Seed Fall 2023

Autumn at home

The month of Seed Fall has come and gone. Most of this month's activity was concerned with preparing for the season ahead.

The garden claimed the Lion's share of the time. When last I wrote, I mentioned the warm, dry weather we were expecting. Well, it came and was a real catalyst for our maturing bean crop. Almost the entire crop came to maturity on the vine and was gathered without any trouble from rainy weather. I have ten bushel boxes of bean pods in the cellar awaiting threshing next month.

Nice looking carrots

The carrots and beets have been harvested and are packed away in the root cellar.

Parsley Worm

I left one carrot in the ground because I found a Parsley Worm on it. This is the caterpillar of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly, one of my personal favorites. I'd rather lose a carrot than to deprive it of its needed safe haven.

Wrapping sweet potatoes 

 

The sweet potatoes we harvested last month have been cured, wrapped and are in the cellar with bags of garlic and shallots hanging above them.

Bob harvested the Spitzenburg apples. We're eating tons of apples.

Making applesauce

I've frozen 14 pints of applesauce - all I have room for.

Apple slices to be dried.

We're also drying apple slices. We've dried four loads so far, yielding 15 quarts of dried slices. Bob enjoys munching on these while reading by the fire during the winter.

The winecap mushrooms are still producing and we're enjoying our late, "free", self seeded lettuce again this year.

Late lettuce

As the harvests have been winding down, we've worked on garden clean up.

All of the trellises have been cleaned off.

Pulling off bean vines

Everything is out except the kale, flowers and our cover crops. We're just waiting for a frost now to finish it up.

I planted the garlic and shallots on the 27th. So, technically next year's garden is already begun.

Planting garlic among the cover crop

Another way in which we have prepared for the season ahead was to get ready for the woodstove season. 

Bob loading wood into his cart

Bob has filled our cellar wood bin with an assortment of wood types and sizes.

Preparing kindling

I gathered kindling and refilled our very large kindling box in the cellar.

In the last update I mentioned our red sauerkraut. This raised a few questions from folks. Red kraut is a Bavarian style. Typically it is fermented along with some combination of apples, onions, bay leaves, caraway seeds and juniper berries. We prefer ours plain, so we don't include these things. Ours tastes like "white" kraut, but it looks nicer and is loaded with anthocyanins.

Our red sauerkraut

The final way in which we prepared for winter was to go to the Friends of Tompkins County Library book sale. We went on $1.50 a book and $.10 a book days. We got some good reading material for winter.

Some of our good finds at the book sale

On Tuesday we will mark the halfway point between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. Since the weather is supposed to be less than pleasant, we plan to rest and relax at home with games, reading, and Grandma Neill's apple pie.

Because of our preparations, our bellies will be full, our bodies warm and our minds and souls nourished. Bring it on!

There's still time to get yourselves ready for a restful and rich winter season. It's so much more settling to embrace what the season has to offer than to despise it. Just a thought to consider.

Till next time,

Kathleen and Bob

Time to enjoy the simple things

Song Time/ Falling Leaves Time 2023

The Harvest Moon marked the end of our month of Song Time/Falling Leaves Time. We're still busy with the garden, but the emphasis has shifted to final harvests and dismantling.

Right now we're in a brief period of warm and sunny days. Total duration should be almost a week. It's a great opportunity for maturing the dry beans and getting the clean up seriously underway.

Here's the garden report:

The corn, squash, cucumbers, green beans and tomatoes are all done.

My tomatoes got late blight, so I had to pick what I could salvage and ripen them in the pantry.

Ripening tomatoes

I lost a large amount of fruit, but am pleased to report that I still got 56 pints in the freezer and five quarts of tomato leather dehydrated.

Macoun Apples

Bob has picked our early (Macoun) apples. We're enjoying those. Our Spitzenburg apples should be ready later in October. Soon I'll be freezing applesauce and drying apple slices.

Harvest starts with trimming vines

We harvested our sweet potatoes. The yield was between three and four bushels. We harvested a little late this year and so the potatoes are larger that I care for. We have to get on the ball earlier next year.

