Closure: The Last Blog Post

So this is it.  The last post from Pleasant Places Farm.  Done.  Finale.  Closure.

We have sold the place.  Signed papers last week, and are now on borrowed,  correction: rented, time until we close on the new house and get moved.  Inside this house there are boxes everywhere.  Empty ones, taped up and labeled ones,  gaping ones.  Large pieces of furniture are missing, either given away or sold.  We are downsizing, after all.  The house's original carpeting, in a color I would have never chosen, I notice is still in obstinately good shape.  I kept waiting for it wear out so I could justify replacing it, and it just never did.

Outside, the spring season is glorious, and Pleasant Places is as beautiful as she has ever been.  I can not tell whether she is bidding me a fond farewell, or taunting me.  I wake every morning to the dawn chorus of birds.  There is, to me, something almost humorous in the extravagance of all that singing. It makes me smile.  The apple tree is blooming, and the dogwoods, and the iris, or it irises?  After a weekend of soaking rain, the springs have popped up again in  the barnyard.  The sparkle of the water everywhere among the bright green grass has a surreal beauty.  The chickens make their happy, clucky noise.  A tractor putters away in a distant neighbor's garden.  Wild turkeys visit the far end of the pasture.  Apparently, all is right on Pleasant Places Farm.

Two of the hens are setting eggs which should hatch just before we leave.   Most of the chickens are staying here, and so is Pico, the guard dog.  He seems to belong more to the farm than to us, and though I will miss him, when the new owners asked us to leave him, it seemed right.

With or without me, things go on as they should.  I am reminded of a summer day when I sat on the stone wall at the old homestead above the pasture and realized I was just one in probably a very long line of stewards of this piece of land.  I, like the ones before, would move on or pass on, but the land itself would remain. And now that day has come.  Sooner that I expected, but in the proper time, I have no doubt.

I am starting a file for the new owners, writing down things it will be helpful for them to know.  Trying to resist the urge to tell them everything it took ten years to learn about this land.   Enough to be helpful, not enough to rob them of the adventure of discovering things on their own.  They are escaping the city and longing to come here and learn to be more self-reliant.  I feel glad to be handing it over to people I believe will enjoy it as I have.

The move here almost ten years ago was about self-reliance for me as well, about producing our own food, about learning the skills of a past era.  In the last ten years there is very little in the way of food production I haven't tackled, from milking goats to butchering chickens and, of course,  growing all manner of fruits and vegetables.  Ten years ago, there really was no "local food" movement in this area, and if you wanted organic and didn't want to drive two hours, you had to grow it.   So I did. Now, ten years later, I will be able to walk to a weekly farmer's market from my new house. I am looking forward to that.   I am still a believer in local food, and I don't think I will ever regret learning what it takes to produce it.

Neither will I ever quit, of my own volition, being a gardener.  As soon as I knew we were going to move to a house on a town lot, I starting reading about urban homesteading and edible landscapes.  I will have a garden and fruit trees, and probably a couple of city chickens.  And what I have learned to do on a larger scale here, I think I may can do even better on our postage stamp yard.  And there will be the luxury of free time.  I have loved my farm, but she  has demanded much attention.  Ten years of never being long away from her.  Now, if I want go away for two weeks, or four, I can...city chickens notwithstanding.  ( I have family close by to look after them)

So another phase of life awaits us.  We move on to a small house with a small yard (way less than acre, can you believe that?) in an even smaller town than we live now.  But though it may sound like my life is shrinking, I feel it is, in fact, expanding.   We will spend less money in gas and in energy, and less energy  and time in upkeep.  That means more time to travel, to hike, to canoe the nearby lake, perhaps to write.  A new adventure.

  I have sifted through all my possessions in the last few weeks, everything, forcing myself to consider every piece and edit, edit, edit. "If you don't absolutely need it or love it, get rid of it,"  I tell myself repeatedly.  And the more I jettison, the freer I feel, and the clearer my sense of what is truly beautiful and necessary.  How odd, that in order to simplify my life, I must pull a reverse Thoreau and leave the countryside for a town, albeit a very small and rural one.

So  I embrace this change; and yet there will certainly  be dusks when I will miss watching the sunset from this porch, and springs when I will remember the awe of helping a new goat kid into a new, green world , and winters when I wish I could once more see the snow clouds roll over the mountains toward Pleasant Places.

