When will he make it end??

Microgreens

To hear Ron tell it, the farm and all it entails, is my fault. This was my idea and he is just helping me out to make it successful. Don’t you believe it! (this is from Tom and Jerry cartoon and should be read in spooky voice). From the first raised bed in our backyard to buying a farm, this has been all him. Every time I think we are getting settled into a solid place with Tiny House Farm, Ron throws everything out of whack. He had shoulder surgery in January and was out of work for two weeks. It was just two weeks, people, but he was bored out of his mind by the end of the first day.

Ron has always had a serious addiction to YouTube videos and will search it whenever he has a project and needs some advice on it. But he also searches the site for new and interesting things to do. During those two weeks, he watched, I don’t know how many videos on a number of different subjects.


Which is why THF is now experimenting with microgreens. These are young seedlings of edible vegetables and herbs harvested less than 14 days after germination. They are usually about 1-3 inches long and come in a rainbow of colors. Basically you use the same seeds you would grow a full sized plant from, but you eat these when they are still tiny; just a few inches tall. Microgreens should not be confused with or compared to sprouts.

Sites such as WebMD tout the nutritional value of these tiny plants. There has been a serious amount of research done, and most scientists agree that microgreens have up to 40 times more vital nutrients than mature plants. Of course some plants have more bang for their buck. As with regular sized plants, the most intensely colored ones will have the most nutrition. Microgreens can add incredible flavor to salads, soups, stews, pizzas, egg dishes, potato dishes, sandwiches, pasta dishes – and anywhere else your imagination takes you.

This was soon in my living room. Ron started ordering things that came in large boxes. A large tub, trays, seeds, lights, racks, sprayers and, of all things, a mini Shopvac. I was lucky in that we already had a Brita water filter that he could use, but he needed a PH tester in order to make sure our water was good to use. Turns out our tap water is alkaline and needed to be tweaked. Our costs would have just gone up if he had to buy special water to use. And that was a good thing as growing microgreens takes a lot of water.

And the water issue has been the biggest pain in the butt. Ron runs our water through the Brita water filter, into an empty water jug and then works to adjust the PH. This he does by adding a few drops of vinegar. You would think this would be easy enough. Just add the same amount of vinegar to the same amount of water in the jug and all should be well, right? Well, not so much. He sets out to get 4 gallon jugs of water ready to go and each one came up with a different reading. More vinegar and then more water added again and again. This seems to be his Achilles’ heel.

The growing process itself is simple enough. You soak purchased OMRI certified coconut coir pads in your PH balanced water for 24 hours, I already had a pot large to hold 16 of the pads at one time. (thanks Gram). Then you wring the pads out, lay them on a rack in a tray and then cover with your seeds. Four pads per tray and eight total in your growing trays. Those are the green ones on right side. Turns out it is pretty difficult to get the seeds evenly spread on each pad. The blasted things bounce all over the place. After you get the seeds in place you have to move the pads to another tray and then pour in more water. You are trying to get each pad thoroughly soaked, so it “sparkles”. Then you move them onto the white spacers in your green tray. Each move results in more seeds falling off the pads. Oh, and you have to spray the seeds with hydrogen peroxide. And the green tray and spacers.


Each tray is covered with a Styrofoam lid and left to sit overight. Then for the next few nights, you spray each tray for 30 seconds and cover it again. It only takes a few days before the seeds start to sprout.

Based on germination tables. the cover is taken off and the seeds are then under lights. . We started with kale, radishes, peas, kohlrabi and my personal favorite, shown below, leeks.

These things are just so pretty. As backyard gardeners we have always grown our veggies from seed but are used to seeing one or two seedlings. Not a carpet of plants like these.

Once the cover is off, you no longer spray the plants. Water is poured into each tray, making sure it is deep enough for the roots to reach it. Ron discovered that my fat separator is the perfect vessel to pour water with. It measures out one cup at a time and has a spout for easy pouring. I was just happy that we didn’t need to buy another item for this project. Though I did lose one of my cooling racks and a colander. Now it is a matter of judgement to decide just when these microgreens are ready to cut. We are not cutting them off the pads to sell, but cutting the pads themselves. Each one is cut into thirds and then placed into a food safe container. Yes, that meant more boxes arrived. Ron did serious research to find the right container. They had to be food safe and clear so the product could shine. He found one that was made in the US and partially with solar energy. Made with 70% recycled materials and is recyclable itself.

