Arvid’s Fishing Report

Lake of the Woods has long been know as the Walleye Capital of the World.  Maybe now it should get some recognition for growing big peppers.  There is a small, but devoted group of gardeners dedicated to growing the biggest pepper and for six years there has been a contest to see who will reign as the pepper king or queen for the year.  The competition is fierce and in two of the years the difference between first and second place has been less than three grams.  Up until this year it has taken a larger pepper than the previous year to win.  It must have been a bit of an off year for peppers because this humble writer won for the second time with a pepper weighing 389.0 grams.  It out-weighed the second place pepper by 2.6 grams.  The all-time heaviest pepper was grown in 2006 and weighed 525.8 grams.  This is all in fun, of course.

The 2004 & 2007 Pepper King

The great Green Pepper contest for 2006 is over and a new Queen has been crowned. The weigh-in and coronation party were a lot of fun. We even had a writer from the Grand Forks Herald at the weigh-in and our story and pictures were in the September 23rd edition. Nyla O’Connel blew everybody away with a pepper that weighed 525.08 grams. For me, it’s back to the drawing board. I went from Pepper King two years ago to seventh place this year. That’s almost going from first to worst.

It’s October and the garden season is about done. It was a surprisingly good garden for as hot and dry a summer that we had.

Pepper Queen Nyla and Her Prize Winning 525.08 Gram Pepper

The Potatoe Crop

The garden is a little early this year and doing quite well. We could use a little rain, but folks learned long ago that you don’t pray for rain up here because you’ll get more than you ask for. A good measurement of how the corn is doing is to have it knee high by the 4th of July. Grandson, Scott, is standing by the corn on July 3rd and I’d say we’re are ahead of schedule.

Scott standing by the corn on July 3rd

Grandma’s helper

There is nothing like a meal of fresh parsnips from the garden as soon as you can get a fork in the ground to pry them out. We didn’t seem to have as much frost as normal years so the harvest is a little earlier. It’s a good crop and an eight foot row will give us and some friends a few meals.

Digging Parsnips

Spring Parsnips