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Rainy Autumn Afternoons
are perfect for processing a half bushel of apples. The apples peeled and cored, some chopped fine for applesauce, another 7 1/2 pints canned, others chopped for Apple Cranberry Chutney, 4 pints, 4 pounds pared and sliced and frozen for pies or cobblers during the holiday or when guests arrive. Again I am thankful that I discovered the Peeler/corer tool, but it still took quite a while to prep all the apples and prepare the recipes for canning.

Apple Cranberry Chutney

After trying Marisa McClellan’s Green Tomato Chutney in her book food in jars it seemed that apples would be perfect for a chutney. After looking at various recipes, I created my own that turned a beautiful red color from the blush pink of the Rome Apples and the red skins of the cranberries.

Apple Cranberry Chutney
- 2 qts. mixed apples, pared, cored, chopped
- 1 c yellow onion chopped
- 1 c Cranberries, fresh or frozen
- 1 c Yellow seedless raisens
- 1 Tbs. ground cinnamon
- 1 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
- 1 tsp pickling salt
- 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
- 3 whole star anise
- 5-6 whole cloves
- 1 Pt. Raw Cider Vinegar
- 1 1/2 c Brown Sugar
Place the cloves in a muslin bag or tea ball. Add all ingredients to a large non reactive pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cook until reduced by half and thickened 1 1/2 to 2 hours, stirring frequently. Remove the spice bag and the star anise.

Ladle into clean hot pint jars, wipe rims, add hot lids and bands. Water bath process for 15 minutes or pressure can at 11 PSI for 10 minutes. Allow to cool, wipe and label jars. Enjoy with roast meat or served over Neufchatel or goat cheese on crackers or baguette slices.

Tomorrow, I harvest radishes, turnips, tomatillos, and peppers then cover as much of the remaining garden as I can with sheets and hope that we don’t really get a frost this early in October. Many of the radishes and turnips will become Kimchee, the Tomatillos and peppers will become salsa and hot sauce. This may be the end of the season for us or we may get lucky and have a few more weeks.

Tomorrow will also be a day to make a batch of Sauerkraut. I see Roast Pork or chops with sauerkraut and chutney in our future.
October 4, 2014
It Can’t Be Over

Warm weather and garden season that is. When I arrived home from last week’s wanderings, the woods were beginning to wear jewels. I had seen a bit of the dark red Poison Ivy climbing the trees and the barest hints of color elsewhere, but by this week’s end there is much more color on the mountainsides.

The Maple aka, the Tick tree as you can’t walk beneath it without acquiring at least one.
The photo doesn’t show nearly the color the eye sees.
So I conceded and pulled out the fall banner and mini banner, the fall wreath, tablecloth, napkins and kitchen towels. With no kids in the house and no Trick or Treaters come this far, I only put a few decorations out, a real pumpkin on the porch, a resin one on the front table, a ceramic ghost and ceramic lighted jack-o-lantern on the bookshelves.

The table set with a large dried bottle gourd, a smaller gourd I painted at Garden Club years ago and a Burgess Buttercup squash from the garden.
So I have conceded, sort of, but I’m not ready for the early frost/potential hard freeze predicted for our region on Saturday night. Today and tomorrow, I will harvest Tomatillos and peppers, drape a sheet over the peppers tomorrow eve in hopes that we either miss the frost or only have a short light one. Sunday I may be able to find all of the Buttercup squash, Seminole Pumpkins and sweet potatoes, but I’m just not ready yet.

This is when I wish I had a portable hoophouse that could be put over the two beds that are still providing, hoping to extend their season by a few weeks. Maybe next year.

Today as the rain comes in, I will can applesauce and apple slices. Yesterday I started the cider vinegar. Tomorrow, we will bundle up and go buy meat for the freezer, leaving space for the 15 chickens that will be processed next weekend.

