Cabin Crafted

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  • Another week gone

    Where do they go, it seems like yesterday that we went to the Farmer’s Market, yet today was market day again. This week we arrived about 10 minutes before opening time and I stood in line with about a dozen other people to pick up my preorders and see if there was anything from other vendors that I don’t have pre-order info for and who aren’t on the market’s pre-order site. Several of the vendors were still setting up, but I came home with goodies for the week. I hadn’t pre-ordered figs this week, but still purchased a half dozen to just eat and enjoy and while talking to the vendor, she said there would be more later because of the late frost last spring, so I came home and checked my fig and it has about a dozen figs growing on it! I’m very excited, and to protect it from the midnight marauders, I decided the flimsy wire fence ring standing loosely around it was insufficient and set about to build the mini greenhouse to protect it this winter, but alas, the corrugated plastic sheets on the chicken tractor are too brittle to reuse. Not to be thwarted, I had some green erosion fencing and step in posts and with 8 posts and the erosion fencing cut long enough to hang over the tops toward the center, it is now well protected from the deer. Grass was cleared back away from it again and a new layer of hay mulch put around the base.

    This structure is more stable than the wire ring, so I may just wrap it in heavy mil translucent plastic for winter. Maybe the 7 foot tall posts I used for the tall tomatoes can be arranged in a way to make a teepee shape that can be wrapped.

    When you still don’t have mowers, but you have to be able to get to the coop and gardens without getting wet to the knees by the tall grass, you just do what you have to do. The line trimmer to the rescue, again.

    I can get to the coop, the gardens, and the bird feeders. Maybe the mowers will come home this week. I actually went all the way around the house and walled garden and most of the way around the vegetable garden as well, all on less than one battery charge. That trimmer was a good purchase.

    At the market, I found Asian Pears and bought enough to make some Asian Pear Marmalade. I will have to go scrounge jars to can it, but that is on my agenda for today or tomorrow while the daytime temperatures are in the low 60’s (mid teens celsius).

    Also taking advantage of the nice day, the little rose was given an in ground permanent home. If necessary, I will cover it with a feed bucket if a hard freeze is threatened until it is fully established by next summer.

    My second string of Thai peppers was started for drying. The first one reached the end of the doubled floss and is hanging on the end of the kitchen cabinet until the peppers are dry and needed. There are hundreds of them out there and each day another dozen or so have ripened red and come in to be strung.

    I received an email that the fall garlic was being shipped, I will keep an eye out for it and keep it cool until it is time to plant it here. I think I should thin the salad mix I started in the house and put some of the seedlings in the a garden.

    I’ve had a break, an apple and goat cheese, now back to work. I love the cooler days, but dread the cold of winter.

  • Autumn is upon us

    The sunflowers are gone, the tomatoes have stopped producing with a few green ones left, the corn stalks are browning. The asparagus ferns have been cut back and the bed weeded, to be burned after it has all dried and nothing is growing near that bed. Peppers, beans, peas, and ground cherries are loving the cooler nights. Most of the locals have already plowed under their summer gardens, I’m milking mine for every veggie and fruit it will provide. The Autumnal Equinox is in 3 days, meteorological autumn arrived 18 days ago. This time of the year is bittersweet as by now, I’m tired of weeding, but not ready for the end of fresh vegetables from my own gardens. We are facing 5 or 6 days of cooler days and chilly nights.

    Ground cherries forming
    The sole pumpkin found when the corn patch was cleared.
    The pile of cornstalks, sunflower stems, and asparagus tops to be shredded or burned.

    The hunters are beginning to ask permission to hunt on our farm. This I also have mixed feelings about. I enjoy seeing the wildlife and the safety of not having hunters walking about our property, but good community relationships are important too and we often get small tasks that I can’t do offered in return. One of those tasks is to repair/re-level a sagging gutter in the back of the house. I won’t go up a tall ladder any longer, I can’t risk a broken hip or worse if I have an incident.