Timely is everything as our first batch of peas went a day or two too long and we had to crunch them into the container. We packed them up into shopping bags and took them to work. Our test subjects were more eager to try them. They used them in salads, as garnish on eggs and in bone broth. Ron and I sprinkled our leeks on potatoes to give them a solid burst of flavor.

We have been practicing for the last month, trying to get the growing time from start to finish locked in. In Ron’s effort to get this just right he bought a new set of lights. Yea, more boxes in our living room. The lights were pretty cool too. LEDs running at 6500 K that cost much less to use and are designed for easy instillation. No need for the lights to be set inside a bracket system. And each set has its own on / off switch.

Ron has been posting some of our photos on THF Instagram site and they have received positive feedback. We are hoping that our current shiitake customers will become microgreen customers too. Our first real attempt at selling them will take place at the Cornel Cooperative Extension Herb and Flower fest on June 15, 2019.

I really should have sprung for a TV streaming service for him. It would have been much cheaper.

We be in the “pink” on THF

Our 3 Acres

Just as January was winding down, Ron went out to THF to cut some of our pink pussy willows. Last year we made no attempt to work with them. It was the second year of growth and we made the decision to just let them be. Of course the deer out there made no such commitment.   Last spring we found gnawed off ends on most of the plants.  A disheartening  sight to be sure.

I assume it was the deer, but we do have rabbits on the farm too and I guess they could be the culprits. No way to know for sure.   We really do want them to grow well on THF. In the early spring their nectar and pollen are a much needed food source for local bees. And who doesn’t want to help out the bees? And as a bonus, they are lovely to look at too.

Anyway, Ron came home with the cuttings and put them into a jar with a few inches of water. This was to force the “pink” color to show.  Then we waited.  And nothing much happened.  Ron always has a vision of the final product in his head.  And he will do whatever it takes to make it come fruition.  But even he cannot fight Mother Nature.   So in early February and then a few weeks later, the two of us headed out to cut more and this time to grab some dogwood twigs.  For contrasting color in the arrangements he had planned.

By that time we actually had more pussy willows to cut too.   Apparently the guidelines are that you need to have at least 10 catkins on each branch and no major empty spaces.  Especially near the top.   You want each of them to look their best and a lopped off or empty top does not improve things.


Now that we had our pussy willows in hand, the next step was to find inexpensive vases for them. Ron’s hope is that we will be able to sell vases of our willows for Valentine’s Day with the red twig dogwoods and maybe a red ribbon or heart. So Jo, Ron and I hit the thrift stores in Syracuse looking for clear vases of just the right size. We were not sure if we would find enough for our purposes. But we did, as unneeded vases were everywhere.

Ron had specific styles and sizes in mind and these are the ones we came home with. They also had to be under a dollar. While the pussy willows would look even more special in a fancy vase, the goal is to keep our costs down. I put a couple of the vases into use by stuffing some of the willows into them. I want to dry them so we can use them as a display at our events. People sometimes do need a visual aid in order to see what is possible. Adding the Easter eggs is a nice touch, don’t you think? The dried ones could be out year round and decorated for just about any occasion. Maybe some tiny Christmas ornaments come December? Shamrocks in March, turkeys in November and hearts in February?

One added bonus to rooting our own pussy willows, we were left with what is known as pussy willow tea. Once your willows have some great roots growing and you get them planted, you can use the left over water to root other plants. This is because all willows have a natural rooting hormone and the water they sat in is now infused with this hormone.

The red twig dog wood cuttings we left in the bucket sprang to life in our living room. We actually had some flower buds showing. It will be interesting to see how well they transplant once the weather gets and stays warmer. We have a good number of the pussy willows that rooted too and will plant them all on THF. Going on the advice from gardening site, Ron has a vision of a solid hedge of willows. At least this vision will be easy enough to make happen. As long as Mother Nature cooperates. And the deer stay away.

What else you got?

Mushrooms,

This is what Ron swears each of THF’s restaurant customers asked him on a regular basis. He used this line as his justification to start a new project. We already have a set of logs that we hope with grow nameko mushrooms and made one attempt at totem growing of oyster mushrooms. We did have some success with the oysters, but using


this method meant there was no way for us to force fruiting and that we would just have to wait for nature to take it’s course. That was not going to work for Ron.