Large potatoes mean 2 meals per potato

We are enjoying fall raspberries and the Wine Cap mushrooms are really producing.

Wine Caps can get BIG!

I have nearly 11 quarts of dried slices so far, and they're still coming!

Dry beans are maturing. The Aduki and Kidney beans are all picked. Black beans and Turkey Craw are nearly all picked. In the next couple of days I will make another pass through the Hidatsa Shield beans and a first pass through the True Red Cranberry and Good Mother Stollard beans.

Harvesting Turkey Craw beans

We harvested my red cabbages and put down a crock of sauerkraut last weekend.

I chop the cabbage.

Bob packs it into the crock with salt.

Now, in addition to picking beans and what not, I'm beginning to seriously clean up and dismantle the garden for winter. I was lax about weeding this year, so I have a good bit of work ahead of me. I'm alternating this work with a quick window washing during this lovely warm spell.

Modern windows are SO nice!

Bob's got the old deck off, except for the old trellising. He ran into another snag there. The hornets have abandoned their nest. That's good. But one of the plants in the flower garden there has turned out to be a stubborn invasive plant. It stowed away in a daylily undetected. Now it has become very obnoxious. It's called Chameleon Plant.

Chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata)

It spreads if any little bit of root or stem is in the soil. We have had to resort to an herbicide to get rid of it, and it will take more than one application. Due to it's aggressiveness, we will have to get rid of the other flowers in the garden. But, that's fine. It gives me a chance to start again with some different flowers.

Bob's been building the border for the new seating area and will build boxes for the flower beds, hopefully excluding any possibility of this plant sneaking in.

Equinox in Finger Lakes Nat Forest

We took time to celebrate the Autumnal Equinox with a nice meal and a walk in the Finger Lakes National Forest. The walk began in sunny weather, but it started to rain halfway through the walk. Luckily the tree canopy kept us a bit drier.

As you can see, we're still busy here, but rest time is in sight. We use October 31 as our target date to be done (mostly) with the garden and begin the shift toward rest and introspection.

We bid you strength and peace as you bring this season to a close and walk into the next.

Till next time,

Kathleen and Bob

Wintergreen and Southern Running Pine

Harvest/Ingathering 2023

We grow some really tall sunflowers!

Here we are, four days after the full moon, and I'm just getting our Harvest/Ingathering update out to you. That's how busy it is here. This is quite possibly our busiest time of year. So, right on to it...

Our weather in August was very cloudy, and sometimes rather cool. It's obvious that summer is on the decline. Very warm days are predicted for this week, but the nights will still be rather cool. We're hoping for sunnier conditions for September. We want to keep that solar production up!

The daily harvest on August 21

The garden work has kept me busy. I've picked nearly all of the blue berries, processed all of the celery and the freezers are filling up. There's still room for tomatoes, corn, applesauce and a few more boxes of kale.

Harvesting fingerling potatoes

Picking green and yellow beans

I've begun digging potatoes, we're eating green beans, cucumbers, eggplants and squash daily. Our meals are determined by what's piled up the highest in the kitchen! It makes for some very odd combinations.

This is what came in on August 31

The tomatoes are starting to come in. I hope to get some into the freezer very soon.

Wisconsin Chief tomato

I began freezing corn on Friday. It generally takes four weekly sessions to process all of the corn in my patch.

Shucking right between the patch and compost pile

Soon we'll be digging the sweet potatoes. You can see how luxurious the vines are. Hope we're getting a nice crop below.

Sweet potato vines running rampant

In addition to all of this, we're also eating and processing our wine cap mushrooms. The bed had gotten too dry, but with extra attention it seems to have recovered somewhat. This delayed production a little. In just one day this week, we harvested over five pounds.

Five pounds of Wine cap-they're large!

 In addition to fresh eating, I've sautéed and frozen some and dehydrated quite a few.

In the midst of all this, Bob brought in some "wildlings" from our woods and meadow. One day he came in with a couple of quarts of blackberries and a nice amount of wild mushrooms.

Wild blackberries

Chicken of the Woods

Both are now in the freezer and will be a pleasant treat in the cold months.

While I have been busy with all of this, Bob's been busy outside.

