Cabin Crafted

Category: farm

  • And You Thought Garden Posts Were Done for the Year – Nov. 10, 2019

    The last few nights have been very cold for this time of year. A couple hovering around 20 f but today the day time temperature is above 60 f, the sky clear and very little wind. With one more day similar to this due tomorrow, it seemed like a good time to prep the garden for winter and to get the perennial onions and garlic planted.

    The bed that was designated for it is a 4′ x 4′ raised bed that had sunflowers and cucumbers in it this past summer. It was cleared of stalks and a few weeds. Each time I put straw or woodchips in the chicken run, they scratch them into wonderful compost mixed with their droppings and some of it gets kicked out the low end of the pen. I was able to gather a full wheelbarrow full of this rich compost to add to the bed.

    The alliums were planted, a thick layer of hay spread over the top and mesh fencing laid over the top to hold the hay in place in the wind and to keep the chickens from digging that bed up when I let them scratch in the garden during the winter.

    While I was in the garden, I pulled the Creeping Charlie from the Blueberry bed, removed the deteriorated tarp from over the mint bed, grabbed armloads of mint, dead pepper plants, and weeds to throw to the chickens. Cardboard was placed over the mint bed. I am going to add another layer to it when I can get some, place heavy rocks to hold it down and put hay over it too. Maybe I can regain control of that bed.

    Each morning, I go to the coop to let the hens out. They get free range time for several hours until the dogs need to go out again. Once I release them from the coop, I look in to see the cleanliness of the coop, to check to see if their water is frozen, and make sure their 5 gallon feeder still has feed. They have been only providing 1 or 2 eggs each day now for a couple of weeks, or so I thought. When I looked in the coop this morning, I saw an egg in the back corner opposite the nesting boxes so I climbed up in the coop to get it. Tucked in a neat nest there were 11 eggs. Sneaky birds. And I actually bought eggs yesterday at the Farmers Market.

    Having an extra dozen around with Thanksgiving coming is a good thing. Eldest son and family will be here for a couple of days so breakfast will be needed for 4, hubby doesn’t usually get up for it. Pumpkins pies will need to be made, so more eggs will be used than the usual amount. I cook an egg for the dogs each morning and sometimes one for me for breakfast or dinner. Now that I know they are being sneaky, I checked the coop while out in the garden and sure enough, there were two more in that corner, plus one in the nesting boxes. I guess I am going to have to check daily.

    If tomorrow proves to be another good day as forcast, after I go for my hearing aid fitting tomorrow morning, I will weed a couple more beds, cut back the asparagus tops and get hay on that bed as well. It is fenced off so the hens can’t get in it. Then the hens will be given time in the garden to scratch for bugs and seeds to help keep the weeds down in the spring. I still want to get help to redo the fencing and posts, but the garden is getting bedded down for winter.

  • Voyeurism II – Nov. 8, 2019

    In March 2013 when I was just beginning to blog, I did a post that I have revisited to read many times. As the trees have lost their leaves for the most part, the week of several hard freezes at night beating down the underbrush, our hay field having been brush hogged, being able to see the deer, turkey, and occasional coyote reminded me of the post. Though much of my archives are trapped in the ether, never to be seen again, I had some of the early ones saved. I am going to revisit parts of it here.

         The overcast weather brings the wildlife out into view.  The week has brought a large flock of wild turkey repeatedly out to forage the hay field for bugs and seed.  Each late afternoon and often early mornings, a herd of deer seemingly materialize from the edge of the trees, one at a time to graze in the same field, and a doe with her twins from spring frequent the area around the barn each evening. They seem to know that we are safe and do not flee when we are out around the house and going over to deal with the chickens. They raise their heads, look in our direction, and return to grazing on the still green grass.

     With the pups indoors and the lights inside kept low, we can sit and watch them.  When there is snow cover in the woods you can see them as they move among the trees before entering the field.  So far we haven’t had more than a sublimation snow shower, but may get a little early next week. At this time of year, the deer coats are dark and when they are still, they are perfectly camouflaged in the trees.

    It is currently deer hunting season in this county. Bow season ended and black powder season is active. This time of year, I don’t like to walk our property or the country road off which we live even wearing a blaze orange vest and hat. Too many hunters are afoot and though we have our property posted, that is not always a deterrent. Our familiar neighbors are respectful of this and if a wounded deer from a non kill shot crosses over to our farm, will ask permission to look for it.