So last summer he decided he wanted to try growing oyster mushrooms in buckets. He decided on the PoHu strain as they are considered the most productive one. This is an even more complicated process that inoculating shiitake logs. First he had to find a deal on and buy food grade white buckets. And we are now the proud owners of a huge clambake pot with insert along with the heater needed for it. Just where the heck are we going to store that when not in use?

When he had all the supplies on hand; the work started. He had to measure, mark and drill holes in each bucket. This is what the mushrooms will grow out of. Then he had to chop the straw that he would layer with the spawn in said buckets. He did this out at THF as it is messy job. He shoved it all into a couple of garbage bags and brought them home with him. Chopping is not only necessary for ease of use, but for getting rid of the seeds. We learned that harsh lesson last year. Once the straw was ready, it now needed to be pasteurized. That meant lining the pot insert with one of our old sheets and filling it with the straw. That was dropped down into the pot and it was filled with water. The pot, of course was already sitting on the heating element. Heat was applied and then he waited for the water to reach between 160 to 180 degrees. It has to remain there for 2 hours in order to be pasteurized. This involved Ron’s best work. He sat in a chair several feet from pot and waited. Making sure the flame did not go out and that the temp stayed relatively constant.

Once the straw was ready he called me on me to help with the really hard part. We had to lift the insert filled with soaking wet straw out of the pot and carry it to the set up tables.

While I am a seriously hard worker and have a strong back (thank you parents), I don’t have as much upper body strength as I needed. It was a nearly impossible task. I honestly don’t know how we did. Not once but numerous times of the course of this project. Every time we did this I tried to think of some way for us to get it done easier. Ron is now planning to have a hoist system built. He is going to move the process out to THF this year and wants to be able to get it done by himself.

The tables were covered with plastic sheeting and the straw filled sheet was laid out on top of it. We spread it out, making sure to keep the straw inside the sheet. Then we covered the whole thing up with the sides of plastic to keep assorted things like bugs out. Now he waited as it had to cool enough to be handled.

The marked buckets were given a quick spray of cleaner and with food grade gloves on, Ron layered the straw and oyster spawn into the bucket. He packed it down solidly after each layer and filled it to the top. Then the lid was banged on and it was ready to be taken out to THF.

Of course that was not the end of the work. Each bucket to set inside a black plastic bag with a wood cross piece on top to keep the plastic away from the side. And every couple of days they had to be looked over and misted.

Once the mushrooms were truly showing, they were taken out of the plastic bag and just set on the table. This year was mostly an experiment to see if Ron could get them to grow and what time frame they needed. He wants to have another type of mushroom he can sell when he needs to. I hope he was paying attention to the time frame, because I wasn’t.

Though all of the pictures I took might just come in handy. If only we had numbered each bucket so we knew what series they were part of. That specific info would probably be helpful this year. Being Ron, he now has plans to expand production. To that end he is going to have his Amish builder come up with a rack system for him to use. Ron has the plans in his head. The hard part will be getting the rest of us to understand it. The buckets will be suspended along the rack so he has easier access to them for spraying and harvesting.

He can’t wait to get started with the building this spring. Personally I am more worried about what Jo will talk her dad into. She loves the shiitakes and thinks the oysters are great too. They have a mild flavor and a velvety texture. She was looking over the Field and Forest Products catalog and has grand plans to grow more of the mushrooms they offer. Just what we need in our already complicated life.

THF wrap-up for 2018

Our 3 Acres, ,

This is the time of year when all of us sit and look back to see what we have done and how far we have come.   We had some major changes at THF and more than a few ups and downs.   Money was spent on repairing our equipment such as our fabulous and much needed trailer/wagon.  We use it to haul just about everything around the farm.  Money was made by selling our shiitakes and my new skin care products.  We added a third event to our schedule and kept our eyes open for any other potential customers.   New people were met and a wonderful friend, Bob Crane was lost.

The weather played havoc with our schedule and plans.  Too much rain at the wrong times kept us from harvesting, planting and painting.  Yes, we had more painting to do.  Ron finally moved forward on getting buildings for THF.  It was a big deal when our shed arrived.  It was Amish made and just what we needed to store our equipment.  Well remembering the time involved in painting our first tiny house, we decided to have the builder paint the shed for us.  We still have a few tweaks do to.  I want to paint green around the windows and door to break up the massive sameness.   And we desperately need more of Ron’s whimsies to hang on the building.   Especially now that it has been moved.