October 3, 2014
Printed Goodness

Several years ago I joined the eBook populous and either rent ebooks (did you know you don’t actually buy them! And they can be withdrawn from your library on the whim of the publisher!); or check real books out of the library and rarely buy a print book, but yesterday an exception was made.
A few weeks ago, a fellow blogger sent me a link to another blog for a recipe. The recipe author has penned two cookbooks.

Before I bought either, I wanted to preview them and couldn’t find them in the library so I looked for them in our local Barnes and Noble retailer but they didn’t have either in stock. They special ordered them for me to preview and they arrived just prior to my leaving for the retreat so I couldn’t go look at them. Tonight, after dinner we traveled the two towns over so I could preview them before they were returned or put in their stock.

I couldn’t decide between them, both containing many interesting recipes for putting by garden and Farmers’ Market goodies and I left with both books. I don’t know whether to thank my blogging friend or not, but I have added to my library and have many, many new ideas for preserving garden goodness, so thank you Yanic for the linky.

October 1, 2014
It Isn’t Over ‘Til The Fat Lady Sings. . .

Or the garden quits producing. The tomatoes are long gone, the Tomatillos and peppers are making up for it. Much to my surprise, the late planting of bush beans is producing.

I returned from my Retreat and the 12 hours of driving in 2 days, the babysitting and errands with more jars, lots of them. I have been taking jars to NoVa for three years, full of canned goodness and have brought a few home, but today I have enough to keep me from a purchase for a while at least.

And bigger jars purchased for the winter storage of bulk goods.

I left NoVa early today and arrived home in time for lunch with Mountaingdad and wandered off to chicken chores and a garden check and was greeted with . . .

Peppers, 5 kinds, tomatillos and beans. This was inducement to pull out the canner again and pickle 4 pints of Jalapenos, 5 cups of XXX Habanero/Tomatillo sauce, blanch and freeze 3 meals of beans and a quart of bell pepper slices. The tiny hot little peppers that I bought as cayenne are being added to a bottle of vinegar as I harvest them for a couple of smaller bottles of pepper vinegar.

The more I put by, the more we will enjoy this winter and the more we can share. The garden has been good to us this year. I still plan to put up a few more pints of applesauce and a few quarts of apple slices in juice, make a gallon of cider vinegar, as much green salsa and XXX hot sauce as I have Tomatillos and peppers, pints of pickled Jalapenos until the frost hits. The winter squash and pumpkins continue to spread and grow. Hopefully, below all of those leaves we will find a good harvest of Buttercup squash, Seminole pumpkins and yellow and white sweet potatoes that were engulfed a couple of weeks ago.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm. It is good to be home.

September 30, 2014
The Outing

After traveling home from “The Retreat,” I helped Son#1 move scaffolding and clean up spilled and dripped stain until it was dark. Mountaingdad drove his car, Son#1, Grandson #1 and I drove in my car to town for an 8:30 p.m. burger before the 3 of us left for Northern Virginia. Once in town and too late on a Sunday night to do anything about it, we discovered I had a headlight out so we switched cars, moving bags of clothes, jars of canned goodies and eggs. We arrived at their house after 1 a.m. Today I am guardian/babysitter as Grand#1 has no school.
We are all slow and sluggish today, but Son#1 was gotten to work, most of the weekend homework done except for some social studies as the book was left at school, and guitar practice done. Grand#1 and I went to lunch then to The Meadowlark Botanical Gardens.

We arrived as a light rain started and decided to enjoy the walk anyway. Hubby’s car had an umbrella and we each had light jackets and off we went.

Wet walks, huge Koi, turtles, pagodas, sculptures, old cabins, fall flowers and foliage made for a pleasant afternoon, well worth the combined $5 admission and better for us than caving in to the sluggishness at least I feel today.
Tomorrow morning I head home to do some more staining and regular farm chores.