Betwixt and Between

Wow, it's been a long time since my last post.  Seven months.  But I have some pretty good excuses--no, really, I do.

First, starting in early (way-too-early) August, school cranked back up, which meant I went back to work.  This year, that meant back to kicking off our amped-up breakfast program and to preparing my assistant manager to...drumroll, please...take my place.  As of January, I have moved into a more educational role, and I am loving it, but I was definitely feeling in between roles there for several months.

And then there is this.  Sometime between July and now (February 5, to be exact) I slipped over from my forties into my fifties.  Now, mind you, I don't have a lot of angst about this.  Being fifty kind of feels like, I don't know, a relief.   Like it gives me permission to, as Ousier Boudreaux said, "wear a funny hat and  ugly clothes and grow vegetables in the dirt" ...Not that I haven't always done those things.  But anyway, 49 felt like being "on the cusp" of something, a feeling I distinctly do not like.  Now, finally fifty, I can grab my funny hat and AARP card and run (being careful not to fall and break a hip) happily into the last quarter. (Actually, since I plan to live until about 90 and die peacefully while napping in the sun in my garden, I am still a few years away from the last quarter, but I am no good with fractions.)

Shirley Maclaine as Ousier Boudreaux in "Steel Magnolias".  I think she is about 55 in this photo.
I remember when I saw the movie, I did think she was old. Ha!

But the ultimate in being "in between" is this:  we put Pleasant Places on the market back in late September. The market being what it is,  this is more of a "well, let's just see what happens" move.  If it sells, we will move to a down-sized property more centrally located...and I will be fine with that.   The reality is that it does get harder to keep up the acreage and work full time, and we spend a lot of money in gas and vehicle wear and tear just driving to work every day.   If  the house doesn't sell in a year, we will pull up the sign, fold up our fleece as it were, and start figuring out how to make the property less maintenance intensive...and I will be fine with that.

But in the meantime, I am in between...did I mention I dislike being in between?  I am not a cusp-dweller, at least not a comfortable one.   It is as if someone hit the "pause" button.  Yes, I will plant a garden and I may even raise some chickens for the freezer, but nothing long term.  I have to put off  raising the turkeys I had planned because they take too long.  I can't plant any more fruit trees because I don't want to invest in something I may have to leave. I really should find a home for the five remaining goats, just in case.  No new fencing. No big remodeling projects.  Just pause.  For now.

What to Do When the Zucchini Fairy Visits

Whether you planted too much zucchini again or you forgot to lock your car, this time of year you really can't have too many zuke recipes. Here's a recipe we tried last night and really liked. 

Zucchini Fritters

2 cups shredded zucchini-drain if  it is watery

1/2 c diced onion

3  eggs slightly beaten (you might could do with 2.   I just have lots of eggs)

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1 cup bread crumbs

1 tablespoon Italian herb blend

salt and pepper

oil for browning

Mix the first six ingredients together in a medium bowl.  You want the mixture to stick together.

Heat a small amount of cooking oil in a skillet over medium heat. 

Drop the zucchini mixture onto the skillet about 2 tablespoons at a time and flatten slightly. Cook until one side is brown and crisp. Flip fritters and brown the other side. When browned, remove to a plate with paper toweling and salt and pepper to taste.

Accompaniments and variations: I served this with Imagine organic tomato soup topped with homemade croutons last night. A green salad would have been nice too.

I think maybe a dill sauce would have made a nice spread/dip for them.

Other spices (cayenne instead of the Italian?) and vegetables (diced bell peppers?) could be used to change the flavor profile.

They were even good warmed up for lunch today!

Kids On The Farm

The kids have finally arrived.  Beatrice gave birth to quads on June 27.  They are all boys (sigh).  Hermione gave birth to two pretty little does on Saturday, July 7.  Both does birthed without my assistance, which suits me fine. I was around for clean-up and to make sure everyone had figured out where the milk came from, and then to move mom and babies into private quarters for awhile. 

Three of Bea's babies were various shades of brown and one, the smallest, was white.  Whether it was his color or his size or the fact that she just couldn't deal with all four of them, I don't know, but for some reason, she rejected the little guy.  She just refuses to let him eat.  So we have a bottle baby.  I have been raising goats for about 12 years and this is the first one I have had to bottle feed as we always let dams raise their kids.  So here I am washing baby bottles and heating milk, and it has been how many years since I did this for any kind of a kid? 

