Song Time/ Falling Leaves Time 2020

 

A sample of Autumn treasures

The full moon occurred here just three hours ago, and so ended our month of Song Time/Falling Leaves Time. 

It has been a busy time here, so we've got a lot of material to cover in this update.

Our weather has been very dry and definitely getting cooler. We had light patchy frost here on the mornings of Sept 21 and 22. Our average first frost date here is generally 10/11-10/20, so you can see that we're headed into cool weather early.

Fall raspberries

Our fall raspberries are doing very well. Much better than our summer berries did.

Picking snap beans

Our snap beans have been doing very well also, especially after the slow and spotty germination this spring. Our Lima beans out did themselves. I've frozen 15 quarts! I pulled the plants this past weekend, so that's the last of them.

Laying out potatoes to dry

We've begun to harvest the potatoes. We plan to finish this harvest on Saturday.

The tomatoes have done well. I've frozen 48 pints, and dehydrated nearly 8 quarts so far.

Lunette inspects the sweet potato bed

Lunette insisted that it was past time to harvest the sweet potatoes. She apparently had inside information, thanks to that terrier nose!

As we began to dig, we found extensive rodent damage!

Rodents gnawed nearly every potato!

We've never had this kind of damage before. Only two hills out of 24 were untouched! Fully 2/3 of our harvest was affected! I had to work  hard to salvage all of the damaged ones. I froze sweet potato puree and also dehydrated both puree and slices. We also ate quite a few meals of sweet potatoes for a couple of weeks. I was able to salvage all of them by cutting away the gnawed areas and cooking them.

Look carefully at the left side. You'll see my helper.

On Labor Day weekend, we renovated the strawberry bed.

Bed before renovation

As you can see, it was an overcrowded mess! We dug up 54 good plants and threw all of the rest out.

(I did save some leaves to dry for tea. It's very good with a little almond extract added.)

Some of the plants were very nice

We removed the plastic mulch and found all kinds of mole tunnels under there.

Lunette inspects a mole run

After pulling everything out, Bob tilled in some rotting wood chips and mushroom compost. We then reset the plants in three orderly rows. Lunette was a great help, as you can see.

Inspection is needed at every step

We finished that job in one day, and we were all worn out.

Hard work takes its toll!

Now we are working on garden clean up. As plants complete their usefulness we take them down.

Cleaning off one of the bean trellises

 This year we're trying trench composting. Bob digs a nice trench in the bed and we fill it with the garden debris, along with the household vegetative matter.

One of Bob's trenches

When filled, he covers the trench with soil and then will top the bed with partially decayed straw.

We still have plenty of work to do in the garden.

On to the pantry. Bob got the drywall hung on two walls and had just finished the insulation work, when we received word that our windows were going to be put in ahead of schedule! Fortunately, we were ready for them.

We now have two wonderful south facing windows in that room.

Back wall before windows

Back wall after windows

View from inside the pantry

We had them replace the two front sidelights at the same time. Now we can open and close those windows and the house has a more finished look.

Front sidelights before

Front sidelights after

Bob begins his two week vacation from Cornell on Monday. He hopes to finish hanging all of the dry wall (among other things) during that time.

Well, as you can see, we've been busy and continue to be so. We did take a day of rest and refreshment on the Equinox. One of the things we did was to take a walk to Teeter Pond in the nearby Finger Lakes National Forest. It was a very lovely time.

Teeter Pond on Sept 22, 2020

By the next update we should be further along in putting the garden to bed. We'll be plenty busy till that time.

We wish all of you a happy, healthy and safe autumn.

Till next time,

Kathleen, Bob and Lunette

Lunette sitting in the sweet potato bed