Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving All!

Post Thanksgiving activities are in full swing today, another bird in the oven.

                                                       Revenge

Turkey prices, funny, we paid $.79/pound last week, that was for the cheapest frozen bird.  We picked up a second bird on Monday night and paid $1.19 / pound, it was the cheapest at Market Basket, WOW!  Up $.40/pound in a week!  Yikes  Market Basket is making Shaw's look real good lately! 

We went to Hannaford and picked up a fresh 20 lb bird for thanksgiving at $.49/pound for a fresh turkey, we'll save the 10 lb'er we got to cook up this weekend for more leftovers.

The thyme herbs we just bought in the last month.  Rose opened the bottle and there's black in the jar.  Threw that out... Sad.  

Jarrod, Crystal, James, and Jason came over for Thanksgiving on Thursday.  A great time and fantastic food was enjoyed by all.

Reynolds Oven bags fiasco...  The Turkey of the day!

Purchased Reynolds 8-24lb Turkey size bags for the 20 lb. Turkey we're cooking for Thanksgiving today.  Rose opened up the bag, put in a tablespoon of flour as directed, then she shook the bag to distribute the flour, 3" of the bag was not fully sealed on the bottom so when she shook the bag flour went all over the place, counters, floor, cabinet fronts... Amazing how much a tablespoon of flour will cover.

Just to add insult to injury, we also purchased bags for meats, for the Thanksgiving Ham, I opened the box, and found no ties for bags, and no instructions...  Extremely disappointing quality issues at Reynolds.

And the plandemic with it's supply chain issues will continue

Stay safe

 

November Ramblings

November Ramblings

 

WOW, DAD is 87 years old!  Happy Birthday Dad!

Once in 580 years the Blood Beaver Moon

I caught this partial eclipse at 4:30 am this morning, I managed to catch it just before it went below the trees, an hour later I went out and it was gone below the tree line.

Talk about crazy food prices, I went to McD's last weekend to get a Filet O' Fish sandwich, just the sandwich, $5.41 I was told, sure enough, $5 for the sandwich and .41 tax. OMG! 

I'm sure you're seeing it too, 16' feet long 5 shelves high, yes that's FEET wide of Marshmallow Fluff at Market Basket!  (Dad's ol'e favorite) A lot of products were one deep, and all pulled forward to make it look better.

We've noticed that even the reasonable restaurants around town are no longer able to contain prices...  Where we used to be able to go out for $28 for an evening is now closer to $55+.  Even Chinese food is pricing us out...

Rose is seeing the twin fawns just before dark nightly, they have their dark coats now, and a white band around the nose in now prominent.

Stay safe out there...

Getting ready for What's next...

TURN YOUR CLOCKS BACK!

FALL BACK...

This post's a bit late...

11/2 Tuesday Evening

Rose finished the clearing out the front perennial bed and the back of the house beds, a whole lot of work, it makes it so much easier in the spring though.

I decided I'd vacuum up the maple leaves with the tractor, and vac attachment, it makes the yard look manicured.

Rose pulled a pallet down the cellar stairs and we put the 20 or so birdhouse gourds onto it in the spaces to dry, Rose said she thinks it took a year last time we grew them.

11/4 Thursday, A frosty morning this AM 24 degrees...

I just read that the new Roomba iRobot vacuum can now detect poop.  Somehow before I read this article it never would have occurred to me, that a robot vacuum may run through poop from a dog accident and track it all over the room.  Who'd a thought?

 

Rose and I had a great dinner at Jarrod's Saturday evening, roast pork, and a nice brown gravy, mashed potato, corn, beans, and topped off with chocolate cake yum.  We're taking the boys home with us they can help with some of the pre-winter preps stuff we need to get done.  Moving the Deer feeder tripod, tarping the camper, and a couple other things around the farm. 

 

French Toast for me and the boys Sunday morning, yum!

With the boys help we got the bump-out cranked in on the camper, we'll use the tarp from last year it looked to be in good enough shape, we got the tarp pulled over the roof and bungied it in place for the winter.

Rose was pulling out the winter clothes and went through all her old clothes in the process, I need to do the same with mine.

 

Monday, the time change didn't hit us too hard.