September 29, 2014
The Retreat

Thursday morning, I departed, leaving Mountaingdad home to care for dogs, chickens, and for part of the weekend, also Son #1 and Grandson #1, while I traveled two hours west with a spinner friend to Hawks Nest State Park for a 3 day spinning retreat. And a treat it was. In route the other 4 of the other spinners from our local group met us at Tamarack, a delightful juried craft market with a cafe run by The Greenbrier. We wandered and ogled the wood, glass, pottery, weaving, prints, and quilts then had our lunch in the cafe before making the last half hour trek to the park.

There we were treated to rooms, most that overlooked a long section of the New River Gorge.

The view from our room and from the conference room of the retreat.
Check in area of the lobby.
We didn’t even unpack before we set up our wheels and started to spin, Shetland, Mohair, Cotswold, Dorset, Alpaca, Yak and Silk. Many vendors with more fiber to tempt this hungry group of fiber artists.

Spinners and weavers, tables of fluff, chatter and knitting, all lots of fun stuff.

At night we partied on goodies brought from home and pot luck shared with beverages of choice. To town we zipped for lunch at the Cathedral Cafe for homemade soup, salad and bread, then homemade Chai tea and carrot cake. Another evening to town for pizza, salad and beer or rootbeer.

Three days of new friends and old, food, fiber and fellowship. Each of us leaving with a goody bag of fiber samples, notebooks, pens, pencils, patterns and a door prize each of wonderful donated weavings, fiber, photo frames, salsa and chips, bags or other wonderful surprises.

In spite of the chattery good times, much yarn was made, much was woven or knit. I succeeded in over 400 yards of a mixed fiber skein.

This will be added to my growing mixed fiber yarn of naturals and colors that will be a blanket someday.

This hot mess of overspun Merino that looks like a 106 yard long hair scrunchy.

And 100 grams of beautiful Merino that is awaiting the other 100 grams to be spun and plied that will become a gift scarf for some lucky person.

The Hot Mess was Merino purchased there as is the Merino that is only half done and the 8 ounce bag of Dorset Lamb fiber the Hot Mess is sitting on. I will enjoy more spinning reminders from the weekend and look forward to the next retreat in late winter of the one next fall. I will return.

September 28, 2014
Watching paint dry

As I have posted recently, we are trying to get our log house re-stained before winter. This either a tough or expensive task as the front of the house has 3 dormers on the upper floor, though the front of the house walks out onto a ground level porch but the roof is metal and steep. The back of the house that originally was designed to have french doors that walked out to a ground level deck ended up on a walk out basement, not in the original plans and the french doors walk out onto a narrow part of the deck one story up and the deck itself sitting about 4 feet off the ground with a serious stone retaining wall under the west edge. This makes the dog run dormer on the back of the main house on the 3rd story. As we have set and moved scaffolding and Son #1 tries to figure out how to set up enough on the deck and in the breezeway garden to go over the breezeway roof to stain the east end of the house, we have discussed the dogrun dormer and its steep sides.

He reminded me that when he was designing and building the deck and walkout that he suggested we extend the walkout the full length of the back of the house to accommodate an extension ladder so he could get up there. At that point, our building funds were running low. The painting contractor who did the house 4 years ago sent two young men up on ladders set precariously on the roof to do it, and charged us an arm and a leg for it. There is no way we are going to let our son do that. We will get as much as we can done then hire someone brave or fool enough to do that part. If we come into a windfall of funds (not likely since we don’t play the lottery and don’t have any known rich relatives), we will extend that deck walkout.

The stain we use, recommends it be applied between certain temperatures and with humidity at or below 40%. This is Virginia, the humidity is never that low, so we have to pick the driest days with a string of expected dry days following it to get sections done and then we sit and watch the paint dry. The stain should dry overnight, it is taking days. Days of being careful not to brush up against it. Days of hoping the cats and dogs stay away from it. Days and days of waiting.