    We still haven’t gotten our mowers back and I am afraid the grass is so tall that they won’t be able to handle it. I may have to wait for the first real frost to hit it before it gets mowed down again, unless we get the replacement brush hog. I will just continue to line trim paths and around the foundation and gardens.

    The chickadees, tufted titmouse(s)/mice, and cardinals are returning to the feeders with the finches that have continued to feed. The hummingbirds are still visiting their feeders and checking all of the remaining flowers. They usually leave by the end of the first week of October, then their feeders will be brought in washed, sanitized, and stored until spring.

    When it isn’t raining, we take an evening walk, usually at the pond as it isn’t as crowded as town. The wild Asters are blooming, the one below was much more lavender than the photo, fungi of various shapes abound, and I love the reflection on the water.

    For now, we will enjoy the cooler weather, safely but sadly alone.

  • Olio-9/17/2020

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    We are seeing and feeling very mild symptoms of other’s woes. The smoke from wildfires of the west has extended beyond the east coast, I have read, all the way to Europe. We are a few hundred miles west of the east coast, but this was our sun yesterday early evening.

    That is not light cloud cover, it is smoke in the upper atmosphere. We can’t smell it and I don’t think it has affected our air quality but it is devastating to think of the infernos that can produce enough smoke to haze the skies of the east coast and beyond. Today we are getting the very outer bands of what was Hurricane Sally that deluged and flooded the Gulf Coast. We have no wind and mostly light rain which is welcome. After a very wet summer, it turned dry and it hasn’t rained in a couple of weeks, crisping the falling leaves, those ones that drift down before the Autumn colors begin, still a month or so off.

    The recommendation is not to leave houseplants out when the temperatures fall below about 45f. It hasn’t gotten there yet, but the next few nights dip into the low 40’s to upper 30’s. The larger plants will be gathered near the door and covered with a sheet or large plastic bag, the succulents have been returned to their winter locations in front of the south facing French doors and the kitchen window sill. They will probably go back outside in a week or so when this hint of fall passes. There are two large hanging planters of Spider Plant. I may cut the babies and root them to restart those pots next year and let the winter cold kill off the parent plants. They are awkward to bring in to the house for the winter and look pretty scraggly now anyway. There is no threat of frost, which would be record breakingly early, so I’m not concerned about the vegetable garden, it should have another month or more of growing time. For our Anniversary last February, hubby gave me a thimble sized rose in a little Lady Bug holder. When it finished blooming, I repotted it into an 8″ ceramic pot and it has lived on the back deck steps all summer and has produced two or three blooms repeatedly. I need to plant it in a garden bed so it has time to produce a good root system before the first frost. I fear if I bring it back in for the winter, I will lose it. The grape vine that was stripped of all of it’s leaves is fighting back and not ready to settle in for the winter.

    There are new leaves coming out all over the vines. I’m sure as soon as they get any size on them, the midnight marauders will find them again and strip it bare. It wouldn’t be difficult to run the hot wire out around the plum and grape vines, but would make mowing that area more difficult and I would have to develop a new habit to change my path to the chicken coop and then be careful not to back into it when gathering eggs. Maybe I could use step in posts and turn off the solar battery when I need to mow and just move the wire temporarily, that is if we ever get our mowers back from the repair shop.

    After thinking that the winter had killed my fig planted last year, it has grown vigorously and is now about 4 feet tall and full. Before frost, I will shelter it better than last year. Last year I filled a wire ring around it with old hay, but that wasn’t enough. When it loses it’s leaves, I will hammer in 4 T-posts and use the translucent corrugated plastic that is on the failing chicken tractor to build a temporary greenhouse around it then fill that with hay and cover the top with burlap or an empty feed sack. I really want it to produce next year. On the driveway hill, we planted forsythia, lilacs, peonies, a dogwood, and a crepe myrtle at least a dozen years ago. The crepe myrtle has never done anything, looking like a foot tall mass of twigs, until this year. This year it actually grew to about 6 feet and bloomed. If the weather prognosticators are correct, we are going to have a wet, mild winter. If that is true, I should get figs next year, another sign of the climate change that so many deny is occurring. Maybe my grandchildren will be planting olives and citrus in the mountains of Virginia when they are my age.

