There’s more to the story about Susan and Jeff Figley’s King Blossom Farm but it has taken two blogs to tell it. There are still plenty of apples ripe for the picking which will continue for a few more weeks. Susan told me that the cold weather makes the Macintosh apples sweeter so she uses them to make much of her apple products.
 
Along with heirloom apple trees, they grow heirloom fruit including tomatoes with names like Aunt Ruby’s Green, Red Zebra, German Green, and Yellow Rainbow. Heirloom fruit may not be as uniformly pretty as their genetically modified relatives, but they are healthier and tastier.

Space is at a premium on their six acre farm so many of the vegetables are grown hanging from string in their greenhouse rather than on the ground which makes cool tomato and cucumber jungles. Another specialty is fresh and dried herbs.
 
Jeff does most of the growing, while Susan cans, preserves, and dries their produce making a huge variety of goodies including pickles, butters, simple syrups (like Sour Cherry and Pumpkin Spice), and a whole array of products that she sells in their little shop “The Heirloom Gourmet” on the property. She also sells her products online at Etsy filling orders from all over the country and beyond.
 
Susan actively seeks old recipes which she collects and creates. She told me it took her two years to talk someone into giving Susan her great grandmother’s zucchini relish recipe. She invited me into her remarkable kitchen where she had just made a batch of pear ginger applesauce which I got to sample. The only thing better than the aroma, was the flavor.
 
In the spirit of small farmers working together to produce quality New Hampshire provisions, King Blossom Farm has partnered with their neighbors including Greg Morneau of Daisy Hill Farm whom Susan refers to as her ‘gardener-in-crime.’ Greg taps his maple trees and Susan helps him boil the syrup, bottle it, add labels that Susan designed, and sell the finished products. Greg and Susan both keep hives on their properties and share the work of tending for the honey bees and collecting the honey which Susan sells in various shapes and sizes. Greg is also the pumpkin man who sells his overflow of pumpkins at Susan’s.

Bardo Farm in Croydon supplies meat that is sold at Susan’s shop and takes orders for fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving. The eggs they sell come from a number of neighbors who raise chickens and can’t possibly eat all their eggs. I have no doubt that farmers sharing their expertise and produce was the way of life for centuries with the “we’re all in this together” spirit that helped them survive.
 
Visiting King Blossom Farm is like a trip back in time. Jeff and Susan love to show people around and teach visitors about their natural form of agriculture.  I brought my grandson there this summer to pick raspberries, and we stayed for an hour as Jeff walked us around his land and green house. My grandson asked a zillion questions that Jeff patiently answered.
 
A big thank you to Susan and Jeff for showing me their farm and letting me interview them.  Here are the links  to their websites:
https://kingblossomfarm.com/
http://www.theheirloomgourmet.com/
https://www.facebook.com/kingblossomfarm  
https://www.facebook.com/theheirloomgourmet
https://www.instagram.com/theheirloomgourmet/
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheHeirloomGourmet

In the spring, GGC member Marcia Hanke asked me to check out the beautiful white flowers that were growing in abundance on shrubs in her yard on her newly purchased property. My trusty app PictureThis identified them as hobblebush. The white flowers are hydrangea-like but what really intrigued me were the textured, heart-shaped leaves like valentines from Mother Nature.

I learned that when the tip of a branch touches the ground (which is often) they root themselves and grow more bushes making for a thick jumble of twigs and leaves. People bushwhacking through the forest were easily tripped up or hobbled in these under-story plants thus giving the Virburnum lantanoides its nickname.
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During the growing season, I noted their progress and tried to capture their growing stages from white flowers to green, then red, then black, then no berries and their leaves from deep green to red with green veins. Most I came across while hiking but stopped again at Marcia’s house to see how her hobblebush stands were doing and got some more cool pictures in their fall colors.
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Just like all the plants and flowers I have blogged about, whenever I come across one of them again, it’s like meeting up with an old friend.

