Holy cow, thats one giant vegetable! I love the tomato pic, looks like an overweight R2D2 or something like that. My imagination goes overtime....

The Pepsi looks delicious as well, my drink of choice!

Great little hammock for your squash, i had to make some hammocks for my beefsteak tomatos, im hoping to get giant ones soon, they were so big they are bending the stem that goes from the stalk to the tomato, of that makes sense. And theres only one tomato per cluster except for one that has two.

I have boring days almost every day Larry so i know how you feel. Saturday is my only social day when i go to the cattle auction. And even that was boring today. Headed to the lake right after, there were a lot of people out on the water when we pulled into town. Great day for it. I guess the sale was slow because Too much rain no one could get anything out of the fields around here. Even the goats looked pitiful. Sure are a lot of worm problems with goats this year. Ive had to switch wormers twice and am about to go to a third

Some poor guy brought in a cow, a calf, a horse and a little goat all in the same trailer. I dont know how the goat made it alive, bit he did. It was bloated and wormy and sold for $4, whoever bought it just wasted their money, that goat wont be alive next saturday. . But, the "old timers" at the barn all say that we are going to have a very rough winter this year. We will see. I am ready for a good hard winter myself, just pray for no ice.

In the ice storm of 07 i lost a LOT of trees. The sound of the silence and then to hear one breaking and falling was eery and beautiful at the same time. It took a very long time to clean up the mess. Thankfully we were only out of power a short amount of time while H hooked up the generator. After that winter i invested in a natural gas generator that automatically comes on if the power goes out. Best investment ever.

Well, ive been all over the place with this post, just thought id keep you company for a minute.

Emma

Thanks, Emma, I needed that. I know very little about live stock, but I am exposed to them a little. I grew up on this place, but Dad died young and I was not exposed to much farm life. After I was grown mom married the man that had land next door. All but 127 acres have been sold, and most of what is left is leases out. I only have a little over two acres, but that is about all I can take care of.

Larry

There is nothing boring about gardening or pictures of gardening in my opinion.

I have people all the time ask me "don't you have a life". I say yes thank you I do have an awesome life.

watching my garden grow and learning from here on what works and doesn't work is FUN and I am enjoying it.
kim

Larry, That's a cute solution. With the shirt in the tee-shirt sling/hammock, and the Pepsi can sitting there, it looks like you're getting to write a book on how to raise large, well-dressed squash fed with Pepsi. : )

Those deformed tomatoes result from some sort of pollination issue. I see such oddities a little every year, but more often in spring when we are still having some cold nights at the time the tomatoes are blooming and setting fruit.

Many of the C. moschata squashes, like your monster squash from Brazil, must have a tropical or semi-tropical origin, because the hotter it gets, the better they grow and the bigger they get. The first year I grew Cushaw squash, there were some that were almost too big for me to pick up and carry easily. I'm guessing they were 40 lbs. Due to their shape and slick rind, you cannot just throw them over your shoulder like a heavy sack of chicken feed. A lot of those big squash varieties produce such large squash that it can take forever to cut up and use just one of them. It is a good thing they are long keepers.

Emma, I have lots of boring days in the summer too, especially when it is just too hot to stay outside for very long. I mean, there's always housework, laundry, cleaning and cooking but those are on my 'boring' list too, though I still do them, of course.

By a bad winter, do you mean a cold and stormy one? That would be great for George's grasshopper problem because there's fewer hoppers in the growing seasons that follow a cold, wet winter and a very wet spring.

I used to love summer and hate winter, but now it is sort of the opposite. I can work outside endlessly in the winter but the heat sure does drive me inside in the summer. The older I get, the more that spring and fall have become my favorite seasons.

Dawn

Hey Larry, if you live near Tulsa and want to see an auction sometime, just give me a shout and we will take you to ours, I will teach you all you never wanted to know about goats and auctions!

Dawn, the old guys basically said because of the rain this late in the season, the cooler summer, and not having had much of a winter for the past few years that this one will be a "cold, hard winter". Now what that means as far as precipitation, I don't know. I listen to what they have to say and a lot of times they are right and sometimes they aren't, but I love talking to them.

I'm like you, I used to love summer, hate winter, but at this stage in my life, I've flip flopped and can't wait for winter to come, I love spring! I used to love fall and still do to a certain extent, but my allergies have gotten sooo bad and when the ragweed starts blooming close to fall, I stay miserable. I spent all day cleaning the lake house, the boring work, because my H had a guys weekend here with his closest friend and then all the kids and grand kids came up and it was beyond dirty. Husband thinks if things are put away that it's clean, sigh....men! But, it's a different house and for some reason easier to clean than mine back at home, so I didn't mind too much.

We went to see the move 2 guns with Denzel and Mark Walburg at the theatre here late this afternoon. It was funny, but a lot of cussing. So all in all a good weekend.

Hoping we got a good rain at home like we did here today, I will know when I get home tomorrow. If we did, it will only be 2-3 times that I've had to water my tomato patch this entire summer. That's pretty amazing in itself.

Made my salsa today with about 7 good sized tomatoes I brought from home. I was wondering if anyone ever gave any thought to how a tomato can taste mildly salty straight from the vine. That plant I have that had the weird spots on it but ripened up ok are the best tasting tomatoes I've had in a long time. I saved 1 of them for DH and I to share and I swear, it needed no salt, and he says the same thing. Very weird. Anyone ever experienced this?

Larry, is that giant squash some kind of zucchini????

Emma

Wow!

Emma, the name of the squash is Menina Rajada Seca. I think it is some kind of winter squash. I have not found a lot of info on it. It appears that it needs a 140 to 160 day growing. I have found some literature that suggest a shorter growing season, but it is not happy until it gets hot. It is native to Brazil and much of the info I have found is written in Portuguese and I cant read it.

I am trying some new (to me) plant this year and having fun with them.

Larry, Everything that I can find says that it is a butternut type squash and I saw weight listed as anything from 15 to 40 pounds. Hope you like squash.

Emma, Yes, there are some varieties of tomatoes that often are described as having a natural saltiness as a component of their flavor.

I'd like to have a cold, hard winter minus any damaging ice storms. The cold hard winters can be really hard on pests like grasshoppers whose eggs overwinter in the soil.

Larry, As Carol said, it is described as a butternut. Most of the winter squash in the C. moschata family are similar to a butternut in their flavor, texture and use. You can use them the same way you'd use any winter squash or pumpkin, including in squash or pumpkin soup, casseroles, etc. In addition, the C. moschata types I've grown all have made fine pumpkin pies, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, etc. Some of the C. moschatas have good flavor and texture when harvested small and used like zucchini as well.

In a good year we get far more C. moschatas than we ever possibly could eat, especially since I usually don't even start harvesting them until August....so you get a whole lot of them harvested from August until November or whenever your first hard freeze hits. Luckily, they store practically forever and their flavor can actually improve in storage.

I choose the best ones for storage, and then just pile up the others in the autumn in wheelbarrows and wagons as part of decorative autumn displays., along with autumn types of flowers like marigolds, goldenrod and mums as well as gourds, decorative corn, corn stalks and scarecrows.

Dawn