We got back from our weekend trip to Detroit on Monday evening. The rest of the week seemed out of sync to me. I think it was from a combination of travel weariness, being off a day at school, and a few days of gloomy, drizzly, sunless weather. By Friday things started to feel normal again, at least as normal as things get around here.
With all that wet weather, I didn't get very much done in the yard, which was frustrating because there's still so much to do and soon it will be too cold to want to be out doing it. We did manage to pick most of the apples on the Northern Spy tree. We filled about twenty buckets with apples. On Saturday Stacey and I took the apples to Lain's Cider Mill up in Canesteo, New York. They pressed the apples for us and we got thirty gallons of cider. We kept out five gallons to drink fresh while we can, and froze the rest. We also used five gallons to make vinegar. The vinegar cider is in a big vat in the downstairs bathtub fermenting right now. It won’t be vinegar for another three or four months. It’s good stuff.
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| Josiah picking apples. |
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| Our harvest of Northern Spy apples. |
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| Waiting in line to have our apples pressed. |
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| Our apples chopped and loaded into the press. |
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| Thirty gallons of cider. |
With the canning season pretty much over, we've taken inventory of how this year's garden turned out. It was a good year for the most part. We canned pickle relish, dill pickles, apple sauce, apple pie filling, beets, tomato sauce, grape juice, blueberry jam, peach jam, crab apple jelly, grape jelly, and currant jelly. We still haven't done the elderberry jelly yet, or the carrots. For the first time in years we managed to use all our canning jars and had to buy more. We also froze sweet corn, green beans, and pumpkin. And we have boxes of potatoes down in the cellar and a bucket of sauerkraut fermenting in one corner of the kitchen. We still have dried beans to shell and cabbages to wrap and store. When you take all that plus what we ate fresh – the lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and celery – it was a good year despite the Japanese beetles and a woodchuck who ate their fill too.
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| Sunflowers drying on the back porch. |
My dried corn yield was not good this year. First of all, half the corn patch collapsed during heavy rain in July. The ears I did manage to harvest looked pretty good. I husked them a few weeks ago and hung them in bundles in the woodshed to cure a bit. I checked them on Tuesday and determined that they were ready to shell and I planned to do that on Friday. On Friday when I walked into the woodshed, I scared a chipmunk who was up high on the wall for some reason. That chipmunk has been a nuisance for a long time. It ate most of the last sack of sunflower seeds I use to fill the bird feeders. Anyway, the chipmunk made a dash for it and I didn't give it a thought until I turned to look at my corn. Half of it was gone! Half the bundles were just empty cobs. I was so mad. We declared all out warfare on the chipmunk and set traps baited with peanut butter. By noon on Saturday it was dead. Unfortunately, there are plenty more chipmunks that hang out in the woodpile and in the wild yard across the road. To make it even worse, I'm sure the offending chipmunk didn't actually eat the corn, but stored it away somewhere. I think when we open the boxes of Christmas decoration that we keep in the woodshed, we'll probably find corn kernels stashed among the ornaments. I shelled what was left of the corn on Saturday night and got about five pounds of kernels. That won't make much corn four. Oh well, there’s always next year.
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| What happens when chipmunks find your corn. |
I planted a row of eight hazels along the far edge of the orchard ten years ago. They have grown into a nice bushy hedge about nine feet tall. In the fall their leaves turn beautiful shades of smoky red and yellow. The hazels bear clusters of nuts inside papery husks. We pick the nuts most years, if we can beat the blue jays to them. But so far, the nuts have been too small to bother with. This year I didn't bother to pick any. I took more pleasure in watching the blue jays steal the nuts than I take in trying to crack and eat the tiny nuts myself.
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| The hazel hedge. |
This coming week I will finish tilling the gardens at last and put the tiller away until spring. Last week I mowed the lawn (leaves) for what I hope will be the last time this season. It's time to put the mower away for the winter, too. We are almost done hauling and stacking the last of the firewood. We'll finish that this week and just in time. There's snow in the forecast toward the end of the week.
I made a big decision last week. I have four vegetable gardens and the largest of them, the one out by the orchard, has always been a problem. It’s the weediest and stoniest of all my gardens. With just four of us at home now, and next year probably only three when Hannah graduates from high school and goes to college, I don’t think I'll need to plant that big garden anymore. The other three will be enough. So I've decided to extend the orchard and plant fruit trees on that big garden. The garden measures 40'x40', which will allow me to plant twelve standard fruit trees. I’ll also do an under-planting of low growing white clover. The clover will enrich the soil and I'll only have to mow it a few times during the summer – and the bees will love it. I've already started reading and making lists of what twelve trees I want to plant. I think I'll plant eight apples, two pears, and two plums. I'm also going to put in a row of blueberry bushes. I haven't selected which varieties yet. I don't have to order anything until February and that will give me plenty of time to do research and make my choices. It's exciting to plan an orchard. Unlike a vegetable garden where things change every year, planting an orchard is a one time (hopefully) deal and requires more forethought. I’m having fun with this.
On our way home from church today, we noted the lingering beauty of autumn. The leaves are past their prime now, but there are still some bright patches of color here and there. The oak, poplar, locust, beech, and alder trees seem to be the last to hold on to their leaves. Their colors are mostly yellow and smoky reds. We stopped on the bridge that goes over the Genesee River in Shongo, New York, so I could take some pictures. When we got home, the house was cold and we lit the wood stove right away. Dinner preparations are underway. Josiah is headed down to the barn to do the afternoon chores. We'll eat and then I plan to take a substantial Sabbath nap. Later this evening we’re going to Shillig's for our Sabbath Soiree. It's the first we've had in a while since they were gone and then we were gone. It will be nice to sit and relax and chat. Then I'll feel fortified for the week ahead come what may – even snow.
Good Sabbath.
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| The Genesee looking north at Shongo. |
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| The Genesee looking south at Shongo. |
