Heirloom Purple Peas!

We love these purple peas! We've grown them here for a few years now, and what a great harvest this year.  We've also left enough on the vines to save seed for next year's planting. They are an old Dutch "soup pea" called Blue Podded Pea (Blauwschokkers) that has been grown for hundreds of years in Europe, an heirloom variety that is considered a shelling pea and needs to be cooked or steamed to really bring out the sweetest flavour.  They can also be eaten as snow peas if harvested at a very early stage. I think they are just so beautiful to grow in the garden, the deep pink blossoms are lovely on the vines, the purple pods are striking, and the green peas inside are delicious.  Our whole family got involved around the table to help shell the peas, and then a large amount were enjoyed for dinner with the extras frozen for other meals in the winter to come.

Seed saving

Seeds!  Beautiful, powerful, amazing seeds.  Now is the season for saving seeds from the garden.  While we don't save seeds from everything in our garden (it's difficult, given that some of our plant varieties such as squash are too close together so could cross-pollinate), we do like to save many of our favourites each year.  Seeds we do save include unique varieties of tomatoes (those black cherry and Mennonite Orange were so delicious and not always easy to buy), heirloom beans, lettuce, arugula and other greens, kale, sunflowers, and loads of herbs and flowers. 

Then there are seeds we save like fennel, coriander, dill, rosehips and amaranth, where we like to harvest enough seed that we can use some directly in cooking, teas or herbal medicines, as well as having enough to plant again next year.  We also like to leave plenty of seeds standing in the garden for winter foraging for the birds.  Depending on the seed, there are different ways to harvest, dry and store them.  Some can be left on the plant to dry (e.g. some herb and flower seeds, beans in pods, sunflowers, lettuce), but others (e.g. tomatoes) are a little more tricky and need to be harvested fresh from the best quality fruit, then dried out, and stored when fully dry.  For more seed saving tips you can read great information at the Seeds of Diversity website.

Apple Tasting and Fate of the Heirloom Apples

We love apples - and this is apple season.  Inspite of damp, cold windy weather, we held our annual apple tasting today.  October is an unpredictable month, so when we were planning for this outdoor event months ago we were uncertain as to what the weather would hold.  We lit a nice big cozy fire in our cob oven, and, bundled up with mittens, hats and raincoats, plus a few extra quilts brought out from our house.  It was well worth it to get a taste of the 20+ varieties of apples on display!  And these 20 varieties are only a thin layer of the vast range of apples grown in our country, even though we rarely see more than a handful of options in the local grocery stores or farmers markets.

Our facilitator from Seeds of Diversity, talked about the history of each apple while passing around plates piled with slices to sample.  We tasted everything from the very familiar McIntosh, Red Delicious, Northern Spy, Cortland, and Empire; to the more unfamiliar Snow (possibly the first apple grown in Canada, originating around 1730), Tolman Sweet, Sandow, Greening, Golden Russet, and Wolf River; to the newly developed Honey Crisp (developed in 1991) and Ambrosia (developed in 1980's - actually a "chance" discovery in an orchard in British Columbia).  Some better for baking, some better for cider, some for long shelf life, some for little browning when cut, some with crisp white flesh, others with pink tinged flesh, and on it went.  Today there are about 100 varieties of apples commonly grown in North America.  According to Oregon Tilth, astonishingly historically there have been over 15,000-16,000 varieties of apples (yes, really!) named, grown and eaten in North America. Today roughly only 3000 are available to growers, gardeners, cooks, chefs, etc (and you need to search pretty hard to find them). Our amazingly rich diversity of heirloom apples is in danger of becoming extinct - an estimated 4 out of 5 apples have been lost to consumers and much of this has only been within the past fifty years.  It is estimated that 11 varieties of apples make up 90% of what is sold in big box grocery chain stores - the other varieties just don't ship well, keep well or display well enough for what the average consumer has been told the "perfect" apple needs to look like.  Read more about this topic at Slow Food USA: Year of the Heirloom Apple.