I was a total slacker with the camera over the weekend. Thus,
I have but two photos for the blog this week, both of which were taken by
Nancy.
So yeah, it’s been a rough year, but I’m thankful that my chosen
family—in this case, Terry, Jane, and Nancy--can get together and have a fun
day. I’m also thankful that these particular people are the types who will hop
up and help get dinner on the table. Jane made gravy; Nancy got out dishes and put
food in serving dishes, and Terry opened the champagne. I carved the turkey,
which was perfectly cooked, if I say so myself.
The first cut on the turkey
Taking off the wing
It was a nice day with good food. My innovation this year
was to bake the herbs (fresh from the high tunnel) in the bread for the
stuffing. Jane declared it a success. It made the flavors infuse into the bread
in a way that took it to the next level. I got the last of the Brussels sprouts
out of the high tunnel. I have mentioned that they didn’t grow right this year.
I managed to salvage enough for dinner, but threw out about three times that
volume. We had mashed Caribou Russets. To finish up, we had “pumpkin” pie made
from BetterNut Squash, a new variety Terry tried this year. I loved it! The
flesh was so firm and smooth. Not like watery, fibrous pumpkins. The only thing
not from the farm (other than staples like salt and flour) was the turkey. I get
such a kick out of that!
I suspect the cliché of turkey fatigue is from a time when all
turkeys were 25 pounds and no one had freezers. Our turkey was gone long before
I was tired of it. Jane and Nancy took some leftovers home. Terry and I ate
turkey, gravy, potatoes, etc. until last night. There was barely enough turkey
left to make turkey soup from the stock that I made from the carcass. We
finished Jane’s legendary gravy with toast for lunch today. And that’s it. All
gone, except for two more dinners of turkey soup in the freezer.
One holiday down, two to go. Then we settle into winter and
wait for spring.
The extra refrigerator is empty of all summer produce. I used
the rest of the apples in a crisp and gave the last 6 pounds of carrots to a
friend who was going to dehydrate them for soups. The only other thing in the
refrigerator was a small melon that had been in there since mid-October. Remembering
the liquified giant watermelon, I cut the small melon in the sink. But it was
good!
A passable melon after a month in the refrigerator
It was a little squishy around the seeds, but cutting that
part got rid of the seeds as well. Bonus! While not the best watermelon I ever ate,
it was passable and better than what I expected after a month in the refrigerator.
I cleaned the refrigerator this morning. It looks a lot
better without raspberry juice smeared on the shelf and too many dead fruit
flies on the bottom to count. This is just where I want the spare fridge to be
the weekend before Thanksgiving.
A clean refrigerator is a thing of beauty
Following an extremely gloomy spell, the sun finally came
out yesterday. The girls were so excited to get back to their dust baths.
Unfortunately, as I approached to take a picture, most of them ran to the fence
to greet me in breathless anticipation for treats that I did not have. These
were the only two left in the raised bed.
Dust bathing on a sunny day
It may get down below 20 degrees tonight. I’m not sure what
the temperature will be in the high tunnel. I know that low 20’s will turn Brussels
sprouts black. Not wanting to risk it, I harvested. My goal was to have
Brussels sprouts for Thanksgiving, and I made it.
The high tunnel Brussels sprouts
You may recall from an earlier post that my Brussels sprouts
did not do well this year. I think I may have topped them too soon. The best
sprouts I have are ones that resprouted from a side bud after topping. This
picture shows the new shoot with the young sprouts developing. You can see the
joint between the two at the bottom of the picture.
A side shoot that I let grow is light blue-green above the greener green of the old shoot at the bottom.
I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving with good food and
good company!
It’s feeling like winter. It makes me sad, but it is
seasonally appropriate. The goldfinches are not gold anymore.
Not-gold finches
Their general strategy is to have representatives sit on the
bird feeder and throw seeds to the ground as fast as they can. Then everyone
flies in and has a party on the lawn.
PARTY! Mostly goldfinches with a few house finch crashers
The weekend had about the most dismal weather you can get--rain, snow, wind.