The plan was to stain the front of the house on Monday. It absolutely poured rain on Sunday, so we needed a drying out day. Instead of painting, we made our annual jaunt to Mabry Mill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabry_Mill) for the winter supply of grits and cornmeal. Though it is not ground there anymore, it is locally ground especially for them, it is wonderful and I like supporting the Parkway, the Mill and having local grains in the house.

The view from one of the overlooks on the Parkway. A beautiful place indeed.

This morning I was going to start early. Nope, this is what I am waiting for the sun to dispatch.

Fog is definitely not low humidity. Though the temperature last night fell to the low 40’s for the first time, when I awoke, I couldn’t see past the window panes. Chicken chores were done by feel.

The Rainbow Rangers are huge now, they look like chicks in the bodies of adults. Some have combs and wattles that are red, though they still behave and sound like chicks. Their heavy bodies and thick legs make their movement amusing. If they want to move quickly, they flap their wings and run awkwardly like they are trying to take off. They have 3 1/2 more weeks to feed and fill out before I will be back to only 12 hens and Romeo. Just as all of the hens are finally laying, it is getting on to molting season and the two older hens will molt this year for sure. The March hatches probably won’t molt until next year.

I know I said I was done canning, but I can’t resist making one more batch of applesauce so that Son #1’s family can have some this winter too. And of course, I will continue to make Tomatillo Salsa and XXX sauce until the Tomatillos and peppers quit producing. Guess I’m going to need more jars after all.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

September 23, 2014
Where have you been my whole life?

The canning was finished yesterday by early afternoon and Mountaingdad was off riding his BBH (big bad Harley) as it was a beautiful day and beautiful riding days will soon end for the season. I drove down to the local grocery, a real small town affair with produce displayed outside and much of it local and picked up half a peck each of Golden Delicious and Rome apples and spent hours peeling, coring and chopping them for a batch of applesauce. Thinking that it would be enough for the season, I jarred it up for canning and realized I only had 7 pints, not enough. My hands were so sore I wasn’t looking forward to another round of peeling. Though I am not a big fan of gadgets, trip was made to Walmart for a flat of jars and an apple peeler/corer, but it was a double fail. This morning, a quick internet search showed that Bed, Bath and Beyond in a nearby town carried the peeler and I knew that Kroger Grocery had the jars, so we made a pre football run to make the purchases.

Quick work of another peck of apples, peeled, cored, sliced and chopped in about 30 minutes. Part of that was learning how the device worked. The apples have cooked down and another 6 pints prepared for the winter.

The Green Tomato Chutney smelled so good yesterday, and made such a small amount that I decided to spend some time gathering and picking just about every green tomato left in the garden, many requiring significant paring of bad spots and making a double recipe of the Chutney. It is simmering on the stove.

I wish you could smell my kitchen right now. I’m hoping for at least 4 or 5 pints from it after it has cooked down.

Last night after the canning was complete, I did finish one of my sweaters. This is homespun yarn made by a friend and gifted to me by another friend. It should be a great fall sweater.

Perhaps I should wear it with a contrasting shirt. Now I am back to working on the other sweater and the dresses for one of our grandgirls.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

September 21, 2014
Tis The End

Saturday mornings are usually spent going to the local diner for breakfast then on to the Farmers’ Market. Not today. Today the morning was spent processing the last two baskets of tomatoes, both green and red, many with spots that had to be cut away. I started with the green, as my end product was to be Green Tomato Chutney from http://foodinjars.com/2010/11/green-tomato-chutney/. The cooking part of this one takes an hour and a half or more. It was prepped and set to simmer on a back burner. Next up were the remaining red tomatoes that were pared of cores and bad spots, diced and tossed into another large pot with some salt. On the last functional and largest burner was the pressure canner with the requisite 3 quarts of water and 2 tablespoons of white vinegar as we have hard water and I didn’t want white rings on the jars. Loaded inside were my last 7 pint jars full of hot water to heat until filling time. The red tomatoes filled those jars with some to spare, so a quick jaunt out to the garden to harvest a pound or so of Tomatillos and some hot peppers and with an onion, some garlic, a toss of herbs, a bit of chopping, the tomatoes became salsa. It was left to cook down some while the diced tomatoes canned and cooled enough to remove from the canner.
While I was standing at the kitchen window, enjoying the outside while doing dishes, I spotted a coyote in the hayfield.