 

Time to start spring cleaning the office, it's supposed to rain this weekend.

 

They haven't uttered the "S" word yet here, so there's that!

 

I added a couple Free new channels "new to me anyway" to the Fire TV cube, "iMDB TV", and "Fawesome", lots of TV shows and movies, oh and iMDB carries Roses fave Judge Judy!  I added another channel I added a couple weeks back called TUBi lots of horror films we've been watching.  

 

 

Side note:  Let me know if you get this Joe...

 

 

 

Into November we go

Into November we go

8 weekends until Christmas

FALL BACK

Time change:  Nov. 7th  1 hour Back  Nov 7, 2021, 2:00 am

Happy Halloween!
Goffstown is getting ready, the signs are up telling forks to watch for pedestrians, and BOO! 

Rainy Day on Saturday

Rose and I pulled the ten or so remaining Butternut squash out of the fridge, we cooked them up three different ways.  A good year for butternut squash for sure.

1. Cut them in half, cleaning out the guts, roasted with skins cut side down on a sheet pan. I liked the ease of this way...
   
2. Cut them in half, cleaning out the guts, peeled, cubed and roasted on a sheet pan. Was more chunky
   
3. Cut them in half, cleaning out the guts, peeled, cubed, and boiled.  This way worked good too.
   

We'll see what method works best, quickest.

We got it all bagged up and into the freezer, I tried a few chunks it is tasty...

 

We have a sign next to the walkway, says Leave all packages Here... and a Beware of Dogs sign 6 feet from that, Twice today Amazon delivery folks walked right past the signs and put the package on my front porch.  My dogs will jump up on you... 

Dad called Friday night, he sounded absolutely horrible, I asked if he had Covid-19, he said no, and yes he got tested, a real hum-dinger of a cold though.  We made a quick run over and dropped off some Turkey soup, crackers, and Gatorade.  Mom sounded a little rough too. Get Well Soon guys!

The supply chain issues continue, we had to hit Wally World in Manchester, we're always reminded when we go there what a horrid place this is. We'll go up to Concord next time... the MHT Wally World had gaps in many places, entire areas that had hooks but no products on them.  No dress shirts???

Sunday 

We're putting in driveway marker stakes today before ground freeze and covering up some exposed maple tree roots to make it easier for the snow blower getting around the house.  We vacuumed out the two cars too.

We've moved the deer yard closer to the house,  easier on us getting out there daily to feed through the bad weather.

 

Stay safe out there...

Finally Frost

FROST!

We finally got a frost, I was beginning to think it wouldn't happen this year with the seemingly never-ending garden production.

We went out and picked the last peppers, and Leeks from the garden, I can now officially pick the kale now as the frost sweetens it.  I'll make up a big batch of Johnny Searle's Portuguese Kale Soup!

The last of the Maple leaves have yet to fall

We finished up around the foundation yesterday, washed all the car windows, I grabbed the Rain-X but it had gone bad, we'll have to pick some up.

Today it's a run to Home Depot to pickup some Sakrete General purpose sand for the walks and driveway, it comes bagged and DRY... nothing worse than trying to get sand out of frozen solid sand barrels.

Rose froze up all the Leeks on Tuesday, we were able to offload some veggies with Jarrod too, whew a little more space.

Adventures in shopping at MB on Wednesday evening, lots of holes on the shelves, this nightmare is just starting and I already can't believe the price of most everything I see.  

No Folgers coffee, we bought some Chock Full O nuts. I never saw 12 foot width of Marshmallow fluff jars on display before.  $4.99 for a box of Total cereal, all of the products were pulled forward on the shelves, nothing behind though.  Out of canned dog food, so we nearly cleaned out the other brand of canned dog food. One guy commented that the Deli was the most fully stocked place in the store. Meat prices were ridiculous, pot roasts stared at $24 for a roast, they has one small eye roast for $17, though they still had hamburg for $4/lb.  None of the Cascade we use in the dishwasher.  We walked the entire store commenting OMG at the prices we saw.

Articles about heating fuel prices are everywhere.  We have propane, and 3 tons of pellets for this winter.

Mid October

2021 was an amazing year for our garden. 

