Today's harvest includes five Hot Lemon peppers, one "Purple Fairy" tomato, and three grape tomatoes.
9/28/16 Harvest - six Hot Lemon peppers, one "Purple Fairy" tomato, and three grape tomatoes.
I'd like to take a moment to discuss the "Purple Fairy" tomato - and to explain why I keep putting it in quotations. In 2014 I bought some tomato seeds from eBay that were labeled "Purple Fairy" tomatoes... The listing was from another country, so I had no way of knowing if the seeds were truly a different variety, or just something with a name lost in translation.
I planted some of the seeds in 2014 - the year our garden didn't quite take off as planned and the tomato plants I had so diligently cared for from seedlings in the house under grow lights were left to languish in their nursery cups, hidden in the overgrown grass in the yard for some time before being set on the patio. They never did get transplanted. The one "Purple Fairy" plant produced two tomatoes, which the slugs loved. The tomatoes were small and oblong, and thick like a paste tomato. I saved the seeds as they were definitely survivors. Given their harsh treatment they still produced fruit, when so many of my poor tomato plants did not that year.
I planted some of the seeds in 2014 - the year our garden didn't quite take off as planned and the tomato plants I had so diligently cared for from seedlings in the house under grow lights were left to languish in their nursery cups, hidden in the overgrown grass in the yard for some time before being set on the patio. They never did get transplanted. The one "Purple Fairy" plant produced two tomatoes, which the slugs loved. The tomatoes were small and oblong, and thick like a paste tomato. I saved the seeds as they were definitely survivors. Given their harsh treatment they still produced fruit, when so many of my poor tomato plants did not that year.
Purple Fairy Tomato?
Which brings me to this year's first ripe "Purple Fairy" tomato. I picked it up off the ground where it had been knocked off of a small cluster of similar tomatoes. I was surprised to find that the label was for "Purple Fairy" - a tomato that did not produce clusters or round fruits last time. In fact, if I had not had a label at all, I'd say this looks exactly like a Violet Jasper tomato! Problem is, I didn't plant any Violet Jasper this year. So, I can't save seed from it this year because I don't want to label this as "Purple Fairy" when it clearly looks like Violet Jasper, and I don't want to label it as "Violet Jasper" when it came from seeds of a different variety.
Or Violet Jasper tomato?
The Hot Lemon peppers came from a store-bought plant. It's actually a very happy plant that is quite bushy and has dozens of green peppers all over it. I've been checking every few days for yellow, and today there was some yellow down in the center of the plant. Unfortunately the really yellow one had cracks all over, though it doesn't look nibbled. The half yellow one is the only other one I pulled off the plant. The three green ones were on the ground. That darn rabbit keeps knocking all my tomatoes and peppers off the plants before they're ripe!
Hot Lemon peppers
I'm not one for spicy foods, so I really got the hot peppers for Tony and my brother. Both of them prefer a little kick and after-burn with their food. Of course I didn't realize that I'd end up with almost exclusively hot peppers. The mild ones didn't seem to do as well, though I still have three bell peppers out there that are still green. Three bells for the dozens of hots I'm growing. Alas, as long as they don't go to waste it wasn't a waste of space. Next year I will try to do a lot more with sweet peppers.
Hot Lemon peppers
The surprise grape tomato plants are doing well. The one in the front raised bed actually stands taller than the trellis, dwarfing the bean and cucumber vines. They're ripening to an odd orange green color, but they don't seem to get all the way orange ... Or it could be that #3 and #5 eat them all before they get the chance to ripen on the counter. It's nice to have these unexpected bonuses. Thank you bunny fertilizer for the bonus tomato seedlings that volunteered without the help of a grow light, hardening off, or wintersowing! Again, the green one was on the ground, I didn't pick it.
Surprise grape tomatoes
I've been watching the house that we want, and yesterday it disappeared. The listing on all MLS websites was removed, and a couple of other websites labeled it as "delisted." I got a hold of our real estate agent - who is on vacation to the Bahamas - and it's a technical contract issue with the previous offer. From my understanding, the house checked out with their inspection, and everything was good, but the person putting in the offer was told they'd put a lean on her home (not entirely sure what that means) and she decided to back out of the offer. Now the bank that owns the property has to wait for her to officially sign a paper that says she's no longer interested so they can get out of the contract (that was created when they accepted her offer).