Yes, after all the time and effort Ron spent to have the shed set in just the right position, he decided to have it moved.   He pulled the trigger and had the same Amish man build another shed for him.  The two families we have been working with have been a huge help to us.   Ron has plans for them to build him a few other things over the next few years.   And kids are just delightful.   The second shed is bigger so we can use as for processing our products.  Cleaning and bagging the shiitakes, sorting the elderberries and drying our calendula and lavender.

Once Ron decided where he wanted this new building, he also decided this was the time to move the shed too. He did not like the current location as it got too much sun and there is no way the two fans we had installed would keep the shed cool enough to dry but not damage either our lavender or calendula. So we had two cement slabs poured. Though I fretted about our budget, it was exciting to move forward with his plans.

By the time both sheds were moved into their new spots it was late November and too late to get a coat of primer on it. Hey, I have a great idea. We need to have a painting event come spring. I am sure we will have lots of volunteers for that project

You can tell from this photo that we had one big project that didn’t get done. We had planned to mow down the proposed future site of our juneberries and get the landscape cloth rows set up. We just didn’t get to it. Too much rain, too many other things to get done and too much inference from our normal daily lives. Things like our jobs caused us to miss some wonderful THF work days.

I continued working on my calendula products, though by the time our events started I stopped making our goat’s milk soap. I had enough of that to sell in 2018. I did learn that soap making can be wonderful fun but frustrating. You will remember that my first attempt of making soap was a simple calendula soap and the bar Josi and I made turned out great. I decided to try making more but this time a double batch using larger molds. I used the on-line lye calculator which is a fabulous tool for all soap makers. It will take any recipe and allow you to increase or decrease the batch size. Or change your ingredients but always making sure you end up with a usable bar of soap. What they can not help you with is making sure you pay attention to your process. When I poured the soap into the molds, I immediately realized something was wrong. I didn’t have enough to completely fill both molds. I couldn’t figure what I had missed. While driving home from work the next day, it hit me. I had not added enough water. I used the amount from the original recipe.

That is when I learned about rebatching. That is when you chop up your not quite right soap and melt it down, adding what you need in order to fix it. That goodness I had a large crockpot to use for this.

I actually kinda like the way it turned out. But it was a lot of extra work. Especially as you cannot be sure you have fixed the problem. This was not the end of my troubles. I tried again with the same recipe but this time it was too oily. I think that was because I put the soap molds right into the insulated box I used for the goat’s milk soap. That meant the soap stayed hot much longer that it should have. So crockpot to the rescue again.

In the middle of all this I also made my first attempt at elderberry jelly. And that turned out to be a huge success. I cannot wait until we have it ready to sell. I plan to make more from the berries I have stashed in our freezer. Our elderberries bushes produced so many berries. I make elderberry tincture and syrup. We sold more than a few pounds, gave away some and froze the rest. I deliberately did this in order to have jelly to sell at the CCE Herb and Flower Fest in June 2019. That means more work between now and then as Ron has to come up with the label design. But first we have to decide on the right jar. Needs to be 4 ounces and able to go into a water bath. We are thinking that the Ball jelly jars while the right size and easy to pick up locally, will not work. Their quilted outside will not take a label easily.

Another hit we had was the pawpaw butter I made. Ron came home with a box of pawpaws from Cornell and I stumbled onto a recipe to turn them into a butter. I learned one of the best ways to cook the pawpaws too. You peel the soft fruit and then toss the whole thing in to the pot. Once it is cooked enough you run it through a fool mill to remove the seeds and any peel that is still in there. It was a solid home run from almost everyone we had try it. Now we just have to wait to have our own fruit to use. That will a few more years. I really do like being able to offer more than one nonperishable product that I can make ahead and not worry about. And both the jelly and butter would be wonderful on a toasted English muffin.

We had a huge set back with our garlic. We had planted 4 rows again in 2017 and were expecting to see another great harvest. But it was not to be. We are not quite sure what happened but we tossed out more than we salvaged and got the remaining set up for curing by hanging it from the rails in our work tent.

Once it was fully cured we moved it to the shed. That was another mistake as time got away from us and we left it there too long. We had a surprise cold spell here. And by cold I mean several days well below 32 degrees. When we finally got out to pull it in, we discovered it had frozen and then thawed. We had to toss most of it. It was very depressing.

Also depressing was the set back I had with growing calendula. I had watched a video from a farm in Maine that grows this herb and they used a bed of straw as mulch. Since we had a bale left over, I thought it would be a good idea. Yeah, it really wasn’t. We didn’t think much of it when the straw started growing in the beds, thinking we could spend some time weeding it out. Of course that didn’t happen either.

