs.

I have been thinking a lot about what we do at Penner Pumpkins and the techniques we use and I realized that gardening can be quite complicated.  I have been doing it for 20 + years so it makes sense, but a newcomer would be quite confused.  Pumpkins, gourds, and squash can't be planted side by side, we have to make sure there is a couple of rows, usually we plant corn, to separate them.  Also Indian corn and sweet corn cannot be planted side by side because it would make the sweet corn inedible.  Also some varieties of sweet corn cannot be planted side by side.  Also corn needs to be seeded in blocks (we usually do 4-5 row) so that there is good pollination.  Every year we get new seed catalogues and they always give us good tips for the garden.  With pumpkins we use many varieties so that we can have blue, orange, white, warted, flat, red, big, small, or pie pumpkins.  I love gardening and I love seeing what comes out of the garden.

Lorissa Penner

Cat Tales

At Penner Pumpkins we love animals.  Growing up we always had cats and dogs.  On our home yard we usually have around 15 cats.  We have this many because of the number of buildings on our yard.  All of our cats have names and very unique personalities.

We use to have a cat named Charlie.  This cat decided that the best place to have her kittens was our front step.  We decided this was not a good place for her to have kittens so we started putting her into a building to have her kittens.  When ever this cat was ready to have her kittens she would meow non-stop til we let her into the building.  One year she had five kittens and we had two rabbits.  One of the rabbits gave birth and died so we moved the bunny into Charlies box.  One day I came in and I hear a kitten meowing.  Charlie had moved four kittens and the bunny and left one kitten behind.  She knew she had five kittens and she moved five animals.

On May 2 Molly had four kittens.  She gave birth to one on a shelf and than decided that was not a good idea and moved to a different location.  She didn't move the one kitten when she went to the new location.  We (Shirley and I) were showing Joy, a person who gives us advice on our Agritourism business, around the zip line area.  I heard a kitten screaming and went to investigate and found the kitten, I didn't see the mother so I assumed she was out somewhere.  I think kittens are extremely cute so I showed Joy the kitten and she found the mother.  I didn't want to move the kitten because the mother than could abandon all the kittens.  Joy felt sorry for the kitten and moved it to the mother.  The mother didn't abandon the kittens and the abandoned kitten is doing fine.

Written by Lorissa