It's FALL

 It's FALL

 

In 2021, Wednesday, September 22 is the autumnal equinox—also called the September equinox or fall equinox. It's the start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere.

 

 ose has been working on the house paint, fixing areas that are peeling, we've had a downy woodpecker pecking holes an inch deep in the corner boards on the back of the house.  I sprayed the foundation for the 3rd time this year, we see lots of carpenter ants running around.

 

Black Cherries

The black cherries, 1/4" berries are falling all over the place, dying rugs and us purple when they get stuck on our shoes.  I need to get onto the roof of the Dog house and run in shed to sweep them off. 

The birds are after all the Black cherries that still have not all fallen, there can be 20 or more birds up in the trees eating them, we literally have 100s of pounds of these things on the roof of the sheds, and the ground, we used the leaf blower to blow them all off the roofs.

We're full blown headed for, and preparing for winter at this point

• Pellet stove cleaning
• Black cherries, swept off the outbuilding roofs
• Relocate the deer yard closer to the house, less to snow blow,  less distance to haul grain.
• Bring the snowblower over to the run in shed, and put the weed whacker in the barn
• Getting the cars ready
  

Started the dough to bake a few loaves of bread this afternoon, an artisan loaf.  The dough will sit overnight in the fridge tonight, and be ready to bake off tomorrow.  

Our 2021 pumpkins for the porch, if only the dogs don't play with them

Time to start thinking about Crumbles, and Cobblers, yum blackberry cobbler, our apple picking claw came in time to get out there and start picking. We picked up some oats for the topping last night.

I went out and picked the last of the 2020 tomatoes, I found most of the raised beds now have something digging holes into them, either chippies, or mole/voles. I am a little concerned about the Leeks, and carrots, may be time to pick this weekend.  The squash seem to be holding up OK thus far.

The Harvest moon came and went, I didn't see it until the next day

Saturday Sept 26th was crazy, so much to do

I mowed the deer yard, and the lawn for probably the 20th time this year.

We jacked up and put new rims & tires on the trailer the old ones were down to just the cords.

Saturday we setup our apple claw/basket, attached it to our roof rake handle, and away we went, we picked a couple dozen larger apples here from our own trees, two varieties, we'll make up a pie.

Apples ready for pie

The Yellow ones we think are Braeburns, the Braeburn apple, is a natural cross between the Granny Smith and Lady Hamilton varieties. The reds are Macs I think.  The bees are all over the apples in the trees, we picked a few without realizing some of them were half eaten while still on the tree.  We sliced them up on Sunday and we got ~12 cups, 8 cups for a pie and 4 for turnovers.  we'll freeze them up, there's still a lot more to do, peppers next...

I was mowing and as I drove by the grapes down by the driveway, the grapes smelled amazing, sweet and very grapey.

Acorn squash, Ace 

The last of the peppers for the year

Picked the Lakota squash yesterday

Our good looking Spuds are cured, headed for the cupboard

The problem with picking is that you need to do something with all that you picked, wash'em, peel'em, cut'em, blanch'em, freeze or can'em and if I'm lucky eat'em before having to put them up.

I forgot about the carrots, I'll check on them today.  We're still awaiting the first frost to pick Kale, it's sweeter once touched by the frost.

Our Swiss Chard is coming back again, I cut down to a couple inches several weeks ago as the bugs were really getting to the leaves. It's looking good again.

We need to pick up some dirt, sand for barrels, and soil for the yard.

Just saw an article;  Vaccines in lettuce. Researchers are now working on putting mRNA vaccines in LETTUCE. UC-San Diego and Carnegie Mellon University are both currently involved in this research. MRNA in veggies, shaking my head. If ever you needed a good reason to plant a garden and grow your own food, this is it.

The bread came out of the oven I can never wait for it to cool.  This loaf was in a loaf pan, tomorrow a loaf in a dutch oven, Yum, it's good.

We have not seen the deer at all this week, they are coming in, just later in the evening we think.

Looks like we have new neighbors up on the hill across the street.  We haven't met them yet, I didn't see a four wheel drive vehicle so it should be an interesting 1st winter for them trying to get up their driveway.

Stay safe out there...

Nice cool morning

Nice cool mornings

A beautiful morning last Saturday 48 degrees, wait, what?

We ran a load of tomatoes, peppers, some basil, summer and winter squash up to Jarrod's house, so he could make up a batch of spaghetti sauce. We dropped the bags of veggies in the driveway as James brought a cold home from school so everyone had a cold last week.

Garden is starting to look worse for the wear, we picked some summer squash, and I dug up all the potatoes, we did good a lot of large and bunches of smaller ones, probably 10 lbs all together. It appears we beat the moles/voles that decimated our crops in previous years, the vines were all laying over, some yellowing, so maybe we did simply beat them to them.

We have carrots, we've never been good at growing them, the carrots we get end of season are 2" long generally.  This year we're getting good sized ones.