    When walking up to the mailbox yesterday, I saw my first “woolly bear” caterpillar on the driveway. As legend goes, the longer the black band, the colder and snowier the winter and if the tail end is black, the end of winter will be colder. He was less than a quarter black on the head end, so if I were to believe in his prediction, the weather prognosticators are correct.

    When I posted yesterday about returning to my beginnings on spinning, I failed to post a photo I had taken.

    The top skein is my very first spindle spun yarn. At two ply, it is a gnarly, knobby 2 or 3 wraps per inch. The red skein below is the most recent spindle spun skein I made, it is smooth, even, and 24 wraps per inch. I will never give up that first skein.

  • And There She Goes Again

    Fiber equipment, I think I am settled then stumble on to a spindle or distaff that just yells my name. I keep my flock/herd of spindles to 5, 3 that I use regularly and two that live in my living history basket to demonstrate the different types and styles. If I were doing more living history, which is on hold during the virus, I would likely have several other styles that people could handle. The three I use are all Jenkins Turkish spindles. I have had others, but if I find one that I like the wood more, or the weight is in my preferred range, one leaves for the new one to come. They vary in size from tiny to small with one in the middle. The tiny lives in a 4 ounce tea tin in a custom made drawstring bag in my “take it everywhere” tote and gets used when I’m passenger in the car or waiting in the car during dental or doctor’s appointments. The medium small is my go to spindle, used with my first ring distaff holding my fiber. The new small one is the size I ply on and maybe since this one is lighter than the one I sold, I will be able to spin on it as well. The second distaff is because I have learned to use the ring distaff and it takes strain off of my wrists as I spin, so I wanted a second one to put with the tiny spindle in my bag.

    This is a return to the beginning as I first learned to spin on a drop spindle, long before I purchased and learned to spin on a wheel. It has become more difficult for me to knit without pain, but spindle spinning doesn’t bother me. Now I just need an outlet for the yarn I am creating.

  • Sunday, Sunday

    Our television is in our loft which has three windows plus two double dormer windows across the vaulted ceiling over the living room, so the large open space can be very bright when the shades are up. As a result, the Roman shades on the loft windows stay closed. Yesterday was the first NFL games of the season and hubby had the TV on from 1 p.m. until long after I left for bed. I’m not much of a football fan, or television at all. I played in the garden for as long as the heat and humidity allowed, weeding and harvesting, bringing in a very full basket and an armload of produce and basil.

    I sat at the dining room table and stripped the basil to dry in another basket, sorted out the beans from the peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos. Then brined a quart of Jalapenos, strung the Thai peppers to dry.

    Then filling my iced tea cup, I came up to spin or knit while football played on. I mentioned that the shades stay drawn so there is no glare on the TV which makes for poor lighting for knitting, but it was just basic ribbing on for the bottom of a grand daughter’s sweater. I alternated knitting a few rows, then spun some yardage on the spindles. The old wrist break and the arthritis it has caused, prevents me from knitting for very long any more. Spinning on the spindles doesn’t seem to bother it.

    After the first game series ended, I went down to make hubby’s favorite meal, homemade enchiladas and tacos which involves frying tortillas into taco shape, shredding cheese, dicing onion, making the enchilada sauce, so a fairly intensive and time consuming meal, as the football games continued above.

    After the meal was completed and cleaned up, left over beans, sauce, and taco meat packaged up for the freezer, I returned to the loft. Only I put on my headphones to block the games and continued with my crafts. As it got darker and more difficult to see what I was doing, I realized that three rows back, about half a round in, I made an error, knitting when I should have purled and thus the ribbing was messed up. Too tired to continue with it and not wanting to try to rip back three rows and picking up 134 stitches in the dark room, I tossed it in my basket, spun for a while longer and retired to bed with my book.

    This morning in the brighter light, I surveyed the damage.

