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

Elise Kendall, who is the hardworking president of the GGC and my good friend, invited me to go with her to buy a daylily plant for the town library’s Shakespeare Garden. I envisioned a little garden store and was pleasantly surprised when we arrived at farm with a huge field full of daylilies. Actually, most of the plants were flowerless on that September morning, but I could envision how amazing it must look in July with thousands of daylilies in full bloom. Even at that late date, I found some spectacular examples that you can see in the close up photos.
 
Elise introduced me to Milkcan Corner Farm owner Lisha Kimball who helped us pick out a late blooming, creamy peach colored plant which Lisha dug up on the spot and loaded on her tractor and delivered it to our car. For the ten years it took the plant to get from seed to the beauty we purchased, Lisha sold it for the trifling sum of $10—a dollar a year. What a bargain!
 
I was intrigued by the farm, and Lisha told me how it all came too be. In 1963, Lisha and her husband Dan moved from Connecticut to the countryside in Webster, New Hampshire. Dan bought her a horse which she loved to ride and would often stop to talk with the neighbors she met and learned the oral history of the area. They were ‘old timers’ and called her “The City Girl.” She learned that back in the 30s, a large platform sat on Mutton Road where the local dairy farmers placed cans full of fresh milk every day. Later a truck would stop by and pick them up and deliver them to Concord where it was pasteurized, bottled, and distributed. She and Dan decided that the Milkcan Corner Farm was the perfect name for their farm located near the very spot where all the milk was once collected.
 
For years, they grew blueberries, raspberries, and currants. It wasn’t until 2005 that the day lily gardens began.  That year, Lisha was diagnosed with Amyloidosis and told she had two years to live. After much research and DNA testing, she learned that when her grandfather was gassed in World War I, it affected his genes and he passed on this rare disorder to some of his descendents. Facing this grim diagnosis, Dan wanted desperately to help his wife and soul mate. He knew Lisha loved flowers and told her “Be happy. Buy flowers.” So she did.
 
After two years of dialysis and many trips to the hospital in Boston, Lisha received a life saving kidney and liver transplant.  She began her daylily gardens before the transplant and continued to grow the farm with the help of her husband, children, and grandchildren.
 
She buys her cultivars (registered cultivated day lily varieties) from growers who raise them from seeds with the cultivars growing for years, first in green houses and then in fields before they are sold. Lisha plants them in her garden and raises them for another seven years before she splits them and offers them for sale. Lisha purchases about ten new cultivars every year at a cost of $40 each to add to her gardens. 
 
She currently has 400 different cultivars in every color imaginable. She put signs in front of each plant with its registered name and characteristics. My favorite is “Naughty Ballerina” There are 80,000 cultivars registered by the American Hemerocalllis Society so Lisha will always have plenty to choose from. 

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?