We're still waiting for a frost for the Kale to sweeten up, I'm itching to make up a batch of Johnnie Searle's Kale soup.  Come to think of it, it's starting to feel like chili weather too.

Rose has the house vents vacuumed out, our oil furnace guy will be here in a couple weeks to clean out the furnace.  We only run the oil furnace over night since we run the pellet stove during the day.

We have our 3 tons of wood pellets now, I'll have to clean the pellet stove out before heating season starts.

The Gold Finches are here, they're eating the seeds out of the Purple Cone-flower in the yard.

Looks like we may have some wine grapes by the driveway, I don't think these are Concord grapes, the grapes are on the smaller side, I'll pick some to see what they taste like, no interest in making wine, this is the first crop of grapes that have produced here on the farm, sure are a lot of grapes though.

We had some worms in the fridge, for fishing that had to go.  I put them in the garden, bunch of dillies and some trout worms.  There are a bunch of Tomatoes to pick again... ugh...

We'll work on the kitchen side sill this weekend, a rotted clapboard needs to be replaced before the fall rains come.  We worked on the house both Saturday and Sunday.  Part of the charm of owning an old house. There is a clapboard on the foundation that is rotted, we'll have to see if the sill itself needs work too.   Turns out it was just the clapboard and the sidewall board that had a bit of rot, fairly easy to repair, some hydraulic cement, and some caulk to seal the new boards and any cracks in the cement.  The job took two days because nothing, and I mean nothing, is straight, or square in this old house.  One of the sections started out at 4" exposure and 3 feet further down was at 3 1/4" exposure.

Before and After

Some paint touch-up and it'll look great again. We were able to remove some old unneeded wiring too.

Bottle gourds inside the fence are growing like crazy they are halfway down the fence line 20' or so.

Roses Zinnia row, you can see the tendrils from the bottle gourds are everywhere 

 

We looked at the Lakota squash this weekend we need to wait for them to have a hard shell before picking them. You test them using a fingernail to ensure they are hard on the outside. The Lakotas, are just about ready, this squash variety didn't do well for us, we replanted once, the plants that did come up so far have only produced two squash.  I hope it's good.

Pumpkins, still a few green ones coming along.

 

Butternut squash shown, Summer and even our Zucchini are still producing.

Stay safe out there!

Putting up, fall's a comin'

Putting up, Fall's coming

It amazes me how slowly everything seems to grow in the spring and through the summer then slam here we are almost overwhelmed with all the bountiful produce to put up.

Yesterday's haul was, winter squashes, tomatoes, we're black-berried out and the freezers are full..

Butternuts are still coming in, good thing they are store well.

Roma, and Amish Paste Tomatoes, and several heirloom fine eating tomato varieties.

Acorn and summer squash are almost done producing

We need to dig through the tomato patch we had a Black Krim tomato planted but have yet to see one fruit, they are a darker not quite black tomato with a green shoulder and are wicked sweet.  It's difficult to find anything in the tomato patch as all the plants have grown so big they have completely filled in the aisles. It's a jungle out there.

I started cutting and coring the tomatoes we picked yesterday, I'm thinking a thick, and chunky spaghetti sauce, a couple of pounds of hamburger, summer squash, Italian sausage, peppers, mushrooms and some Italian seasonings should do it.  We bagged it all up and put 7 quarts in the freezer and had some for dinner.

We picked tomatoes and squash again today, squash and tomatoes with chicken strips for dinner.

Rose said a huge deer came in tonight just about dark, real dark in color, fall colors?

It truly is the end of summer, we took the Gazebo down removing the screens, lights, and then the canvas cover.  We usually get some pretty vicious winds during hurricane season even if we don't get the brunt of the storm.

Stay safe!

Wrapping up Summer

Wrapping up Summer

Labor Day is almost here, the official end of summer.

Pumpkins already...  Bright Orange a bit too early I suspect!

Our pumpkins are already fully ripe, Orange, not mostly orange, but full blown Jack O' lantern ready for Halloween orange.  I did see a pic of a farm in Bedford and all their field Pumpkins are fully ripe too.

The boys were back to school Tuesday, the freshman class started Monday, the big sophomore class started Tuesday!

It'll be a while before we'll see them now.  :-(

We picked several large mixing bowls of tomatoes today, another bowl of wax and pole beans and more summer squash. I still have to pick blackberries tomorrow, there's more rain coming Wednesday, the good news is we've only had to water the garden once since June.

Rose and I put up 7 quarts of tomato puree

Bottle gourds are coming along, we have a couple Lakota squash, it's an old native American long keeper that was recommended, I can't wait to try it.

Rose made Chicken Rose and Balsamic summer squash for dinner tonight on the grill, yum a keeper recipe for sure.

Got to get grain this weekend.  And a haircut...

Stay Safe out there...