    For some odd reason, it was half a round and only in the row down three rows, so this morning, I dropped each stitch back three rows one at a time and picked them back up correctly. It may have taken longer to do that than to just frog three rows and pick up the stitches, but the yarn is superwash, so slick, the knit not very tight and I didn’t want to risk having to frog all 2 1/2″ and starting over. At any rate, I can continue knitting the rib for another half inch then begin on the body of the sweater. This sweater has a pouch and hood like a hoodie sweatshirt, so the fiddly pouch will have to be picked up soon. I have knit this sweater at least a dozen times in various sizes for daughter and her kiddos, but that pouch always causes me pause, plus I need two needles the same size and only have 1 so I will borrow one from daughter, after all, the sweater is for her daughter.

    The eggplant purchased at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday was salted, wept, and brined to ferment on the counter for several days. I had fermented eggplant a few years ago at a fiber retreat, it was made by a friend and I hadn’t thought about it for a while until an online friend made some. Since eggplant is like a sponge and absorbs flavors, I used fresh basil, fresh oregano, minced Thai and serano peppers, and crushed garlic to flavor it. It should be delicious in a salad with Mediterranean food in a few days.

  • FEAR

    I have just finished listening to a very thought provoking Podcast, hinting on a topic my husband and I have often discussed.  Though the Podcast was not directly on the topic, it sent me here.  The topic is societal fear, the Podcast actually was on the history of public bathrooms and how we got where we are now with sex separate facilities and the issues they cause for transgender, non-binary, intersex, and disabled people.

    It takes me back more than 3 decades when as a  Mom with young children, I was faced with having to take a son into the women’s room or hubby having to take our daughter into a men’s room because we didn’t want them going into the other facility on their own or leaving them outside to wait while we went in.  Even then, the idea of single the sex bathrooms seemed absurd to me.  You don’t have them on buses or airplanes.  We share bathrooms in our homes and in some small businesses that have a single facility, why can’t we have bathrooms that accommodate everyone.

    The answer is fear, unreasonable fear.  It has been pervasive in history.  When bathrooms were a privy, everyone used them without regard to gender or color, then indoor bathrooms came along with water and sewage infrastructure, but women were basically kept at home.  As women entered the workplace, the system changed, but only for privileged white America when we unnecessarily segregated a whole population out of fear.  Building code was written to mandate separate sex bathrooms. Then after desegregation, the fear switched to AIDS, could you catch it in a bathroom?  Then more open acceptance of same sex marriage, or has it just fomented more irrational fear as the issue of which bathroom a transgender, non-binary, or intersex individual must use.

    I think most of what drives today’s issues is fear of change, fear of what people perceive they can’t control but shouldn’t control.  Fear caused by generations of ignorance by people raised to believe that anyone of a different race, religion, gender identity, or nationality is alien and suspect if not outright dangerous.

    Back to the Podcast, the code, through the efforts of lawyers, researchers, and architects who are themselves in one of the categories in the first paragraph or at least open minded and not driven by fear, has changed to allow new building to have one large bathroom with grooming areas, hand washing areas that vary in height and are  long “sinks” angled away from the user, and toilet areas with stalls of varying sizes to accommodate everyone regardless of size or disability.  This would work, it would be as they put it in the podcast, “more eyes” to prevent unwanted behaviors, but unfortunately the code doesn’t mandate this change, just allows it and as long as the FEAR is there, it will continue to be a problem in our society.

    It is time for our small-minded fear to be cast away and recognize that we are all humans on the same planet and can benefit from each other’s cultures, beliefs, ideas.

  • As things wind down

    The posts including my obsession with canning will end and we will eat fresh until frost and then start digging in to the larder. The Natural Foods store did have pears, and Valencia oranges, so as soon as we got home from hubby’s appointment and the curbside pickup, I pared, cored, and sliced the pears; quartered, seeded, and sliced an orange and cooked the marmalade down to 5 half pints of my favorite jam. It may taste a bit different as these were firm Barletts, not the Asian Pears I usually use, but I will have some on the shelves for winter. As these won’t go anywhere (i.e. to Son 1 or daughter’s homes), I used the reuseable lids. One thing I don’t like about them is you don’t get the satisfying pop to know they are sealed. You have to wait for them to be totally cool, remove the band, and lift them by the lid to see if they successfully sealed. And you don’t want to use the permanent marker used on the metal ones to label the top of the jar. Instead, I will use small pieces of freezer tape to label them.