Here's the link to Lisha's facebook page so that you too can become her friend.
www.facebook.com/lisha.kimball.1

We folks who live in Grantham have a remarkable gem in our very midst. Right now is the perfect time to visit King Blossom Farm because their spectacular apples are ripe for the picking. Among the many varieties are 135+ year old heirloom Macintoshes and Red Delicious. The heirloom apples may not be as uniform or as pretty as the genetically modified relatives but they are a whole lot tastier and healthier. I bought some Macs and Rambos, which is a French dessert apple that’s great for eating. Amazing!
 
Jeff and Susan Figley purchased the farm in 1983 and chose the name King Blossom because every fruiting spur on an apple tree produces a cluster of six buds—five centered around the largest and first to bloom and called the king blossom. The orchard hadn’t been worked in years so they were given expert advice from the UNH Extension Agency and Cornell. There’s a great video on their website of Bill Lord of UNH Extension Agency showing them how to graft apple trees. Did you know that an apple tree grown from a seed won’t produce apples like the tree it came from? Grafting is the only way to insure getting the same type of fruit.
 
After the tree closest to his driveway was hit by truck, Jeff decided to use that tree for an experiment to graft a number of different kinds of apple scions to grow different apples on the same tree. As I walked around the tree, I saw Red Delicious, Hudson, and Black Oxford on different branches of the same tree!
 
Jeff told me that back in the days of the small farms, farmers would grow about six to eight apples trees of different varieties to ripen at different times. A lot of the farms have been abandoned, especially after the devastating 1938 hurricane. Jeff was able to get a nursery tree of the Scott apple cultivar from Bluffside Farm in Newport, Vermont, near where Susan grew up. Now Scott apples are flourishing in their orchard—a living memory of the past.
 
The lucky orchard has the benefit of their very own bees that Susan and Greg Mourneau of Grantham’s Daisy Hill Farm started keeping ten years ago. Susan loves springtime when she can see the orchard come alive with thousands of pollinating bees, hear their buzzing, and enjoy the heavenly aroma of the blossoms. But don’t wait until spring to visit King Blossom Farm. Take advantage now of the short picking season and head out to the farm and meet Jeff and Susan. They love to share their knowledge and passion for growing apples and fresh vegetables and creating other delights.
 
Here are links their website and more below:   kingblossomfarm.com/

Susan makes delicious products from the apples and vegetables they grow  and sells them in a little shop at their farm and on Etsy. Here  are some more links:

http://www.theheirloomgourmet.com/
https://www.facebook.com/kingblossomfarm  
https://www.facebook.com/theheirloomgourmet
https://www.instagram.com/theheirloomgourmet/
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheHeirloomGourmet

​What I’m about to share with you is  going to blow your mind.
 
It all started with a purple mushroom growing in the Webb-Crowell Forest in Sutton. That bright purple color stopped me in my tracks and whetted my appetite for more. As I hiked with Kathy’s Friday Followers, we saw tons of mushrooms all along the trail—different colors, different shapes, different sizes. The biggest difficulty was not stepping on them.
 
Back home, I did a little research, and I learned that the mushrooms I saw were only a small part of the fungi. Most of their bodies are made up of a mass of thin threads known as a mycelium. Mushrooms bloom much like flowers do when conditions are right which explains why we saw so many in the recently-rained-on forest.
 
Up until the 1960, fungi were classified as plants, but it turns out they are more closely related to animals.  Their cell walls are made of chitlin which is also found in the exoskeleton of insects, crabs, and lobsters. They are now classified in their own kingdom separate from plants and animals.
 
The honey mushroom is considered the largest organism on Earth spreading across more than 2,000 acres of underground soil in Oregon. It’s estimated to be at least 2,400 years old.
 
According to the Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, "There are 75,000 fungal species that are named. But this number is believed to represent only 5% of the species that exist in nature."
 
There are over 30 species of mushroom that glow in the dark. The chemical reaction called bioluminescence produces a glowing light known as foxfire. People have been known to use these fungi to light their way through the woods.
 
I saved the most surprising fact for last: All fungi digest their food outside their bodies. The fungi find their food (say a fallen log), dump their enzymes on it, and the mycelium absorb the digested nutrients. How crazy is that?