    We always worry a bit about our dogs during hunting season. Ranger, the mastiff is apricot color. He is a 200 pound dog and though he isn’t built like or moves like a deer, we don’t want him to be mistaken for one. Shadow is a German Shepherd and moves farther afield, though usually staying on our farm, but with the abundant number of coyotes/coywolves/coydogs in the woods, we don’t want her mistaken either. The alpha we see most is as large as a German Shepherd and is black. As a result, the dogs get much more supervised outdoor time during hunting season.

    Each season here on the farm brings different aspects to enjoy. The spring budding of trees, the young bunnies and fawns. Summer is haying, gardening, and enjoying the beauty. Autumn brings bright leaf color and and cooler weather. Winter, the voyeurism, warm fires, and hot cocoa or tea while wrapped in a hand knit shawl or a warm quilt.

  • Jack Frost’s visit – 10/25/2019

    Jack Frost made his arrival 14 days after the average frost date for our area in the mountains. And he returned the next night too. Though neither frost was a “killing” frost, it did burn the leaves on the pumpkin vines, revealing the 4 dozen fruits hidden in their midst. Most are still green, but Google says they can be set on a sunny patio and will ripen. There are no more frost dates in the forecast for about 10 days (of course that can change in a blink), so they will sit and cure or ripen until it looks like the weather requires they be brought in to the root cellar.

    These are Seminole pumpkins. They remain small and turn tan when ripe. Being a moschata variety, they are resistant to vine borers. I feared there wouldn’t be any as the vines took so long to take hold and grow, but in spite of the frost, there are still a few flowers blooming.

    The frost wasn’t enough to totally kill off the remaining peppers, but to make sure they weren’t wasted, the last of them were picked, along with a handful of sheltered Calendula flowers.

    The Calendula still has many buds and because of it’s sheltered position along a south facing stone wall, I may be able to continue harvesting them to dry for salves for another month or so. The peppers were all cut in half lengthwise and for the next couple of days, the house will be piquant with the scent of capsaicin as the oven is used as a dehydrator to reduce the moisture in them for storage.

    My longterm to do list includes an arbor for the grape vine and a solar dehydrator. Short term, I need to clean up the mess that was my garden this summer. A few handfuls of weeds and spent beans were tossed to the chickens to pick through.

    The asparagus tops need to be cut back and their bed mulched with hay. The spent sunflowers need to be cut or pulled and the bed nearest the compost turned and fed with shovels of compost in preparation for the garlic and onions in about a month. The beds that had the tomatoes and the overgrown mint bed are full of mint and weeds and need serious clean up and mulching. The bed that was peas last spring, that I planted oats, field peas, and vetch in as cover crop and then the chickens scratched up has a few of the cover crop plants in it, but is mostly weeds, so it too needs to be pulled up and covered with hay. I tried to control the mint with a tarp which failed miserably. Maybe the weed wacker will bring it down and I can cover it with a thick layer of newspaper and cardboard, a thicker layer of hay and let it sit dormant for a year. The mint that has escaped the bed is growing over the top of cardboard in the aisles and is fairly easy to pull up.

    Each year in April, the University has a Saturday where you can sign up to have students come help you with projects. I am going to try to catch that date and see if some students can help me rebuild my boxes and reset my fence so that it doesn’t look like a drunk erected it. If I can get the posts set where I want them prior to the student’s arrival, perhaps we can get a tight run of 4 foot welded wire around the garden, the gate hanging hardware put in the wooden post that has the solar charger on it, and the gate moved. Both of my solar chargers need new batteries, perhaps that can get done this winter so it will fully charge and once the fence is repaired, new electric can be strung along the top to discourage the deer. There is a lot to be done, but the weather is cool now and not so onerous to be outside working. A couple hours a day over a few days should get the garden put to bed for the winter.

  • Away and Back again, 10/15/2019

    Almost another week away helping family. Eldest son and his wife purchased their first home and it required some serious upgrades some of which needed to be done before they put anything in the house. The first two trips by me were to help out by getting their young teen to and/or from his new High School as the bus transportation for this school did not go to where they had been living for several years, and to help pack boxes of books, extra linens, and items they could do without for a few weeks. By the second trip, some items could be moved, but had to be secured in the largest bedroom with the door closed.