    While we were in town for the appointment and curbside pickup, I was going to get a fermenting book from the library. They have been open inside for a month or 6 weeks with limited number of people at a time and safety precautions so I didn’t bother to check the website. There has been a significant spike in COVID cases on campus and town is in shutting down mode again. The library only has curbside pickup, but I hadn’t pre-arranged to get the book. Fast food restaurants with drive-through service have again closed their dining rooms with service only in the drive up window, which is all we use anyway. Another small business that has a sister business in town has closed and their stock moved to the sister business that is both ice cream shop and gift shop. I suspect we will see more of that and more food places close for good as it gets too cold to eat on their patios and sidewalk tables. The town had closed one street that has several restaurants flanking it and erected canopies with tables to accommodate them and they gave up 5 or 6 parking spaces in the alley near the Farmer’s Market for the same purpose. It will soon be too cold for people to sit out there to eat and the tables with umbrellas on College Ave will be taken in for winter. This is going to hurt these businesses again. The University is fighting to try and stay open until Thanksgiving to close and finish the semester virtually and online exams. Their plan was to reassess the situation if their quarantine room availability dropped below 50%. It is down to 31% and so they are moving students living on campus in one dorm to other dorms, giving them a housing rebate for having to move and freeing up 70 more rooms in an effort to stay open. The problem is the off campus students that go to classes on campus and return into the community and the limits COVID has caused to their dining facilities sending students to local restaurants and fast food locations to get food and the virus is spreading in the town and surrounding communities.

    A long time ago, seems like a different lifetime, I worked with a very diverse group of folks, some of whom were excellent cooks, all older than me, many having already raised their families as we were just beginning. Recipes were often shared, even school staff cookbooks made. Several of the recipes became go to recipes for our growing family, a meatloaf recipe, pizza or calzone dough, and a faux lasagna. The meatloaf has evolved slightly, but is still used, now in small amounts or made into several and frozen except for the one cooked. The dough made about once a week. The faux lasagna went into the file after no cook lasagna noodles were introduced, but lasagna makes too much for just the two of us. One of the purchases I make from the Natural Foods store are really good egg noodles, the pasta from the faux lasagna. I had an 8 oz fresh mozzarella from the Farmer’s Market, bought a carton of cottage cheese from the village store, and made a quick pasta sauce from the tomatoes on the kitchen window sill, along with some of our garlic, onions, basil, oregano, thyme, and rosemary and without having the recipe in my file anymore, it was recreated as well as I could from memory. I had Parmesan and there are still a few eggs from the molting hens. It doesn’t come off quite like lasagna, but it is rich, cheesy, with good sauce and an under an hour meatless meal. I quite enjoyed it, hubby ate it, but would have preferred real lasagna. He never complains, but I can tell when he thinks it is a repeatable meal. He has left over goulash and rice for lunch today and I have a serving of the casserole. We will both be happy.

    As seniors we always get a flu shot, usually in mid to late October. We are wondering if we should get one now, but then worry that it won’t still be effective through the entire flu season. I guess a call to our primary care physician’s office is in order to get their opinion. We have no reason to go anywhere for the next few days until Farmer’s Market preorder pick up so we will hunker down safely here at home. The annual HVAC service is scheduled this afternoon. I am glad we have a walk out basement so the technician can enter and leave through that door and I can deal with the paperwork on the porch. We don’t want people coming into the house unnecessarily as the virus spreads through our rural community as well.

    I am thinking and worrying a lot about my online friends and two young cousins on the west coast in the midst of the wildfires. One I know has had to evacuate and others are hoping they won’t, but dealing with thick smoke and ash. The cooler temperatures and predicted rainfall can’t come soon enough for them.

    Stay safe everyone. I see more and more cartoons wishing 2020 adieu. It has not been a good year.

