I enjoy fall decorations. They are up from September 1st until the day after Thanksgiving, and even then, I’m reluctant to give them up. There’s just something about having gourds, pumpkins and bittersweet vines around the house to make it feel cozy as the weather changes. But all good things must come to an end. The fall decorations are gone. And when I say gone — I mean gone!
We had one decent pumpkin from our garden that we harvested probably the end of July. It’s been part of our fall decorations for the last several months, but we chopped it in half and fed it to the chickens. They loved the seeds and the pulp and there was nothing left when they were done with it.
So now it’s on to the Christmas decorations – which don’t stay up nearly as long as the fall decorations — but I like this too.
The one and only big pumpkin.The girls enjoyed every last bite.I love cutting the bittersweet that grows around the farm.And using it to decorate our window sills.But now it’s time for Christmas – already!And this is nice too.
I can’t help myself when I stop at the Amish Market. Everything looks so farm fresh — and if we don’t grow it on the farm, I get it there. The other day they had bushels of apples – and they were cheap – and I got caught up in the fact that it is fall and I should be doing “something” with apples.
I stopped at Walmart on the way home for more canning jars. They were out! Who runs out of canning jars in the middle of canning season! I’d have to make do with the few empty jars I had on hand, which meant I better cook these apples down into apple butter. I diced them and piled them into a roasting pan with a little cider, some brown sugar and spices and let them get mushy, ran them through the food mill and then cooked them in my crock pot for hours – and hours.
It’s thick (thicker than that grape jelly disaster), and creamy and sweet and spicy — and so easy! I filled all my remaining jars.
I couldn’t resist the apples.Roasting in the pan.All those apples, and it only filled five of these little one cup jars.
Our experience with grapes on this property has been a bit sour. First, we planted some grapes and they died. Then we planted some grapes, and they are still alive, but there are no grapes. Then… I found wild grapes! I figured that was the solution — free, wild and growing profusely.
I picked bunches of these tiny gems, washed them, stemmed them, ran them through the food mill to remove their seeds, and made grape jelly! I’ve been making jams and jellies for years — I know how to do it. This batch was a flop. It wouldn’t set up, so I ended up with tiny jars of grape juice.
Not one to give in to failure, I popped open all those little jars of grape juice and tackled making jelly — again — with even more Sure-Jell. It still didn’t set. It’s a little thicker, but still not like jelly; it’s more like grape pudding – which sounds disgusting. Sour grapes.
Tiny little grapes.Only half a quart of juice, and a batch of jelly that wouldn’t set. That’s sour grapes.
Every fall we are bombarded with green hand grenades. They fall from the trees with a thud or a thump, and lay on the ground where they become ball-bearings under my feet as I head down the hill to the chicken coop. Then they begin to rot; they squish when you step on them. The squirrels run around gathering the nut from inside the green husks and tap them against the tree trunks with the vengeance of a woodpecker. Yes, it’s black walnut season.
Last year, I called the local extension service to see if there is any place locally that processes these nuts – they never called back. This year, I decided I would take matters into my own clean hands. I put on rubber gloves and gathered four five-gallon buckets of the green husked nuts. Then I spent several hours with a paring knife, slicing into the husk and releasing the nut shell. I ended up with about three trash bags of green husks, and about 7 gallons of hard nuts – and black hands – because the rubber gloves apparently weren’t black walnut proof.
I washed the nuts in a big bucket using a rake to agitate them and get the remaining husks to fall off, drained the black sludge water numerous times, and then put the nuts on the shelves in my greenhouse to dry.
After much research on the web, I settled on “Grandpa’s Goody Getter;” a massive nutcracker with a lever that makes it look like you’re playing the slot machines. With each pull of the handle, I hit the jackpot if the nut cracks cleanly and the nut meat falls out. More often than not, it takes a tiny pair of clippers and a nut pick to coax the meat out of the shell.
Countless hours later, with hands that still won’t wash clean – I have two pints of nut meat. Yes, 20 gallons worth of green-husked nuts gave us two pints of edible nut meat. This IS nuts.
I’ve been researching better ways to do this (and keep my hands clean). I’ll let you know if next year’s nut harvest is less nutty.
Green “hand grenades” that land with a thud.The nut inside the green husk.Our industrial sized nut cracker that’s more like pulling the handle on a slot machine!Tedious work picking out the nut meat.Stained hands…And a few nuts!
We have a tree by the spring house with one limb that stuck out way too far, looked out of place and was casting a shadow where I want to plant my squash next year (because we all know how the squash completely took over my other garden this year!). So I asked Chris to cut it down. And he loves to use his chain saw.
That was until the chain saw got bound up in the tree and stalled out. I thought I was going to have permanent “yard art.” A statement piece; a chain saw sticking out of a tree about six feet off the ground – forever. After some comments that I won’t repeat here – Chris decided a crow bar might work. It didn’t. I decided that grabbing the far end of the limb and pulling it down might release the chain saw. It didn’t.
Then we decided a combination of crow bar and pulling on the limb might work. The limb hung just to the edge of the stream that flows from the spring house. It’s muddy. My sneakers squished in the mud as I grabbed the limb again and bounced it up and down while Chris wedged the crow bar between the chain saw and the tree. With every bounce, he could inch it out a bit more. Until I bounced a little too much, slipped on the slope, and did a face plant in the mud. There were some more comments that I won’t repeat here. But it worked. The chain saw popped out of the tree. And I popped out of the mud.
