Summer CSA (July 22)

My CSA share box gets seriously heavy in July, what with the tomatoes, potatoes, and melons. This was the harvest for this week: peppers, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, slicing tomatoes, "cherry" tomatoes, potatoes, watermelon, and a smooth skinned cantaloupe:

After the watermelon had cooled I split it and discovered it had yellow flesh! I can't remember ever tasting a watermelon as sweet as this. I emailed Sammy (the farmer) to get the variety name and to see if it was a hybrid or an open pollinated variety—if the latter, I could save the seeds. He said it was a hybrid that he got from Johnny's Selected Seeds, but couldn't remember the name. I looked on their site and Sunshine looks like it might be the variety. It was unbelievably good:

I also love the variety of "cherry" tomatoes Sammy grows. They rarely make it past the first day:

Giant Zucchini

This zucchini got too big before I noticed it, so I decided to just let it grow. I brought it in today since I was ready to pull the plant up. It's interesting that the longer this zucchini stayed on the plant, the weaker the plant got. It stopped putting out any new flowers and lots of the leaves began wilting. Since a plant's mission in life is to bear fruit and create seed for reproducing itself, I wondered if this zucchini being allowed to grow so large sent a signal to the plant that said, "Our work here is done." It weighs 4 pounds, 4 ounces:

In Praise of Compost

Back on June 2, I posted this picture of three "plants" (wasn't sure what they were at the time) that had sprouted at/near the base of a compost bin:

This is what they look like on July 24:

I think they are some variety of pumpkin squash, based on the early markings. I recall getting a pumpkin squash in my CSA share last summer which I never ate. It sat on my kitchen table through the winter and I composted it in the spring. So these plants are likely from those seeds. However, if the squash was a hybrid (rather than an OP [open pollinated] variety), it likely won't reproduce true to the parent. So it will be a surprise!

I think the robust growth of these plants is due in part to the alfalfa meal I put in the compost bin every time I add new raw material. It is a great nitrogen source for the bacteria and must be feeding these plants as well.

What Little Boys Do on the Way to School

This is a great video. It's a demonstration of how "balance bikes" -- bikes without pedals -- can be used to teach really little kids how to balance and steer bikes before they learn to ride with pedals. But the demonstration turns priceless seeing all the things this little guy does on his way to kindergarten, arriving just as the bell rings. The freedom and joy of being a tyke on a bike:

Pictures from Pella

Back when I joined Facebook, I started a Kruidenier Family Group for people with the last name "Kruidenier"—a rare enough name to create a small group. I haven't counted lately, but I think around 30+ Kruideniers have found the group and joined up from all over the world.

I looked at the Group's page the other day and found a note left by a nice lady in Pella, Iowa, who isn't a Kruidenier but lives in a house built and inhabited by a "Dirk Kruidenier" in the late 1800's. Dirk Kruidenier, and his wife, Wilhelmina Pluggers Kruidenier, were my paternal great-grandparents. I contacted the lady and asked for more information about the house. She and her husband had bought and renovated the house and lived in it for a number of years, but were selling it. She directed me to a local real estate web site where I found some pictures.

Pella, Iowa, (40-50 miles east of Des Moines) was founded in 1847—the settlement of around 800 Dutch immigrants who journeyed to America. I actually have the beautiful wooden trunk brought from Holland by Dirk Kruidenier when he emigrated with his parents as a six-year-old in 1854. He and Wilhelmina Pluggers were married in Holland, Michigan, (her hometown, also the daughter of "pioneer Dutch settlers") in 1877, and they lived in Pella in the house (below) where Dirk owned a "general merchandise store there, with considerable success" (from his obit). They moved to Des Moines, Iowa, in 1904 where he entered the wholesale carpet business. Then, in 1910, he along with his three sons became the distributor of Cadillac automobiles in the region: Kruidenier-Cadillac Co.

Here is Dirk Kruidenier:

And Wilhelmina:

These pics of their house are from the real estate web site, so not great quality. The lady who currently owns the house offered this info: 11-foot ceilings downstairs, transoms over all the interior doors for air circulation, plaster medallions on the ceilings in four rooms with a large hook for hanging gas lights, three bedrooms upstairs (plus a bath the current residents added) and a master bedroom and bathroom downstairs. She said they love the house and hate to sell it.

The design is unusual to me: the bulbous living room on the front of the house with dual front doors (?), one on each side of the porch (?):

The lady said the brick walls of the house were "three bricks thick!"

Nice detailing over the windows and in the brick work on the right:

The interior of the aforementioned living room with the curved front wall. I like the period wallpaper:

I'd never seen pictures of this house before. Nice to get a glimpse of where one's forebears lived—especially after coming to America with everything in a small trunk.

Dirk died in Des Moines of a heart attack at age 68 (1916), and Wilhelmina lived until age 80, also dying of a heart ailment of some sort. (Unfortunately, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn wouldn't write Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease until 2007.)

I would love to have known them both.

Attentive Marketing

Today's stage in the Tour de France was one of the most exciting I've ever seen. They boys rode up a massive final peak in the Pyrenees with a screaming, twisting 20k downhill to the finish. I'll quench my inner sportswriter and not describe the entire thing and mention only a decisive event that determined the winner of the stage: When the leader of the Tour attacked near the top of the peak his chain popped off and his main rival sped past him and started the downhill with a 30-second lead, eventually displacing the unfortunate rider at the finish line as the new Tour leader.

Many of these very expensive bikes have a small accessory installed called a chain catcher that prevents chains from popping off the front rings (which happens rarely, anyway). But this rider's bike didn't have one installed (although I bet it will tomorrow).

I laughed when, about three hours after the race ended, a marketing email came through from Competitive Cyclist in Little Rock, Arkansas—a terrific seller of high-end road and mountain bike wares. They sell the best of EVERYTHING related to this sport, and I have gotten quite an education just from lurking about on their web site. The highlighted item in their marketing email? Chain catchers:

Selling on the news of the day. That's why they're the best in the biz.