Since Tony went ahead and asked our real estate agent to put in an offer on our behalf (without checking with the bank to see if we still could get the funding after buying the new vehicle), we are next in line, should they accept our offer... I am hopeful that everything lines up. This property is pretty ideal. It has a water source, only one nearby neighbor, huge open field for potential garden, orchard, or pasture, plenty of woods for the kids to play in and explore, mature apple trees, an area where a garden used to be (with mature rhubarb already growing), a young weeping willow (one of my favorites), a huge rope in the back yard to climb - or turn into a tire swing, a room in the basement that would be ideal for a pantry to store canned goods, the spiral staircase and loft bedroom that #1 wanted in her idea of "the perfect dream home," and it's all on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere... and now that Tony has a vehicle that isn't ready to fall apart, the extra travel time wouldn't be an issue. He's even worked it out for the one day a week that he works a close shift followed by an open shift that he can stay at my parents' house in their spare bedroom so he won't have to drive all the way home - saving him time and gas and giving him an extra hour and a half of sleep.
Of course, the realist in me on the other hand is admonishing myself for letting my hopes and dreams cloud my common sense. Why would the bank adhere to our pre-approval after we just took on an additional $320 per month in car payments? I don't (realistically) think that we will qualify for an additional $500 per month mortgage when we're functioning as a family of seven on a single income. Yes, I think we could make it work with minimal disruption to our everyday lives, but I don't think that a bank will agree. We aren't like a normal family. We rarely eat out, we rarely go to movies, we don't take vacations. Right now a majority of extra income is going toward bonus things - like the little kennel we just bought for the extra buck rabbits, the new auto-shelter we will be using as a bunny barn, and for the scratch-post project that I still haven't gotten to. We went for years feeding our family on $50 a week, scrounging leftovers from my parents', and making it all work. We've only just recently started to eat out occasionally and see a movie sometimes on $5 Tuesdays. These are added privileges that we can easily do without and not feel like we're missing out as we so rarely do them anyway and have not done them in many years before. We do not watch television, though we do have a Roku that gives us access to Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon. There have been times when we have had to cancel these subscriptions too, and we survived just fine. We can definitely make a mortgage work (from a strictly financial standpoint), especially if it opens up opportunities to grow more food for ourselves, delve into permaculture, and gives us a bigger kitchen to work in to can, dehydrate, and process our garden bounty. Unfortunately, I don't think that's how banks make their decisions on who they loan money to.
Since Tony went ahead and asked our real estate agent to put in an offer on our behalf (without checking with the bank to see if we still could get the funding after buying the new vehicle), we are next in line, should they accept our offer... I am hopeful that everything lines up. This property is pretty ideal. It has a water source, only one nearby neighbor, huge open field for potential garden, orchard, or pasture, plenty of woods for the kids to play in and explore, mature apple trees, an area where a garden used to be (with mature rhubarb already growing), a young weeping willow (one of my favorites), a huge rope in the back yard to climb - or turn into a tire swing, a room in the basement that would be ideal for a pantry to store canned goods, the spiral staircase and loft bedroom that #1 wanted in her idea of "the perfect dream home," and it's all on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere... and now that Tony has a vehicle that isn't ready to fall apart, the extra travel time wouldn't be an issue. He's even worked it out for the one day a week that he works a close shift followed by an open shift that he can stay at my parents' house in their spare bedroom so he won't have to drive all the way home - saving him time and gas and giving him an extra hour and a half of sleep.
Of course, the realist in me on the other hand is admonishing myself for letting my hopes and dreams cloud my common sense. Why would the bank adhere to our pre-approval after we just took on an additional $320 per month in car payments? I don't (realistically) think that we will qualify for an additional $500 per month mortgage when we're functioning as a family of seven on a single income. Yes, I think we could make it work with minimal disruption to our everyday lives, but I don't think that a bank will agree. We aren't like a normal family. We rarely eat out, we rarely go to movies, we don't take vacations. Right now a majority of extra income is going toward bonus things - like the little kennel we just bought for the extra buck rabbits, the new auto-shelter we will be using as a bunny barn, and for the scratch-post project that I still haven't gotten to. We went for years feeding our family on $50 a week, scrounging leftovers from my parents', and making it all work. We've only just recently started to eat out occasionally and see a movie sometimes on $5 Tuesdays. These are added privileges that we can easily do without and not feel like we're missing out as we so rarely do them anyway and have not done them in many years before. We do not watch television, though we do have a Roku that gives us access to Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon. There have been times when we have had to cancel these subscriptions too, and we survived just fine. We can definitely make a mortgage work (from a strictly financial standpoint), especially if it opens up opportunities to grow more food for ourselves, delve into permaculture, and gives us a bigger kitchen to work in to can, dehydrate, and process our garden bounty. Unfortunately, I don't think that's how banks make their decisions on who they loan money to.
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