Fiacré's spade: October bonfire

Last week, we finished the last of the “can’t wait” garden tasks—canning the sauerkraut and harvesting the alleged garlic. We still have pint jars of sauerkraut from last year, so I put this year’s sauerkraut in quarts. Let’s see—a pint’s a pound the world around. So 20 pounds of sauerkraut would be 20 pints, two pints per quart, would be 10 quarts. I think. I put approximately one quart in the slow cooker with a pork roast. We had Ruebens one night. Figuring in the water loss from the cabbage to the brine, I washed 8 quart jars. There was enough to completely fill 7 quarts with the rest in the 8^th jar to be refrigerated and eaten first.

Canned sauerkraut

The ginger was an adventure. It had grown happily on the deck all summer. Since the leaves were turning brown, we knew it was time to cut it back and harvest some of the corms.

Senescent ginger

There were lots of corms under the ground.

The corms underground

We put two clusters of corms in new soil in the greenhouse for next year. The reason I said, “alleged” above is because the corms did not smell very gingery and the older ones were bright yellow. Hilda had also tried to grow turmeric, which we thought had died. The question remains—were the labels switched? I don’t know what fresh turmeric is supposed to smell like. We put the corms in the garage to dry, hoping that it would concentrate the gingeriness. Hilda grated some and cooked it in rice. The rice tasted mildly gingery at first and more gingery the next day. We haven’t made up our minds about it yet.

It was a beautiful weekend. Pat, Nancy, and Jane came up for our annual bonfire. Terry started it in typical boy fashion with a bottle of gasoline.

Terry pouring on the gasoline

A minute after he lit the trail of gas, it looked like this.

Whoosh! The fire starts from a trail of gasoline (right)

At three minutes, it was roaring.

Three minutes into the fire

Everyone helped put wood on the fire. There’s no picture of me because I was the photographer.

Nancy

Hilda

Pat used Hilda’s walker to move some logs over to the fire.

Pat

Pat and Nancy worked on pulling down a snag that has bothered Nancy for years. The rest of us hoped it wouldn’t land on their heads. Pat poked at it with a shovel….

Pat dislodged the upper end of the branch with a shovel

…until she got the long end on the ground.

The long end of the branch on the ground

Terry went over and helped dislodge the branch from the limb that was holding it up. And then it was put on the fire.

Nancy and Terry carry the branch to the fire

Terry frequented went around the sides of the fire with a pitch fork to rearrange the wood and toss in unburned branches.

Terry tidies up the fire with a pitchfork

I brought down a tripod to get a picture of all of us. We spent most of the time sitting by the fire talking. The picture shows how far we had to sit from the fire to keep from burning our knees. It was a hot fire!