  • Arrrgh, mowing equipment

    After I posted yesterday, I went down and put the new belt on the mower deck being very careful not to get it twisted and to follow the installation diagram. The engine started right up, I pulled out of the garage, engaged the mower, got about halfway around the front yard once and it ate the new belt. Something must be misaligned, a pulley, unlevel deck, something. So I pulled out the gas push mower to finish the front and mow a path to the chicken coop, yard hydrant, and garden. It hasn’t been started since April and it wouldn’t start. I thought I was going to dislocate my shoulder trying to get it running. Finally, I pulled the new line trimmer down, weed whacked the paths to the coop, hydrant, and garden and came in totally frustrated. A call to the local reliable repair shop to see if they worked on that brand of riding mower and they do, so the trailer was hooked up, the mower loaded and since we were headed there anyway, put the push mower on the trailer too and delivered them to be checked out, adjusted, and hopefully repaired without costing us a month’s retirement installment. Until they are returned, I will just keep paths whacked to the cars, the coop, and the garden.

    We are due more rain today and tomorrow, but since the weather is cooling off, hopefully the grass won’t grow so much it can’t easily be mowed.

    The reuseable lids arrived yesterday. I have placed an order at the Natural foods store and put pears on the list. If they have any, I will make my marmalade. If not, I will check the Farmer’s Market again on Saturday when I go to pick up my pre-ordered goods. I am still hopeful that since pears are a fall fruit that I will find some variety to use. I have moved some dry goods to old salsa jars and empty tins to free up a few more of the half pint size jars and with the ones still in the basement and a handful of quarter pint sized ones, I have enough for a couple batches of jam or marmalade, and enough pints for another batch of diced tomatoes or pasta sauce. I have combined some quarts of brined jalapenos to half gallons, so I can use quarts for tomatoes too. There are still a dozen wide mouth pints on the shelves as well, so there are enough jars and lids to finish the season’s canning. The beans from the other night added 3 more gallon bags loosely filled so they don’t become an unusable block of blanched beans in the freezer. I wish there was a more environmentally friendly way to store the frozen peas, beans, and corn. A sandwich size container is just about the right size for the two of us for a meal, maybe I should buy a stock of that size container that can be put in the dishwasher and reused year after year. I tried glass jars a couple of years ago, but you have to pack the beans or peas in water and risk jar breakage in the freezer.

    Signs of summer fading away.

    Wish we could share this out west.
    Autumn Joy in bloom.
    One Stella amidst the the faded Calendula which has generously self seeded there.
    Enough Zinnias for a tiny bathroom vase.
    Zinnias with ragged leaves and fading blossoms.

    The garden is winding down, the flowers are fading, the leaves on the trees are dull and on our walk last night we could see the beginnings of color change and thistles blown.

    Blown thistles and cockleburrs against the reflection on the pond.

    Soon walks will require layers and starts before, not after dinner as the days shorten, the nights lengthen. And the seasons move on as we continue to distance from family and friends. Stay safe everyone.

  • Midnight Marauders?

    With all of the pears and most of the apples gone, and now the grape vine totally stripped of leaves, I think I must have midnight marauders. I have run deer out of the orchard dozens of times, but nothing has ever bothered the grape vine before. Two days ago, one end was stripped of leaves, yesterday about half, this morning, it is bare.

    There is still plenty of wild vegetation and grass so I’m not sure why they are coming this close to the house and eating the grape leaves. I guess as soon as the weather chills, it will get a pruning job. I’m glad I got the grapes before this occurred because the few that were left to ripen are also gone. Perhaps, I need to run the electric fence strands around the orchard as well as the garden.

    A couple of years ago, I was looking for a waste free chicken feeder to put inside the coop and found the plans for this using a 5 gallon bucket, a hole saw, 3 PVC elbows, and it is perfect. It holds an entire 25 lb bag of feed pellets, three hens can feed at a time, and because they have to stick their head in and down to get to the food they don’t toss it everywhere or scratch it out like they do in an open or tray edged container. The only drawback is the lid provides a great perch to look out the windows toward the house, so I have to add a flower pot on top to keep the lid from getting fouled by the fowl. That designer was genius and the plans were easy to follow. If I hung it, it would become a moving target, bet it would be fun to watch them trying to feed, but it sits on an old galvanized feeder tray to raise it off the floor a few inches.