    This trip was to help finish moving the last of the household goods and items from the shed, get the move out house cleaned up, help start unpacking the books and kitchen items, and help them get floor leveling applied to two of the 4 rooms that needed it done in order to lay laminate flooring and ceramic tile. A couple of the days, I worked on house stuff while they were at work and school, over the weekend, I was working with them.

    Soon they will have their house in order. Now they can walk to local restaurants, the library, the parks, instead of a 15-20 minute drive, and they have plenty of space to have a separate library, music room, guest room and home office. On the flip side, they no longer are in the woods with a creek in their front yard.

    I took knitting and drop spindles with me and they never left my bag. I did read some, but was so tired by bedtime, that I didn’t even do much of that.

    My garden is a mess, idle beds are weedy, beds that had stuff still growing are dead or dying and the pumpkins are taking over. I can see a few in the bed, but still don’t know how many. I pulled a few weeds when I got home this morning, picked a few remaining peppers and beans. After a day or two of resting up, I will tackle the dead and dying plants, remove more weeds, continue my fight with Creeping Charlie and Mint, put more cardboard down and cover it and the idle beds with a thick layer of hay, and get the bed ready for garlic and potato onions to be planted in about a month. The forecast is for rain tomorrow. There is still no frost in the forecast for the next 2 weeks.

    For the rest of this day, I am going to sit, maybe nap, and fix dinner.

  • Autumn at last? – 10/4/2019

    The fourth day of October and the first day in forever that it will finally be less than 90f (32+c) during the heat of the day. The last time this area hit 90 on October 1 was the October before Pearl Harbor. And though we have had two brief showers this week, it is still bone dry with full outdoor burn bans in effect. It has been hot, dry, and brittle here while other parts of our country have experienced record rain falls and flooding, and a record snowfall.

    Our average first frost date is October 10. It has happened only once that early since I have lived here and I am certain it is going to be well after that this year. It has been too hot to put the garden to bed for the winter and too early to plant the garlic and potato onions that need to wait for much cooler weather.

    Like in past years, I had put a Jade plant, a Dracena, and a hanging spider plant on the front, north facing porch for the summer.

    The back of the house faces south so the kitchen and both baths have south facing windows that hold 2 small philodendron, three holiday cacti, an aloe, and a ponytail palm cluster.

    Last winter, I bought the tiny succulent in the nobby glass candle holder in the above picture and this spring, I divided the aloe. Then fell prey to the outdoor display at the grocer of a concrete looking pot of succulents, realized that two tiny hen and chicks had survived the winter outdoors, was gifted a most gorgeous succulent dish garden in a hand thrown bowl, and bought a yellow flowering Kalanchoe. The second aloe pot was moved to the porch, the purchased and gifted succulents added to the same table, though the Kalanchoe was re-potted from the tacky plastic pot it came in to a ceramic one and a matching pot purchased to plant the hen and chicks.

    The spider plant “babies” were potted in a second hanging pot and hung on the opposite side of the entry way and then a friend gifted me a different variety of already rooted “babies” so I added them to the new pot. Now I have two spider plants that will need to come inside when frost threatens. The jade plant and the Dracena have places that they overwinter indoors, but now there are succulents to bring in as well.

    The area in front of the south facing doors to the back deck is where the big guy follows the sun on cool days. He has already taken to lying there for short periods of time now that the sun is beginning to move to the south of the house during the day and casting light in his spot. It gets too hot now and he doesn’t stay there long, but that is his spot.

    The corner in front of the hutch, in “his spot” is where the jade usually goes, but that is the door that opens onto the deck that wasn’t usable for two years until this spring, so I can’t put the succulents there.

    A some shuffling in my craft area, along with a bit of decluttering this summer cleared a small folding bookshelf that is about the same width as the kitchen cabinets on the opposite side of the french doors, so it was placed against the cabinet in front of the semi-fixed side of the doors. Though there is no frost in our near future, it is supposed to dip into the lower 40’s f (5 to 6c) at night later this week. The spider plants can withstand that, but I didn’t want to risk the succulents and Dracena, all tropical plants, so each pot was brought in, sprayed down with a water spray to rid them of stink bugs and spiders, thoroughly watered and put in their over winter spots.