The deck almost gone

He's been removing the old deck. It was 18'x24', so there was a lot to remove. He's saved a few of the reusable materials to make a trellis for my clematis and some planting boxes.

He ran into a snag (this happens on all projects). Notice the white trellising in the photo. On the back of this is growing a shrubby vine that is very large. It has to be cut out before that trellising can be removed. As Bob was hacking away at it, he uncovered an active hornet's nest! It's the size of a basketball and was totally hidden in the shrub. He's very fortunate that he saw it before hacking into it or bumping into it. He didn't get one sting! The colony will disband and die with the cold weather, so the trellis will stand until that time. Other than that, the deck removal is complete. We're still discussing what exactly we want to do with this area.

This week Bob's been busy cleaning up the mountain of discarded material by the garage.

With all of our renovation work and the deck removal, we had amassed quite a debris pile.

20 yard dumpster arrives

On Tuesday afternoon we had a 20 yard dumpster delivered. As of today the pile has been loaded in and the dumpster is full. It will be picked up this week. That's a big sense of accomplishment!

In the month ahead there's still plenty for us to do. Our garden certainly does not quit on Labor Day, so I'll have my hands full there. Bob's got various little maintenance jobs to do. Many small tasks get set aside during larger jobs. We'll also be sure to take some time to enjoy the nice late summer/early autumn weather, especially on the equinox. 

We hope you too, will take time to enjoy the season's change.

Till next time,

Kathleen and Bob

Some of our wine cap mushrooms

Abundance/Ripening Time 2023

Bright Sunflowers

The summer seems to be slipping by. It's been a busy month for us here. We have many pictures in this edition. For those who enjoy the photos, you have a bonus.

The garden on July 20th

First up, the garden. It's beginning to produce a bit more, but we're still waiting for green beans, squash, cucumbers and tomatoes. What we do have is: fruit

A mixture of berries

Strawberries are done, blueberries are still going and autumn raspberries are trickling in.

Blueberries have been very productive

I have harvested all of the green cabbages. Red are next to be gathered.

One of our green cabbages

I'm still freezing kale, parsley and celery. We're just beginning to bring in beets, carrots, potatoes and wax beans.

Harvest starts small and slowly.

The garlic and shallots have been harvested...

Freshly pulled garlic

...and are curing in the cellar. (We decided that the attic may be too hot.)

Curing shallots and garlic

We decided it was time to do some maintenance work in our bird garden. Our primary ground cover there is lemon thyme.

Lemon Thyme in bloom

It is very beautiful and fragrant, the bees are ga-ga over it, and it grows like crazy. It had almost obliterated our walkway to the feeders. So, we decided to cut it back some and reclaim the path.

Bob working at one end of the path

I began work at the other end

It looks a little rough right now, but will soon look as if nothing happened. We took all that we removed and put it on each side of the front porch area. We hope that it will settle in there nicely.

The porch is finished. We love it, as does our neighbor's cat!

The neighbor's cat has claimed the porch

Here are the "more pictures" that I promised last time:

The final product

View from the doorway

Nice dining area

View from the porch

Another view of our apple trees

Final view of the yard

Yesterday's full moon coincided with Lamas Day. Lamas Day is the midway point between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox. It's the high point of summer. We mark it as a time to celebrate the early harvests. Our weather was beautiful and we spent the day walking at Fillmore Glen State Park.

Enjoying a picnic on the trail

One of the views along the trail

A Red Spotted Newt beside the trail

We walked at a leisurely pace, taking three and a half hours, with many stops for photographs. We took a quick nap after we got home. We're getting old, you know!

Finally, this month we were also surprised when the village actually repaved all of the village streets (there aren't that many). We've been here for 12 years this month, and never has any repair work been done on our street. It was really deteriorating. We have heard that repaving was last done several decades ago.

The crew in front of our house

So we have a nice, smooth street out front. But now, our front walk needs to be done, and that's our responsibility. The projects never end, you know.

That's about it for this month's happenings. We hope you continue to enjoy your summer.

Till next time,

Kathleen and Bob

Hens and Chicks

Another lovely rainbow