In the beginning the flowers were lovely and grew much better than Ron expected.

This is what I had come fall. You can barely see a few yellow flowers amid all the straw. Now I have to wait until spring so I can mow all the old dead stuff down and try again with more seeds and serious commitment to weed pulling. We left most of flower heads to go to seed and drop where they where. I did snag seeds from a few orange flowers to grow next year for sale. We are going to plant again next year in our old garlic rows.

We have January, February and March hash out our plans for 2019. There will be another log inoculation event, more planting, much more weeding, and painting. Lots of decisions to make and assorted mistakes too. And I will certainly collect a few more bruises. But we will have tons of fun, meet more great people and if all goes well, we will make some money in the bargain. We are all really looking forward to it.

We be pawpawing

PawPaws

We had come home from the pawpaw festival with saplings in order to fill in the empty spots in our “orchard”. It was hard enough to decide which variety we brought home, but now the really hard part started.  We had to plant the buggers. We were expecting the process to be easier than the first planting.  Not so much. The problem was the weeds that we had allowed to grow. We had to locate each previous planting spot and then rip out all the stuff we needed gone.   The recent rain also meant we had not been able to get out there with the brush hog before starting the project.   So everything was over grown.

We did not make our usual early start on September 30.  Now that fall is nearly here we have to wait for the sun to come up and the temps to get a bit higher.  As I pulled out the weeds, I had to be careful not to yank out the pawpaw too. It was easy enough to identify the ones that were actually growing,  but so many were just sticks. Those I had to tug on and if they resisted, they stayed. The mulch had to be pulled away from them and more dirt added. I think that one of our problems was the depression we left the first time. It allowed the rain to pool and from what I read, pawpaws don’t like wet feet.  As I pulled the mulch and then the weed cloth away, we were delighted to find actual signs of life on more and more of our “sticks”.

We had brought our generator out to THF as it was needed in order to run the big drill.  Ron would use that to re-dig the planting holes.  While he worked on that, I kept yanking out weeds.  I reached the end of the first row and grabbed a handful of the tall white flowers to pull out.  They came out easily but they brought some lovely ground wasps with them.  Within seconds they were all around me so I dropped my tools and bolted.  Ron had no clue why I was heading his way until he heard me yell BEES.  He took off his hat and preceded to smack them.  What he didn’t realize is that the hat’s buckle had come apart and every time he swung it, the metal buckle hit my ear.  He was so intent on the wasps that he didn’t even hear me yelling to stop.  I pulled off my fleece jacket (thank goodness I had that on) and we ran to the shed.   We waited for about 10 minutes before venturing out to find they had dispersed.  Needless to say, I did not finish weeding the end of that row.

Weeding, drilling and planting.  The two of us worked our way up and down the rows, filling in where needed.  This was really one of the hardest work days I had been through in a while.  It was the weed pulling itself that got to me.  By the end of the day, my back and arms were massively sore.

Ron decided he wanted to put the cages back on this year.  He is hoping they will give just a bit more protection to the plants so they make it safely through this winter.

By 3:30 we were finally done. Every one of our new plants had found a home.  In fact we could have used two more.  Those were the holes we did not get to because of the wasps.  We still had dozens of seeds waiting in the frig so maybe a couple of those will survive and fill in the gap for us.  Ron marked the older plants with a red flag.  The new ones had no flag but the cage.  The ones we had hope for but had only tiny signs of life were left without cage or flag.   We ended up with 19 survivors from our 2016 planting which was so much better than the 8 ones we had previously counted.   With the addition of the 18 we got in PA,  we are back to our original amount.  As the new plants were grown in a region that has similar winter weather, we are more than hopeful that they will not only survive but thrive here.   Ron come home with these higher expectations after he went out to Cornell University yesterday to attend a workshop on pawpaws.  He got a lecture from Andrew Moore who wrote the book Pawpaw: In search of America’s forgotten fruit.  I mentioned him two years ago as he was a speaker at the Mother Earth News Fair.  He also got a tour of Cornell’s pawpaw orchard and came home with a basket full of fruit.

During our research we have learned that pawpaws are eaten by everything from foxes to squirrels, racoons and opossums.  But nothing eats the tree itself or the seeds.  It takes from 5 to 6 years of growing before you will see any of the fruit itself.   And this is the only host plant for the zebra swallowtail butterfly.  