They have been very vocal the past few nights and while I got the binoculars to check him out and my phone to take the distant photo, I spotted two more. All three were taking their time sauntering across the newly mowed hayfield, into the woods and up toward the house. They passed close enough to the house that the dogs indoors became very agitated.

The only jars left on hand were a new flat of half pints that I bought with the idea of making the chutney, so nine of them were washed, filled with hot water and scalded in the canner. The end result was 5 half pints of salsa, 5 half pints of chutney. One of the chutney’s didn’t even go in the canner, it will travel with me this week to the spinning retreat with a block of Neufchatel cheese and a box of crackers to share at the happy hour. A half pint of salsa and a bag of chips will also go.

It has been a good season for tomatoes, unlike last year when we didn’t get enough to get up through the winter. It was not a good year for beans thanks to the bunnies. The shelves are stocked with tomato products. The freezer with chicken and peas. This week I will purchase one more flat of jars and a basket of local apples and can one batch of applesauce, then the canner will be packed away for another year.

My session ended with a sandwich and a fried green tomato that I set aside just for my lunch.

September 20, 2014
Olio – September 19, 2014

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

Today’s sun turned to rain, 40% that rained off and on all day, so no staining could be done. We had an appointment to get one of the cars serviced in a nearby town, the same town in which the Sherman Williams Store is located. After the car servicing this morning, we went to Sherman Williams as the Assistant Manager had told me on Wednesday night at the coffee shop where our Knit Night group meets, that the stain I needed would be 40% off this weekend. When we got there, the Manager said that his Assistant was incorrect that it was only their products, but since I had been told and their sign was ambiguous, he honored the discount for us this one time only. We came home with the 10 gallons that will be needed to finish our log home staining.

Last night, Son #2 called to give us an update on their house renovation progress in preparation for selling their home and asked if we would check for property of about 10 acres, preferably with some sort of dwelling on it within their price range. A bit of internet research, we came up with a list and set about today to check out some of our finds. As we live in the mountains, in a rural county, this sent us on a 3 hour road trip.

On our return home, we took an less than direct route to check out the address of a house on land that we had seen before and came around a curve to see a beautiful gaited dark bay riderless horse headed right down the road toward us. He turned and trotted back around the fence, past his owner’s home to a poorly attached gate, then back to where we had first encountered him. I got out and knocked on the house door, but no one was home, so I opened the gate and he went right in, but was quite agitated that he couldn’t get past the next gate to the other horses. Unsure how he got out, and due to his agitation, we opened the other gate and let him join the other horses. There was a bit of tussling between them, but we figured it was better than having him run up and down the road. This is the second time Mountaingdad has encountered a loose horse at that farm, the first time, he and a FedEx man got him back in the fence. Perhaps that guy should do something about his fencing. We can never catch anyone there to let him know about his escape artist.

This is the season that pork is less expensive and though I prefer to buy from someone I know, I couldn’t pass up the 10+ pound shoulder roast for under $2 a pound at the local grocer. I had it cut in half and today put half in the crock pot with a mixture of raw cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and crushed red pepper and slow cooked it into Barbecue, 3 1/2 pounds worth. It has been packaged in 1 pound packages and frozen, the remaining 1/2 pound set aside for lunch in the next day or two. The other half is frozen for now and it too will be turned into Barbecue soon. It is nice to have such a quick meal ready in the freezer.

Tomorrow, I will can my last batch of salsa and a batch of Green Tomato Chutney at the suggestion of a blogger friend, http://familyfaithfoodfabric.wordpress.com/, if you have never read her blog, you should.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

September 19, 2014