Why, yes, that is snow in the picture.
Snow
When Terry came to bed Saturday night, he told me there was
an inch of snow on the ground, even though the forecast was for no
accumulation. By morning, though, most of it had melted from the grass. Only
the deck bore testimony to the night’s precipitation.
The last vestiges of the snow that fell Saturday night
Last week, I wrote about the tomatoes biting the dust. I had
some tomatoes ripening in the house. The very last one went to bacon, lettuce,
avocado, and tomato sandwiches. I’ll long for ripe tomatoes long before they
are available again, but for now, I’m glad to be done with them.
The last tomato sandwich of 2021
The only thing left that requires my attention are a few
more apples. When the weather is so gray, wet, and bleak, I can’t keep myself
out of the kitchen. I have to find something else to do soon, however, because
every freezer we own is packed with baked goods. Anyway, I looked through some
cookbooks for an apple cake recipe. I came up with on in King Arthur Flour 100th
Anniversary Cookbook. I’m beginning to suspect that these recipes are of more
historic than culinary importance. The cake was leavened with yeast rather than
the usual baking powder and/or soda. It did not have much of a yeasty flavor, a
disappointment to me. It also had a kind of weird aftertaste. I’ll give it this—it
aged well. By the third day or so, the weird flavor went away. I admit that it
was a pretty cake, but I doubt if I will make it again.
I wasn’t thinking all the way through when I planted the
raised beds last summer. I put the Brussels sprouts in a bed next to the
chicken run. Here’s the problem: the Brussels sprouts don’t get harvested until
after the first frost. They say a mild frost makes them sweeter. Therefore,
when we moved the chickens up to winter quarters as daylength fell below 13 hours,
I had to exclude the Brussels sprouts bed (as well as two adjoining beds) from
the run when I put up the fence. Poor hens! Nowhere to dust bathe.
Three adjoining raised beds
In the Before Time, the killing frost would certainly come
before mid-October. Hilda said for the first several years they lived here, it
frosted on Sept. 15 like clockwork. Now that the climate is warmer, the first
frost date has been creeping further and further into the autumn months. This
year, it didn’t happen until the first week of November, when the temperature
dipped below freezing briefly for a couple of nights. The Brussels sprouts did
not do well this year. I have no idea why. I salvaged what sprouts I could
before the first all-night freeze. I’ve ruined beautiful stalks of sprouts in
the past by waiting too long. There are limits to their frost tolerance.
When it warmed up again, I turned the raised beds with a
broad fork. A broad fork, as the name suggests, is 20 inches wide. There are
handles on each side of four large tines. One stands on the crossbar to push
the tines into the soil, then pulls back on the handles to break up the soil. Eliot
Coleman recommends the broad fork to preserve the soil structure. I can’t claim
to understand exactly what he means by that, but I have observed that
earthworms generally survive the process. The same cannot be said of
rototilling. Terry is a fan of rototilling and thinks that broad forking is
untidy. He does concede the earthworm point, however. Besides, breaking up the
clods gives the girls something to do.
The broad fork leaves clods
When I finished with the broad fork, I moved the fence to
the outside of the raised beds. I took the risk of doing this while the hens
were out, betting that they were wary enough of my presence to not take
advantage of the sagging fence. All went well, and the fence was repositioned
without any escapees.
The first thing the hens did was scratch around in the oak
leaves around the raised beds. I watched for awhile, and only one of the
Dominque pullets had the courage to hop up on the edge of a raised bed. She
hopped right back down. There’s a reason that we use the term “chicken” to describe
cowardly.
I got tired of waiting and carried on with other end-of-season
outdoor tasks. When I saw Terry, he said, “You’ve got to see the hens!”
I got my camera and stealthily approached the run. If they
see you coming, they run to the fence, hoping you are bringing treats. I needn’t
have worried. They were completely focused on dust bathing. Mind you, there are
three beds, one bed for every 3 to 4 chickens, but they were all right on top
of each other in the middle bed.
Everyone has to be in one bed
OMG! This is the BEST. THING. EVER!