Which is just fabulous.  I cannot wait to see the first one out on THF.  We have been making some of our plant choices based on whether it is native to our area and almost more importantly, what insects it attracts.  It will take a few more years before we see the results from our planting of coneflowers, milkweed and other wild flowers.   And I cannot wait.

Paw Paw Festival in Hallam, PA

Learning Adventures

Yes, this is a thing.  Thankfully this was a one day event but it did involve a five hour drive down to Pennsylvania again and a hotel stay.  I am going to push Ron to find more events that are close enough for us to drive there and back in the same day.  New York needs to step up its game.  Ron decided it would be better for us to head down Friday after work, spend the night and then go to the festival on Saturday morning.  A good plan in my mind as this meant we didn’t have to get up at crack of dawn and drive down in order to get there for opening time at 11 am.  Actually Ron would want us to be at the gate about 10 am so we can be first in line.  He really likes doing that. Besides it gives him time to chat with the other early birds.

The Friday night drive started out with scrambling to get out of the house.  Ron, of course was home with a cold.  Rotten timing on his part.  I had arranged to work from home so I did not have to lose time on the drive home before we headed out.  It was a slap dash run out the door.  This time I did remember my toothbrush and the glass measuring cup I use in a microwave for my tea water.  As it was only one night, we didn’t bring a cooler or any food.  Snacks is what we forgot.  I try to bring something to eat on every trip, just in case.  Zombie apocalypse could happen any time, and we really should be prepared.

We ran in some of that annoying mist, serious fog and traffic on our drive to York, PA.  But it wasn’t too bad.  We stopped to grab a quick bite for dinner and arrived at the hotel just before 9 pm.  Car was unloaded and I, for one, tried to fall asleep.  That is when I realized what I had forgotten.  My ear plugs and sleep mask.  That made for a long night.  Ron always has to unwind with TV before he goes to sleep.   But it was the traffic outside the hotel that made the night so hard.  We were on the second floor and the noise was constant and loud.  I don’t think my ear plugs would have made much of a difference.

Anyway, I was up early (think well before dawn) and restless.  As Ron was still sleeping, I didn’t want to turn on the TV, so I got some clothes on and went walking.  There were 4 floors in the hotel so I went up and down, back and forth and chatted with the few staff members who were also up and about.   I don’t remember the last time Ron slept past 6 am before, but it was 7:30 before he finally woke up.  The cold really did a number on him.  Thank goodness we had separate beds.   I simply refuse to catch his cold.

The folks behind the festival were on top of things and sent out an email telling those who were on their FB page about road closures in the area.  The remnants of Hurricane Florence had hit this area too.

We could still see the after effects along our way.  The amount of water that came through here had to have been very scary.

As usual we were early to the Paw Paw Fest, but were not the first people there.  There were a few vendors already set up and Ron headed over to talk with Lori Shellenberger from Nurturing Nature Nursery about the paw paw plants she had for sale.

The plan this weekend was to come home with some paw paws and a dozen or so saplings to plant.  The ones we planted two years ago did not do as well as we hoped.  It does take 5 years of patience before you have the chance of fruit being picked, but we lost quite a few plants.  It was very sad when I gave a gentle tug on the stems we planted and more than I liked pulled out in my hand.  The others either have leaves or resisted my tug.  Fingers crossed that we will see life in them next year.  Personally I think we are going to have to expand our paw paw area.  I have 18 pots ready to go at home with my attempt at growing from seed.  That of course will take years, but I can be patient.

I was amazed at the number of people who came to try paw paws.  Most of them had never had one before.  They had stations set up with slices of different varieties of paw paw for every one to try.  Just like apples, there are serious differences in the varieties.  Some are creamer, others taste more of melon.  When I had people at work try the ones we came home with, some told me they tasted apple or pear. There were muffins, popsicles, salsa and ice cream for us to try too.  The ice cream was hands down, the best thing.  I am really looking forward to trying out some recipes with our own paw paws.

We spent a few hours at the festival and learned a few more helpful things about growing paw paws.  And I found a possible secondary use for the seeds.  Earrings.  Fair warning.  A set just might be in your future.

Our ride home was a simply a nice drive with great weather and very little traffic.    Even though we were only gone for one night, it was so good to be home.  I think I am done with trips for awhile.  But I have to say, for a spur of the moment idea,  this was a good one.  After 30 years, Ron’s Adventure Tours is still going strong.