    In that spot, they will be warm, get sun for about half the day, and be where I can monitor the plants for mites and scale, a problem that the spider plants and aloe seem to suffer in the winter indoors. There are hanging hooks in the utility room window that will get the spider plants later. I will trim back any damaged foliage, most of the longer “babies,” spray them with a very strong stream of water outdoors before they are brought in and hung in the windows. I love my houseplants as much as my gardens.

    Maybe with the cooler days, the spent plants in the garden can be trimmed back or pulled, the asparagus tops cut to the ground and mulched, and the bed for the garlic and onions prepared for planting in late November. I will continue to harvest peppers and beans as long as they provide and will bring in the pumpkins once I can find them in the vines, probably not until a frost kills back the growth.

  • Waste Not …-9/21/2019

    I am certain that my Great Grandmother who grew up in eastern rural North Carolina in a large family was raised with a huge garden, yard chickens, and the knowledge to can and otherwise preserve what could not be eaten right away to have for the non productive winter months. They probably could grow collards or kale well into the winter, likely made kraut and pickles in large crocks to be dipped into all winter, cold stored apples and pumpkins.

    My Grandmother was born in the same environment, but moved to the city as a young woman and I am unaware whether she canned, but I know she didn’t after I was born, she was working outside the home at a bank by then. My mother made a few attempts when I was a young teen, but I remember jars of foods she had prepared, bursting on the shelves in the room off the garage.

    Though I had a garden of some size through most of my adult life in nearly every home and making Pomegranate jelly with my Dad most autumns, I really didn’t get into canning until we retired and bought our farm. I keep a decent sized garden, have a small orchard, and many wild berries. This area has a strong ethic of buy local and eat local and the environmental impact of doing so spoke loudly to me. I knew that I wanted to raise chickens for eggs and grow much of our food. That which I can’t or don’t grow, I try to purchase from the Farmers’ Market, both meat and produce. Though I don’t buy produce to can, I do try to save as much of what we grow as I possible by freezing, fermenting, or canning.

    The Asian Pear trees produce much more than fruit than we can consume. Last year, we gathered the apples and pears and took them to Wilderness Road Regional Museum and pressed them into a delicious fruit cider. Some of the pears were made into marmalade and jam. This year I was away from about the time the fruit was ripening until the middle of last week. The deer got a lot of it, but enough remained to make 7 pints of applesauce, 3 pints of pear sauce, more than 5 half pints of Pear Marmalade. And a enough of the undamaged ones to enjoy fresh and to barter for some hot peppers in two varieties that I don’t grow.

    After a decade of trying to water bath can in an 8 quart stock pot, constantly looking for a shallow “rack” to put under the jars, I purchased a real water bath canner, a 21.5 quart one with a real rack.

    Though the tomatoes didn’t do well this year, there are jars of tomato sauce, pizza sauce, and salsa. The cucumbers thrived and many jars of pickles were canned, other varieties fermented and stored in the refrigerator. The hot peppers are still producing and 5 quarts are pickled in the refrigerator, the rest to be shelf stable canned, or being turned into fermented hot sauces in the style of Sriracha or dried.

    There are just the two of us with occasional visits from grown children, some of the pickles and sauces will be shared, but we should eat well. The garden is still producing green beans to be enjoyed and frozen, hot peppers to be canned, and pumpkins that won’t be revealed until the leaves die back or we get a frost.

    Each year I look at the shelves and wonder if we will eat it all, each spring I anxiously await fresh foods from the Farmers’ Market and early garden as the shelves empty of preserved garden goodness and fill with empty jars awaiting a new season of canning. The canner won’t be put away until the last pepper is picked and the excess pumpkin canned for holiday pies, then the canning tools and food mill will be packed in the big pot and stored away for another year. Waste not, want not.

  • Autumn -9/18/2019

    The Autumnal Equinox is just 5 days away. We have days of cool fall like weather (today) and days of Hades hot (like yesterday). The days are shorter by about 2 minutes each day, the trees are beginning to color, some leaves are falling. The shorter days and cooler nights are when the peppers produce like there will be no tomorrow. The pumpkins that I feared wouldn’t do anything have taken over the entire lower edge of the garden and the blueberry bed and there are green pumpkins that will ultimately turn tan as Seminole pumpkins do.