    I finished the mittens yesterday and returned to spinning the ruby and purple Shetland/Bombyx braid, using my new ring distaff and the Finch spindle. I can’t model the mittens as they are for someone with small hands like a tiny woman or larger child. I had someone look at mittens in my booth two years in a row and say they wanted mittens when walking their dog, but their hands were too small for the ones I had. I will put then in the shop with the dimensions posted, maybe they will fit someone’s idea for mittens. There is enough of the blue Tunis left to spin for a matching hat. The mittens need to be washed and blocked still.

    It is a slow day. No canning. I still need to mow before we start getting rain again.

    Take care and enjoy the pending fall weather.

  • A Better Start

    My day started earlier than I wanted due to an ailing pup, and not being able to go back to sleep after dealing with him, but it got me up to see the sun rising, the fog lifting, chores and breakfast done in time to peel, chop, cook, and can the basket of tomatoes before hubby was up. The basket minus a couple of slicers that were slightly green on the crown were all used and it made 7 pints of plain diced tomatoes to be used however needed in the coming months. Only 6 pints fit in the canner, so the 7th was put in a wide mouth jar with a storage lid and will go in the refrigerator to be used in some recipe in the next week. If I only need half, the other half will be frozen until it is needed. As I began this post, the lids are popping indicating the seal. Since my lovely SIL sent me the lids, I have canned 4 dozen jars of goodness and I still await the delivery of the reuseable ones I ordered. Tracking shows they should be here on Wednesday, so I have a break of at least a couple mornings before there are enough tomatoes or tomatillos to process. I am almost through my jars as well, though there are wide mouth pints that can be used if needed. There are some half pints being used for storage that can be switched to other containers if needed.

    The shelves await the cooling tomatoes. They are deep enough to hold 3 or 4 jars front to back depending on the size of the jars. I will save enough jars for a batch of pear marmalade if I can get the pears, and a small batch of ground cherry jam if they produce before frost. Tomatoes and tomatillos after available jars are exhausted, will be blanched and frozen. Peppers are dried, frozen, and brined in quart or half gallon jars and there are plenty to get through this season. Other than peppers, the remaining tomatoes ripening and the tomatillos, the only other items growing are beans and peas which are used fresh and blanched and frozen. The paltry few carrots that germinated can stay in the garden until needed. Any spinach or lettuce used fresh until frost kills them off. It has been a good garden season. As the weather cools, I will finally make the final box or boxes and will spend the milder winter days doing more maintenance in the garden. It was fairly easy to manage this year but would be easier if I was more consistent with the use of cardboard under the edges and between the boxes and if something other than old hay was in the paths. Maybe now that I have an easy to use line trimmer, I should just let grass grow and keep it mowed short, though wood chip mulch would be better. I may rent a small wood chipper to grind the corn and sunflower stalks to help them break down. If I do, there are plenty of fallen branches that could be chipped for mulch.

    Hours later:

    The belt has been returned, the new one picked up. The cucumber vines are pulled, planting #2 of beans were picked clean and pulled and #3 provided a generous harvest to blanch and freeze this evening along with enough for tonight’s dinner with our corn and our last cucumber.

    Tomatillos will be blanched and frozen, Jalapenos brined, there are a couple more Thai peppers somewhere in the midst of the beans, I guess they will show up when the beans are washed for the pot. A few more tomatoes to finish ripening on the sill, if I leave them on the vines, the birds peck holes in them. Some of the slicers will be eaten, some frozen with the paste tomatoes for winter use.

    I didn’t quite finish the mittens last night, I quit before I was done. The top is being closed in, the thumb will be finished, it is less than an hour’s work to be done.

    Stay safe, if you are in the middle of the country, find your parkas and hope the snow is light and quickly gone for another month or so. It is getting delightfully cool at night, but still hot during the daytime. We should have 5 or 6 more weeks before first frost.