Happy 90th to Hilda!

 We had a busy and momentous week last week. Hilda celebrated her 90^th birthday on Thursday. Our main celebration was on Friday, when both my brother and sister-in-law could visit. Pam is still working two or three days a week, poor thing. Just as I never passed up an opportunity to remind everyone that I was the only one in my house who had a job, Pam often remarks that she is the only one in the family who is not retired. Perhaps another year or two.

Here’s the birthday girl. We took pictures with and without the mask, so that we could remember that this birthday was unique in being celebrated in the midst of a pandemic. I still have hope that a year from now, this whole COVID thing will seem like it was a long time ago and that it was over quickly. Then again, we still may be wearing masks next October. Surveys suggest that some people intend to never shake hands again.

Hilda with her mask, tiara, birthday bouquet, and balloon

As above, with beautiful smile showing!

At Hilda’s request, Doug made puttanesca, a tomato sauce with capers, olives, and anchovies served with spaghetti. I made a loaf of sourdough bread and a chocolate cake.

Hilda serves herself the beloved puttanesca

On Saturday, Jane came for a visit to carve pumpkins, help me set up streaming from my laptop to the TV, and consult on fixing Hilda’s refrigerator.

Terry had three beautiful pumpkins this year. First we wiped off the mud that had not come off during the preliminary hose-down when he brought them in from the garden.

Terry wipes off his pumpkin

And then we carved. This is the result.

Left to right, my pumpkin, Jane's, and Terry's

After we were done with the pumpkins, Jane helped me assemble the runzas (a.k.a, bierocks or Nebraska meat buns). I made the dough before Jane arrived, and it had been rising during the pumpkin carving. I divided it into 12 portions.

Aliquots of runza dough

Jane scooped up a half-cup of the hamburger, cabbage, onion, and cheese filling and pressed it together.

An aliquot of filling

I slid it off the cutting board onto a rolled-out portion of the dough.

Filling in the dough

I pinched the dough together, encasing the filling…

Sealed runza

And then put the bun on parchment paper on a baking tray.

Ready for the last rise

They were beautiful!

Baked and cooling 15 minutes before we can eat

And tasty!

The final product

We got the refrigerator drain working again in between dinner and dessert. It was a long day! 

We relaxed on Sunday. We had a salad for supper made entirely from produce from the high tunnel.

It was good to sit down in my chair and admire our pumpkins lit up.

 

More apples and snow?

Remember last week, when I said the white pine look awful with all their dead needles, but they would look like nothing happened when the needles dropped? We had some Big Winds this week, and you can now see a pile of yellow needles under a perfectly fine-looking white pine. Scroll down to last week’s post for the “before” image.

Dead needles on the ground; impossible to tell the tree lost any

Here it is, October 19, and we are still harvesting tomatoes from the high tunnel.

High tunnel tomatoes--are they not beautiful?

I thinned the baby lettuce for the first time on Tuesday so we could have bacon, lettuce, tomato, and avocado sandwiches for supper.

Tomato sandwich with the first picking of high tunnel lettuce

I devoted Wednesday to getting apples out of the spare refrigerator. I made applesauce, which is (I mention every fall) the easiest thing ever. I peel the apples, but that step isn’t even necessary if you like pink applesauce, as my mother does. First put a bunch of cored, cut-up apples in a big pot. Add a little water so they don’t burn on the bottom. Heat and stir every few minutes.

Early in the applesauce-making process

And stir and stir, adding a little more water as needed. Eventually, the apples will break down and voila! Applesauce!

Applesauce! Like magic!

I also made apple cake, the best part of which is the cream cheese frosting (of course!).

Apple cake

At the end of the day, all the apples in the house were gone. At the end of the next day, Terry had filled the refrigerator again. We have some outstanding Yellow Delicious this year. I don’t remember having those before. It might be the first year the tree has borne fruit.

We had another cold night Thursday. The tops of the basil in the high tunnel got frozen. Basil is such a wuss about the cold!

Frost-nipped basil in the high tunnel

When I cleaned the lisianthus pots, I found one plant with three buds. I put that pot in the high tunnel, and the first bud has opened.

A brave last lisianthus

The tomato plants were damaged on the top and along the wall. Nevertheless, I picked 12 more tomatoes on Friday, and they are still ripening. I think the plants have stopped flowering, which is no surprise because they depend on long days to get the reproductive action cranked up.

Frost damage on the tops and sides of the tomatoes

The phone just rang. It was Terry alerting me to the fact that it was snowing. He got the tractor back in the shop in the nick of time. I asked him this morning if it was going to rain today. He said no. I didn’t ask about snow!

Snow? Seriously?

This is very early for snow. I don’t know if it will stick, but even so, it makes one wonder if it’s going to be a long winter.

