Harvest Pictures

Some of our pumpkins and winter squash

The last of the basil, which I just threw into a large ziploc bag and froze.

Some of the unripe spaghetti squash (basket), and some small buttercup squash (floor).
The spaghetti squash have since ripened, which we are glad for - we weren't sure they would ripen if picked early.

Oliver with some fermenting cider and winter squash.

Lots of green tomatoes! I'm afraid some of them are rotting already, so I plan to make a
bunch of green salsa today or tomorrow to make use of them.

A full pantry of summer goodies! Canned and dried tomatoes, salsa, pickles, ketchup,
and apple butter.

And we're back to greens in the greenhouse. 

Harvest season wraps up

The harvest is pretty much finished now. Yesterday I pulled all the remaining tomatoes off the vine, and cut the plants down. I picked 15 lbs of ripe tomatoes and another 45 lbs of green tomatoes, which I laid on a table in the dining room to continue to ripen. The ripe tomatoes were sliced and put in the dehydrator. I also picked the last peppers and eggplants and cut down those plants as well. There were 6 eggplants and about 10 bell peppers. I made chile rellenos with the peppers for dinner last night. Not as spicy as using poblanos or anaheims, but still a good excuse for some fried, cheesy goodness. I had cut down the cucumber plants last week and had brought the remaining cucumbers into the house. The greenhouse looks so different now, without the tall tomato plants and cucumbers to fill the space. All that's left is clover that had been underplanted below the tomatoes, and the various types of greens that we've planted to feed us (and possibly to sell) over the winter. All in all, we picked and processed about 170 lbs of tomatoes this summer, not including the two or three that we picked and ate each day in salads. Not too shabby for a couple of ex-yuppies in our first year of farming!

The other day, as I was eating my cucumber and tomato salad for lunch, I realized that it was the last of its kind for this year. We ate a lot of salads like that this summer, and I never did get tired of them. It gives me something to look forward to for next summer.

Today, in the main garden, I picked the various pole beans, which will continue to dry in their pods in a bucket. We will transplant some of the kale and lettuce from the main garden into the greenhouse as well, to fill in the beds that I just cleared.

On Saturday we spent a good part of the day at a neighbors house, picking apples. They have three large apple trees that were loaded with apples, and so we helped pick one of the trees clean. The apples filled eight or nine 50 lb sacks, plus another full bag of damaged apples that we'll give to the pigs. We got to keep half the apples in exchange for them coming over and using the grinder and press. These apples are so tasty, way better than most of the apples on our property. Plus, they're good storage apples, so we can keep a sack in the basement for awhile, to snack on. It was a nice day, with our two families working together and our kids playing together. It made me feel like we're starting to build some community in our little neck of the woods.

It is also time to turn some pigs into pork. We hope to have one of the male pigs, the biggest, slaughtered and butchered in the next week or two, then plan to do the other male in about a month. We are still on the fence about whether or not to keep the female. She is not very big, so it seems a waste to kill her, but if we keep her over the winter then that means paying for grain to feed her. But if we keep her, we may also be able to breed her in the early spring, which would mean not having to buy new piglets. It's a dilemma.

Apple Juicing

Grinding apples

It's a family affair - my dad is helping, along with Oliver and Charlie the Dog.

Even the new pup, Zoe, is enjoying a tasty apple.

Cutie-pie Oliver.

After grinding, you fill the cheesecloth with some of the ground apples.

Add a second layer.

Then fill the second layer with more ground apples.

There are the two layers of apples, ready to be pressed.

The bucket is ready to be filled with juicy apple goodness.

Harvest season makes me happy

Harvest season is in full-tilt right now! It was so much fun to pull all our winter squash and pumpkins in, and weigh them with our new 70 lb hanging scale (it's my current favorite kitchen gadget). We have a whopping 220 lbs of winter squash and pumpkins. The big winners are the spaghetti squash, weighing in at a total of 86 lb! So awesome! I am actually starting to believe that we may feed ourselves this winter. We've picked all our dry beans and have shelled most of them. We had planted black turtle beans, light red kidney beans, and yellow kinearly beans. We realized that we didn't plant nearly enough dry beans, and will probably devote at least one whole row to them next year. We still have pole beans to pick, but they haven't dried yet.

We continue to process tomatoes (we picked 25 lbs more today), of which we are drying some right now, and will can the remaining picked tomatoes tomorrow. There are still a lot on the vine that are ripening, so it'll be interesting to see how long they last in the greenhouse before we have to pull the plants into the house to finish.

We had a surprise volunteer tomatillo plant that gave me enough to make a big batch of roasted tomatillo salsa with, and we munched heavily on that for a couple of weeks. I hear that once tomatillos are in your garden, they'll come up every year on their own – I sure hope so!

Last week my parents were visiting, and while they were here we used a borrowed grinder and press to juice a whole bunch of apples, probably about 1 bushelful. We drank a bit of the juice, but took most of it and reduced it down to apple syrup, which we are now using on pancakes and oatmeal. It turns out that we cooked it down a little too far, and it is more jelly-like than syrup, which just tells us that next time we don't have to cook it as long and should end up with more syrup! It's tasty stuff. This week, we juiced about the same amount again, but put the juice into a fermenter, and are going to try our hand at making hard cider. That requires some patience, it seems, as it won't actually be ready to bottle for 4 or 5 months, and then you have to let it sit for another month or two, I think. I so hope it's worth it!

Also while my parents were visiting, my mom took several of our eggplants and made a big pan of moussaka – so delicious! Food seems to taste so much better when we grow it or know where it comes from. I am so grateful for all the food that we have harvested, and will continue to harvest, and will appreciate it through the winter. 

Welcome to the Farm, Zoe

Originally we'd been thinking of getting an LGD (livestock guard dog) next spring, but after the recent weasel incident, we decided we needed to get one sooner. Orrin found a few different options for sale on kijiji, and went and picked up our new dog Thursday night. She is a Maremma, with natural protective instincts, although we will help her hone them to our particular farm and set of animals. She's 4 months old and white. We will be training her to spend much of her time around the sheep, so that she will align herself with them, and treat them like family. She will also learn the boundaries of our property, or in this case, the workable property (pasture, house, chicken coops, garden) and then will protect everything within the property from predators that might try to come into the area. I wanted to give her a tough-sounding name, as we have high expectations of her protection abilities. So, I thought Xena would be good – totally cheesy, but I never actually saw the show, I just figure the character was tough. Orrin told me that name is TOO cheesy (apparently he's actually seen the show). My second choice was Athena, who was a warrior in Greek mythology. Orrin's choice was Zoe, after the tough chick from Firefly, our favorite TV series. Oliver had to be the tie-breaker – Athena or Zoe? He chose Zoe. Zoe it is! Now let's see what you can do, Zoe.