    Yesterday I posted that I harvested apples and pears upon my return home. Later in the afternoon, I picked a whole basket of peppers and enough beans to cook with dinner. The second planting of beans all came from the same seed package, however the beans growing are two different varieties.

    The peppers were tackled as dinner was being prepared and 5 quarts of Jalapenos were pickled, the red ones set aside to make more Sriracha style sauce, and the rest cut in half and seeded to dry. They sat overnight in a basket and this afternoon were put in a very low oven to finish drying.

    The Anchos are beginning to develop and turn red. One of the plants didn’t survive to develop, so there won’t be too many of them this year. They are going to be solar dried for enchilada sauce. Also this afternoon the bucket of fruit was addressed with a batch of Pear Orange Marmalade made and canned.

    That is my favorite of the sweet preserves that I make and it hardly put a dent in the number of pears picked yesterday. Tomorrow I will address the apples, making applesauce and then will decide what to do with more pears.

    I didn’t think the deer ate the pears, but all of yesterday’s windfall were gone this morning, so I shook the tree to bring down more for them to clean up tonight.

    Fall also brings delivery of the Alliums to be fall planted. Yesterday I got a notice that they had been shipped and today they were in the mailbox.

    Outside the chicken pen some volunteers sprouted a while back. At first I thought it was corn, but as it developed, I realized that the volunteers were actually sorghum. The heads were cut to dry this morning so that the seed can be added to birdfeed for the wild birds this winter.

    The Alliums will have to wait for another few weeks before they can be planted here. In the meantime, they will be stored and the bed for them enriched with compost and prepared for the planting.

    I love the produce of fall, but hate that it signals the upcoming cold and short days.

  • Home Again – 9/17/2019

    I’ve been away for 6 days helping family as they renovate a house in preparation to move. Being there has allowed the adults to work after their day jobs and on weekends without having to worry about the young teen. I was able to be with him on a day off from school, pick him up on two other days as the bus from this school doesn’t run to his current home, and get him to school this morning. It allowed me to help with daily household chores such as laundry and preparing dinner so they could work longer without having to get home to him.

    I also filled boxes. They are true bibliophiles and music lovers. Books were packed and boxes and bookcases moved. Extra linens packed and moved. The kitchen and big furniture will have to be moved once the renovation is complete enough to allow them to function in the house, but they are getting closer.

    This was my second trip to help out since they purchased the house just as school began and I know that they are grateful as they repeatedly let me know. On this trip, I was talking about trying to pick the apples when I got home, that the deer had not already pulled down and eaten, being fruit that was all over my reach. The Asian pears also heavy with fruit that the birds were damaging and fruit was beginning to fall. The deer don’t seem to want the pears. Generally I pull the tractor near the trees, stand on the seat and grab what I can. They asked me why I didn’t have a fruit picker tool, I didn’t even know they existed. They showed up on Sunday with a brand new extension pole fruit picking basket for me as a gift.

    After arrived home today, getting unpacked, and laundry started, I took my new tool out to try.

    What a genius idea. Though some of the fruit is bird damaged, there are plenty of apples to make applesauce, and plenty of pears to make Pear and Orange marmalade, my favorite.

    The 8 gallon bucket was half filled with the remaining apples and filled to the top with pears. There are many more pears out there, most very small or bird damaged, but I harvested more than enough to can. We generally have a later frost that kills the early fruit blooms and the later blooms produce enough fruit for our use and the fruit gets larger because it isn’t crowded. We did not have that frost this year and one of the two Asian pears had so much fruit that it broke several branches and mostly the fruit is small. If there isn’t a later frost next year, I know I must thin the pears and once it gets cold, I must prune the damaged branches.

    I love my gift. I was safely able to get a harvest and the rest of the week is supposed to be a bit cooler, so I will can applesauce and jam.

  • Whew, I’m back then gone again-8/26/2019

    These few weeks are on the road. Away last Thursday to help out family with packing and as transportation as they prepare to move. Time was spent enjoying their company and some time alone at their house with empty boxes to fill with books, music, and linens. Thursday was hot when I arrived and after picking up grandson, we waded in the cool creek before preparing dinner.

    The tiny fish darting around our feet and a few crawdads skittering away if you disturbed their rock.

    Friday was rainy but much cooler and the time that everyone was away from the house was used to pack boxes, clean up the garbage that the bear got into and taking photos of the jewelweed with rain drops on the leaves.