Apple juice and broccoli rabe

We have been enjoying the unseasonably warm weather this week, but it is all coming to an end soon. I have finally gotten used to our white pines thinning their needles in the fall. While we think of them as evergreen, in point of fact, they shed the needles that aren’t earning their keep before the winter every year. What I mean is that when a needle gets shaded by new growth, its ability to photosynthesize declines while it still evaporates as much water as it ever did. It is using resources without giving anything back. These slacker needles have to go. The tree looks awful for a while, but after the yellow needles fall, it is as if they’d never been there. The tree looks full and green and beautiful again.

White pine shedding its underperforming needles

I tried making apple juice with my steam juicer. I have a grinder-type juicer with which I have made awesome apple juice, but it is a lengthy process that involves a lot of filtering and filter cleaning. I cut up a combination of MacFree (a variety of MacIntosh) and Liberty apples, half filling the top of the juicer.

Whole lot of apples in the steamer

Then I let ‘er rip. Hardly anything came out. When I expressed my disappointment, Terry said, “Aw, honey, there’s no juice in apples! If you press cider, you get a little juice, and the rest is pig food!”

Itty bit of juice coming out

So either way, one must embrace the waste when juicing apples. I probably let the juicer run a little too long in my eagerness to increase the volume, and the result was a bit watery. I mixed it with some of my old juice, and it was just right. As with the grape juice, the steam juicer was a lot less work.

We had an exceptional wildlife morning on Wednesday. First a doe walked across the field and posed nicely in the early morning sunlight.

Doe in the morning sunlight

Then her fawn, nearly grown, walked up behind her.

Doe and fawn

Finally, our six tom turkeys made their appearance, although not close enough together that I could get everyone in the picture. They are so uncooperative!

Doe, fawn, and turkeys!

The broccoli rabe in the high tunnel is huge. Last night, I cut a whole bunch of leaves and looked up a recipe for sauteed broccoli rabe with garlic and hot pepper flakes. This is what it looked like before cooking.

Salad spinner full of broccoli rabe

This is what it looked like after. Like most greens, it shrunk down to nothing. It was, however, not as bitter as I feared it would be. In fact, both Terry and I liked it. I’ll trim so more off next week.

Broccoli rabe with garlic and hot pepper flakes

Look how big the radishes are getting! I will be able to start thinning the lettuce before long.

The first planting of radishes and lettuce

It’s so nice to have something growing even as most of the outside world is winding down for the year.

Winter readiness

 We continue to make preparations for winter. Saturday evening, we moved the girls from their beloved summer pasture in the orchard to the chicken run up by the house. Soon Terry will have to shut off the water to the outside spigots, and Hilda and I will have to carry water from the kitchen to the coop. Perhaps even more importantly, the hens will not lay eggs with less than 14 hours of light. Now that we are down to less than 12, egg production in the orchard had already dropped from 4 to 6 eggs per day to 0 to 3.  The pullets are not laying yet

The move to winter quarters worried me a little. The pullets are not yet integrated into the flock. We had to put the morning treats of scratch grains in 3 different spots for the pullets to get any. The hens chased them off but were only able to cover 2 places at once. When I shut the coop at night while they were in the orchard, I saw that they cowered in the corner instead of roosting on the perch with the big girls. I hoped there would not be problems when they were confined to the smaller run. On that account, so far, so good. I haven’t noticed anyone missing feathers. Yet.

This is also the first time the pullets have been cold. Between the cold and the bullying, all the pullets were hunkered down on the windbreak yesterday morning. The hens patrolled the ground underneath.

Pullets hunkered down on the windbreak; hens on the ground

I’m loving the high tunnel.  I had to order seeds, which finally came on Saturday. I planted spinach, onions, two more kinds of lettuce, beets, and carrots. The beets and carrots are a long shot, but it’s supposed to be warmer than average for the next 10 days or so. We’ll see if they can grow enough to be edible before the days get too short.

While I was out there, I noticed that the tomatoes were infested with tomato hornworms and that the hornworms had in turn been infested with parasitoid wasps, just like the worm on Terry’s peppers. I found 6 hornworms altogether, 5 covered with cocoons. I left the infested ones to produce more wasps that would infect any worms I didn’t find. I threw the sixth worm to the chickens and watched the game of Keep Away that happened afterward.

Two of five tomato hornworms with white parasitoid wasp cocoons on their backs 

My friend Margaret K. tagged me of Facebook with a recipe for Brussels sprouts with bacon and cheese in a cream sauce. What’s not to like? I had to try it. I rounded out the meal with roast chicken and baked potatoes.

Brussels sprouts with bacon and cheese

Roasted chicken

Hilda, Terry, and I enjoyed a proper Sunday lunch as well as a quick Monday supper of leftovers. Life is good.