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Frost Warning tonight. Busy day after a busy Thanksgiving weekend. Wanted to can some apple butter and apple sauce, but instead I spent naptime madly harvesting all remaining veggies from the garden: 3 green cabbages 1/2 dozen japanese eggplants of varying sizes 2-3 dozen peppers, green and purple, of varying sizes 3 over-sized zucchini 1 [...]
Snippets from this week’s conversations: *** E: Mummy! He won’t let me hit him with this stick! M: Say that again? E: He won’t let me hit him with this stick! M: Say that one more time and listen to what you are saying. * M: He’s not supposed to be on the computer right [...]
Home-canned food has saved us from starvation on more than one occasion. On a snowy winter’s day, when the fridge was looking bare and I couldn’t go get groceries ’cause the driveway needed plowing, but the tractor was out of diesel, and the only local pizza delivery place decided they “wouldn’t risk it”, I’ve bounced [...]
It’s that time of year when I cut and dry all my herbs for winter use. The small-leafed herbs are hung to dry – tied up with twine and hung from coat hangers – but the majority of my harvest meets the heat of the dehydrator. I like that it’s done quickly but still at [...]
Pure unsweetened apple butter was my kids’ first condiment. When they had their first rice cakes, and it was too soon to try peanut butter, I gave them apple butter. When I made Apple Barley Pancakes, they were never served with maple syrup; they were served with apple butter. Their first “cookies” were sweetened [...]
The orchard is throwing up apples. We don’t spray for pests or diseases, and we stopped pruning years ago – call it laziness, busy-ness, whatever – but every two or three years, we have perfect growing weather and in spite of our lack of attention, the trees give us a fantastic harvest. This year is [...]
We’re eating enormous amounts of fresh raw food from the garden. Every day we take a bushel basket and head down to collect the daily harvest; we come back with our bellies full and our basket wanting. No dishes! And the kids love it because they think there’s something naughty about ‘stealing’ food right off [...]
It’s been a busy summer of gardening, harvesting, cooking and preserving. This year is, for me, the most productive season I’ve ever had. The early spring gave us an early summer which, in turn, gave us an early harvest. The dry start was scary, but eventually gave way to an almost perfect schedule of rain [...]
So our old raccoon is back and, clearly, is no longer deterred by my little green box. He knocked down half my corn stalks last night. There were little nibbles where the ear would have developed. I decided to pull all remaining plants, leaving nothing for the little b—–d to get his fingers on. I’ve [...]
June was a blur. But the garden grows without me, now, so there’s little to do there except wait for the harvest. The peas are just finishing, the beans are just starting, the greens are continuing, and the tomatoes are full size and ready to change colour. I have never had such a lush vegetable [...]
Miscellaneous updates for the past week: Fertilized the tomatoes. Replanted (third time) yellow beans; eleven of the original twelve plants had been chewed off by a furry foe. Lost one pepper plant to some critter that left the plant mostly intact, but nibbled on the stem just enough to make it flop over in despair. Planted [...]
The oven works! However, we only lasted week before I started shopping for a portable electric burner. The first one I bought turned out to be a dud; I returned it to the store the following day. It was another week or so before I found a very funky, but sturdy, double burner, and I snatched it up for [...]
It took all winter to come up with a decent garden plan, but at this point, it’s mostly gone to hell. It happens every year, though this year it’s comical. The tomatoes are in the general vicinity of where they were planned to be, as are the peppers and summer squash; there are fewer of them, though. [...]
All tomatoes are planted – only 18 plants this year, less than half of the previous year – but with a little extra care and diligence I could end up reaping the same harvest. We shall see. I lost one tomato to a cutworm, another to a raccoon. To fend off more cutworms, I decided [...]
It’s been an amazing week for gardening, weather wise. On Monday, I sowed cilantro, green pole beans, yellow bush beans and shelling peas. I also finally transplanted my ailing onions and leeks, and my stellar parsley; they should have been put in the ground ages ago. Wednesday, I sowed more beets and carrots; also chard, corn [...]
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