Eliot Coleman (in Four Season Harvest) also says that
if you plant carrots in the high tunnel the first week in August, they will get
just big enough before the soil freezes that you can have baby carrots all
winter long. Due to the late frost, the high tunnel carrots are enormous.
The carrot bed in the high tunnel
Fortunately, these huge carrots are not as woody as ones of similar size from
the grocery store. I’m not sure if it’s due to variety or freshness.
Giant carrot
The beets, planted at the same time, are also quite robust
Alas, the tomatoes took it in the shorts when the real cold
came. We say goodbye to fresh tomatoes until next year. Pulling out the last of
the tomato plants is a melancholy task. Sniff.
Sad, dead tomato plants
I was working at the Green Living Expo all day Saturday.
When I got home, Terry said there was a surprise for me in the kitchen. There
on the counter was the first Dominique pullet egg! They certain took their
sweet time to grow up. Since then, however, we’ve had one brown pullet egg
every day.
First Dominique pullet egg between two hen eggs. So cute!
Now that the time has changed, I can close the coop before
dinner. This week, I’ve been rewarded with some fabulous sunsets. And so, day
by day, we prepare to hunker down.
Halloween rushed up on us again this year. Terry set aside
three nice carving pumpkins from his harvest and put the rest here and there
for decorations. It was not until last Thursday that we got around to carving them.
Jane came up for the afternoon. Here’s what we ended up with.
Left to right, Jane's, my, and Terry's pumpkins
My pumpkin is in the middle. I tried to make lips, but it
turned out looking more like a moustache. Jane and Terry’s pumpkins looked cute
and happy. Terry deviated from tradition by cutting a hole in the back of his
pumpkin instead of taking the top off. Terry said we’d done it that way last year.
I looked back to last year’s picture (see post from October 27), and this does
seem to be the case. I’d forgotten all about it, and Jane and I had the tops
off the pumpkins before Terry joined us.
I got three votive candles from my lifetime supply, purchased
at Ikea 20 years ago. This is what our pumpkins looked like lit up. Note that you can see right through the left eye of Terry's pumpkin.
Lit up
Saturday was our annual bonfire. It wasn’t the same without
Pat and Hilda, but two other friends, Laura and Jan, joined us. I somehow did
not get a picture of Jan.
Due to some bad storms last summer, we had an extra large
pile of branches. Note that it is above Terry and Laura’s heads. Terry put some orange trail tape on branches to assess the wind direciton
Extra large burn pile
Terry started the fire like he always does—with a prodigious
amount of gasoline. He was concerned that the wood had gotten wet in the two
days of rain that preceded the fire.
Prepping for ignition
He needn’t have worried. The fire took right off.
Soon it was burning wood rather than gasoline.
The fire "took"
Many of the logs had mushrooms sprouting from the ends, a
testament to the wetness.
Mushroom on a log next to the burn pile
Everyone took turns throwing wood on the fire. We started
with branches and logs near the burn pile.
Jane prepares to throw a stick on the fire
Laura helps Nancy get a stick over the puny and oft-burned sapling by the fire ring
Finally I got a picture of someone, in this case, Terry, tossing wood onto the fire
Nancy went back into the woods and pulled branches out for
the rest of us to throw on the fire.
Nancy cleaning up the woods
Then we sat around and watched it burn. As it burned down.
Terry went around with a pitchfork to turn it and move everything toward the
center.
Terry tends the fire
When the fire was mostly embers, we headed up to the house
for supper. I made baked penne with sausage and Italian bread. I also baked my
legendary pumpkin (shaped) sugar cookies (that contain no actual pumpkin). I
forgot to take a picture before the guests arrived, and someone (not mentioning
any names) snitched one as an hors d-oeuvre.
Pumpkin sugar cookies
We kept our jack-o-lanterns in the living room until Monday
morning. I noticed fruit flies flying around them by the second day already. Where
did they come from? I am beginning to believe in spontaneous generation.
Anyway, two more days in the house was as much as we could stand. I moved them
out by the compost bin, where they will smile happily until they collapse from
freezing and decomposition. Ashes to ashes…