It’s always after an event like that when I think – we forgot to take pictures. I would have shared one of the chain saw stuck in the tree.
The stone ruins of the summer kitchen are the perfect place for my herb garden. This year, I started them in large pots in the greenhouse and moved them onto the brick floor of the summer kitchen once the weather was warm. It’s close enough to the kitchen door to run outside for a snip of this, or a bunch of that. But now the weather is turning cooler and I know my fresh herbs won’t last much longer outside.
I harvested bundles of leaves, washed them, sorted through them. But drying things takes TIME! I don’t always have a lot of time – so I bought a dehydrator. Chris isn’t the only one that always needs new toys (tools) for the farm. The dehydrator was a new addition for me this year – and I’ve used the heck out of the thing. I’ve dried buckets of cherry tomatoes, some San Marzano tomatoes, a few onions, and all our garlic bulbs. I’ve dried most of my crop of scallions. And now I’ve dried the herbs. I have jars and jars of dried ingredients to use all winter long. Cherry tomatoes and chives to throw into some strained yogurt for a great dip, onions to add to salad dressings, parsley to sprinkle on top of a pot of mussels, rosemary for a Sunday roast chicken, and even thyme. Now I just need TIME because I’m gonna be busy cooking!
The perfect spot for pots of herbs.I started with lots of leaves…But once they were chopped and dried…It’s only a jar full.
Remember back when I said the garden was DONE! I was wrong. That was just the eye of the storm. It was calm and quiet for a few weeks. It was so quiet, in fact, that we even sneaked away for a long weekend of vacation — since there wasn’t much happening here. Maybe it was the extreme heat followed by the unseasonably cool weather that stunted the production of tomatoes, peppers and squash; but now they are back with a vengeance.
I came back from vacation to find a garden full of ripe red tomatoes, red and green peppers and more squash! In fact, I picked 14.5 POUNDS of tomatoes. Time to get busy canning again!
Thankfully — we weren’t affected by the hurricanes…But we’re in the middle of a tomato tornado
Isn’t it enough that we have a chicken coop? Now we need a chicken shed too?
We’ve been using a plastic storage bin that was intended for lawn furniture cushions. It has more than exceeded its life expectancy. The squirrels have taken a toll on it – nibbling to get inside to the chicken food. We knew we needed to replace it, we just hadn’t found the right thing – until the other day.
I was leaving the Amish farm market where I sometimes stop to indulge in their freshly baked sticky buns, and there it was with a “For Sale” sign. They called it a “trash condo” – intended for trash and recycle bins – but it was just the right size for the five gallon buckets of chicken feed, bird seed and chicken treats (yes, the chickens get treats). We went back out over the weekend (really an excuse for more sticky buns), so I could show it to Chris – and bought the thing.
Then another trip out on Monday to pick it up (really an excuse for MORE sticky buns). Chris was quick to point out just how useful his truck and trailer are. For a little shed – it’s heavy. It’s not like we could just lift it up and put it down. After a lot of maneuvering, we finally got it loaded, home, unloaded, settled in place, and all set up with the chicken food and paraphernalia stored inside. Now the chickens can have their treats. I went inside and ate a sticky bun – because I think I earned it.
This box has got to go!So we brought this cute little shed home.It doesn’t look that big, but it was a project to get it into place.I definitely earned this treat!
I thought harvest time would be in October – but here we are, barely into September, and my “root cellar” is nearly full already. I don’t really have a root cellar – I have a basement. And the basement door has a sign over it that says “wine cellar.” It’s not really a wine cellar either. I’m not sure what the basement is other than dark and damp and cool. I guess that makes it the perfect place for a root cellar and a wine cellar.
We’ve dug up the potatoes, harvested most of the winter squash, canned the tomato sauce and put up a year’s worth of pickles and jams – and it’s all stored in the root cellar/wine cellar/basement. It can be a bit inconvenient to traipse outside to go to the basement/root cellar when all I need is a couple of potatoes for dinner – but as long as I’m there, it’s a good thing that it’s a wine cellar too.
The “fruits” of our labors – jams and pie fillings.Pickles and tomato sauce.Butternut squash, butter cup squash, spaghetti squash and acorn squash.And lots of potatoes!
That’s funny. There’s always work on the farm, especially on Labor Day — a day off from work… so we can work!
The calendar changed to September and so did the weather. It’s cool (actually chilly!), and the garden seems to be winding down. There are still some tomatoes and peppers, and we’re waiting for that fall crop of salsify, but everything else is DONE! Even the corn. We didn’t exactly get a bumper crop. We had maybe two dinners with our own corn. I wouldn’t exactly call it corn on the cob. It was more like corn on coblettes. They were short, stubby cobs with a kind of starchy, rather than sweet tasting corn. It wasn’t the best thing to come out of the garden. But all was not lost. The best harvest from the corn was yet to come! The corn stalks!
Now, we’re ready for fall.
The corn wasn’t much of a meal.But the corn stalks look pretty for our fall decorations. Even our “pet” crow thinks so.Can summer really be over already?
No Rhyme or Reason Farm 