Laboring on Labor Day

Good heavens, I’ve spent so much time standing in the kitchen this weekend that my feet are about to give out. I cleaned another two big trays of tomatoes and made pizza sauce. The peppers are ready for harvest. I made enough stuffed peppers for four meals. Jane is coming up later this afternoon to make a batch of pepper relish. I made some Asian chicken slaw with a cabbage that had to be harvested because it split. Once the head breaks open, fungus follows soon afterwards. We will be making sauerkraut next weekend.

We’ve started harvesting the onions and shallots. As soon as the tops drop over, they have stopped growing and will rot if left out in the rain, if it in fact ever rains again. (We are hoping for tomorrow.)

Onions drying on screens in the garage

The dry beans are ready now too. I love shelling dry beans. Not only can I sit down while I do it, but the beans are beautiful. The Vermont cranberry beans range from pink to magenta to dark purple. I particularly like Lena Cisco’s Bird Egg. What a cool name! The beans are like little bird eggs, and again highly variable. These are five of the 13 varieties we grew this year.

Left to right, top row Hidatsa Shield Figure, Vermont Cranberry, Lena Cisco's Bird Egg; bottom row, Black Turtle Beans, Peregion.

We tried golden beets this year. The germination was terrible. We ended up with exactly four beets. Golden beets are supposed to be less “earthy” (translation: tastes like dirt) than red beets. Here they are in the casserole before roasting.

The entire harvest of golden beets

And here they are drizzled with balsamic vinegar and a side of Benedictine cheese. Frankly, I don’t think I could tell the difference in a blind taste test. Hilda thought they were a little sweeter.

Golden beets drizzled with balsamic vinegar and served with Benedictine cheese

Yesterday we had a dinner invitation to Diane N’s house. I offered to bring a peach pie because Michigan peaches were on sale. Not to brag or anything, but I think this was my first perfect pie. It did not leak peach juice from anywhere. All the filling was completely enclosed in crust.

I had a dilemma when I took it out of the oven. We live about a mile from a dairy farm, and when the wind blows from the south, we get innumerable flies. At first, I thought that they were all houseflies and was surprised that some of them bit. I read in Hobby Farms, however, that houseflies that bite are really stable flies. My first thought was that “stable” was the antonym for “unstable.” I felt like quite the city slicker when the true meaning of “horse barn” floated up in my brain.

In any case, we’ve got flies. How was I going to let this pie cool without getting flies all over it? I struggled to make a tent with a flour sack towel draped over four juice glasses. Then I remembered that years ago, Jane gave me a pop-up screen to keep flies off the food at picnics. We don’t picnic much anymore, but I knew right where the screen was. After a bit of study, I figured out how to put it up. The pie got plenty of ventilation in its fly-free zone.

Peach pie cooling under a screen while a fly (upper left) puzzles over how to get access

Whew. I’ll be glad to get back to work tomorrow so I can rest.