    Saturday after grandson’s volunteer time at the library, he and I drove to a local State park and walked a trail that his Mom’s Master Naturalist group had done and looked at some of her art used on the signage. It was a beautiful mild day for a nice gentle walk in the woods.

    Sunday after a late breakfast out with everyone, he and I used my Lifetime Senior Pass for the National Park system to drive up on the Skyline Drive and hike a couple miles up a mountain trail, mountain goat on a couple of the rock piles, and back down the trail. I guess there were too many people out to see any wildlife other than a few butterflies.

    On the way back off the Parkway, we ended up behind this lanky young man skate boarding down the Skyline Drive wearing earbuds, so he probably couldn’t hear the traffic behind him. Eventually the car in front of us, us, and the line behind us were able to go around him. It was a very long down slope, quite steep at some points causing him to do tight S turns to slow himself. I hope he made it safely without causing anyone else injury because of his stunt.

    Other down time was spent spinning on one little Turk and plying on the other slightly larger Turk and knitting on a small shawl. I was so enamored with the last issue of Ply magazine that I read it through cover to cover and took it with me to reread. I had two books with me and finished one, but found the second one of zero interest to me.

    I’m home for a few days to get laundry done, the house vacuumed of dog hair, the chicken coop cleaned out, then off again later in the week for a long weekend with friends as a vendor and participant at a fiber retreat. When I return from that, again a few days at home to clean up and unpack to repack and return to help the moving family out for a few more days.

    The garden has given up on tomatoes and cucumbers. The sunflowers are drooping and need the heads cut. The tomatillos are not really producing anymore, but I am hopeful that there may be a few more to harvest. The peppers are heavy with fruit and there are a few pumpkins, but the chickens got in my garden every day I was gone and destroyed the fall plantings and the cover crop beds. I guess those beds will just be covered with hay for the winter instead.

  • Signs of Fall – 8/16/2019

    The vivid emerald green of spring is fading to a drab green with highlights of yellow and red leaves mostly on the weedy shrub and weed trees, but the Sycamores are yellowing, several trees are shedding leaves already. Putting by is also a sign of impending Autumn season and that has been a task multiple days a week for the past several weeks. Some days it takes many hours and produces quantities of goodies to be enjoyed over the cold, non productive months. Some days a small batch or two of a sauce or jam are made. This morning, the Tomatillos gathered over a couple of days were made into 5 half pints of simmer sauce with the recipe from Canning by the Pint, one of Mellisa McClellan’s books. Some of those recipes are followed to the letter, others are a jumping off point for me as was today when I added several ground Jalapenos to the recipe to kick up the spice level of the sauce.

    After lunch, more grapes were picked, giving me enough for another batch of grape jelly from our grapes. That recipe is from Food in Jars, another of her books. It is a low sugar recipe compared to the one on the pectin box, using 3 cups of sugar to 4 cups of juice and requiring about 20 minutes to cook, rather than the 7 cups of sugar to 5 cups of juice and the couple of minutes of cook time. I would rather spend the time and have jelly that tastes like grape, not sugar. The remaining grapes will be left for the resident critters that roam our farm at night.

    It is very satisfying to hear the lids pop to seal after they are set on the towel to cool.

    The pollinators are busy today, a very hot, uncomfortable day to be out. Native bees on the sunflowers and bumblebees on the Autumn Joy.

    The sunflowers are Hopi Dye Seed and I hope to harvest a flower or two to try dying some wool with them. Behind them and on the edge of the Tomatillo bed are mixed sunflowers, some Mammoth, some Bronze, and one smaller flowered variety that produces masses of 6″ flowers per stalk. They are great for cut flowers for the table. Most are the typical golden yellow but one yellow variety produced lemon yellow blooms.

    Most of the sunflower heads will be cut off when mature and some given to the chickens to peck the seed, others hung from the wild bird feeder pole for them to enjoy this winter. This year was a good year for sunflowers.

    Unless I purchase a box of tomatoes, canning season is drawing to a close for me. I will make a couple of small batches of Asian Pear Orange Marmalade and will can the remaining Tomatillos whole as they mature. The apples are too small to make applesauce but will be pressed for cider and maybe a batch of cider vinegar made. Maybe when apples start appearing fresh at the Farmers’ Market, I will make one canning of applesauce.