We put a lot into the garden, leaves, mulch, compost, and some other soil amendments, lime, bone/blood meal, composted cow manure, and peat moss.  We braced for a drought, putting in irrigation hoses and plastic to cut down on water usage, in the end we haven't watered since the end of May, go figure.  

I don't know if we've ever grown this much in our Vegetable garden.  We're still getting tomatoes, butternut squash, pumpkins, kale, leeks, beans are drying on the vines now.  We're expecting a frost to come in and take out the remains of the garden in the next couple of weeks, except for the Kale, it loves the frost...  Speaking of frost, I was talking to some colleagues in Canada Thursday and the have already had their first frost in Ontario.

The Pellet stove's been running mornings, and some evenings as we're in the 50's this week, this ol' house holds heat like a barn.

We heard it, on Oct 10th, it upset the dogs too.
MANCHESTER, N.H. — ** Update: Scientists now say the boom was likely caused by a meteor entering the atmosphere. Read our latest report. **

Supply chain stories are cropping up everywhere, appears it's far worse than predicted.  Get those x-mas gifts early folks.

We've got to get the boat put away for the year, the snowblower up to the house and we'll start thinking about tarping the camper too.

The first of the ladybugs and stinkbugs have arrived Rose said there were bunches of ladybugs on the front of the house.

Halloween is Sunday, October 31, 2021, I don't know if that's good or bad.  We'll probably go downtown and walk around to see the kids in costume.

Saturday the 16th, Lots going on in Goffstown today, St. Matt's big yard sale, an antique snowmobile and mini bike show, and the Great Pumpkin Regatta all today. There was a great turnout as the rain held off all day today.  The
Great Pumpkin Regatta continues Sunday, I think with a race, and Punkin Chunkin.

We took a ride looking for some color, ended up in Concord, not a lot of color this far south.

We pulled the utility trailer out back, we're loading it up with scrap metal from around the farm.

I decided that seeing 40 or so percent of the leaves on our two maple leaves were already on the ground to load up the vacuum on the lawn tractor, we went over to where the vacuum was sitting in the hedge row. I grabbed one side she the other, simple right, hah, not so much, on the way out I managed to trip on a raspberry cane slamming me to the ground on my knees HARD, I almost smashing my face on the back of the tractor in the process, I got real lucky, Rose said so you're lucky you didn't lose all your front teeth, everything feels OK, we got all the leaves vac'd up. Rosie cleared all the squash and pumpkin vines as well as a ton of volunteer morning glory vines (for whatever reason Morning Glories took over many sections of the garden this year, all volunteers too.) and she pulled up the irrigation hoses and plastic this week.  This left me with nice clear beds to cover with leaf mulch putting the beds to rest for next year.  It's one of the best things ever vacuuming up the leaves leaving a pristine grass yard.

The design of the garden,  beds, and gate locations this year were awesome, our most productive and easiest to maintain.

Oh, I forgot, the yellow jackets have moved on, thankfully.

Stay safe out there...

October Already

October Already

It's Jarrod's Birthday today, Oct 1st when I started this post.

Leaves are turning fast around here, swamp maples are in their full red dress

Red Raspberries are setting fruit again, amazing

 

We've started watching the Squid Game series on Netflix. We're not normally the series watching type but this looked good.

2nd loaf of bread baked in the Dutch Oven rose more than the 1st loaf baked in a loaf pan, there's a white sandwich bread I'll try and bake next.

More work on the foundation needs to be done if it stops raining, kitchen side, finishing up with some hydraulic cement work and caulking.

We're still getting Blackberries too.  Crazy year

 Yellow Jackets

 

I was out mowing the filed last night, and went to check on the Yellow Jackets, I found something had dug out the nest though there were still a couple bees flying in and out, you can see the combs on the ground.  The entrance hole used to be 2" in diameter now it's 8+" wide.  I read that Yellow Jackets don't produce honey, I was initially thinking a bear looking for larvae, I saw that raccoons, and even foxes will dig into the nests for the larvae too.

 

Bees are loving the Bottle Gourd flowers, they're still covered with flowers and bees.

Supply Chain shortages are starting to crop up again,  At least we don't have to worry about TP shortages any more, the enterprising farmers around here have started growing it!

Now that's just funny...

Wash your Hands!

 

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...