My family came up for the fourth, and we had a wonderful visit.  Lots of good, old-fashioned food like chicken and dumplings, vegetables from the garden and homemade ice cream.  It was so good to have my mom, dad, sis and her kids here.

My niece and nephews enjoyed visiting the animals. My niece helped me feed the bottle baby...

And my nephews gathered eggs...

And hung out with Peaches, the cow.





Solstice

Something about the solstice intrigues me, feels like something that should be celebrated, and so I had made plans, important plans mind you, to piddle in my garden last evening and then sit on the porch and drink in those last long rays of the longest day of the year.

Instead, I came down with this awful summer cold complete with aches and chills. I caught the fading rays of the day through my window as I sat wrapped in a blanket watching "American Pickers" on Netflix. Not the celebration I had planned. Sometimes I think life is made up of the"insteads".

But summer proceeds with or without me. The garden is starting to produce the warm weather vegetables now: squash, beans, zukes. I even had a salad the other day that included our romaine and our first grape tomatoes. I think this is the first year I have ever had both ready at the same time. Usually the lettuces are gone long before the tomatoes come in. For sure the romaine won't hang on much longer in these ninety degree days.

The peaches that the late frost and hail storm spared were stolen by a marauding squirrel. I caught him in the very act. He also boldly visits our front porch every day looking for a way into the squirrel-proof bird feeder. The varmint stands his ground until I am within a couple of feet of him, and I have to follow him off the porch to get him to leave. Very cheeky. I had to buy peaches this year.

The pullets are growing and the layers are laying, or most of them are. We have eight layers currently and are getting about six eggs a day. I have never been any good at discovering the slackers. Heidi, the duck, has decided she is a chicken and lays her pretty blue-green eggs in the nest boxes with the others.

Goat babies are imminent. Bea is as wide as she is tall. It has to be soon. Next week probably.

The katydids are already clacking away in the trees. Really early for them. During the day, haze hangs over the mountains nearly hiding those farthest away, muting and smearing the colors in the nearer ones.

Last night just after dark, which came around 9:30, I pulled myself off the couch and stuck my head out to listen to the night sounds for just a moment. There in the dark the crickets chirped, the toads trilled and the tree frogs sang their summer song. The longest day of the year had passed.

Bunnies and Chickens and Cows, Oh My!

It has been a wild and wonderful spring at our place. So busy that I haven't found time to write about all that goes on here...

Like the March 2 tornado that thankfully missed our farm completely, passed just yards from where our daughter was housesitting and devastated houses and businesses in our town.

And the weeks of beautiful, warm weather that has the garden jumping out of the ground.

 And the return of my feathered friends, like this bright goldfinch, the ruby-throated hummers, and just today, my favorite indigo buntings.

The batch of pullets is growing fast. It will soon be time for them to join the bigger birds.  Hobley, the drake, disappeared while we were away Easter weekend.  Whatever got him was large enough to just take him out of the pen without leaving much of a trace.  So now the only duck left is Heidi,who has been moved to the chicken house for safety where she maintains an uneasy peace with her new roomates. 

The menagerie grows.  We have adopted our niece's huge rabbit, Baxter.

More big news, and I do mean big,  is that a cow now lives at Pleasant Places--  A pretty, friendly Jersey named "Peaches".  She belongs to a friend, and is just staying with us temporarily.  Besides just the fact that I am enjoying having her around,  I am hoping she will cut down on the summer mowing and provide us with some good fertilizer. 

The Season Begins

The non-event winter and early, early spring are conspiring to make me feel behind.  I am not fond of cold weather, but winter does keep you inside where you might, perhaps, clean out closets or the pantry or the freezer.  There are a dozen inside chores that simply did not get done this winter-that-never-was because it was just too nice outside.  In fact the weather was so inspiring that I started too many projects: the new herb bed (about 3/4 ready), a place for a small three sisters garden down by the barn (about 1/4 ready), more raised beds by the fence (started in my head only)...to name a few.  Not to mention the more mundane things like stringing new electric fence that should have been done.  And now with spring flowers blooming in February, it feels like the gardening season has begun.  In fact, it has.

I have lettuce coming up in the garden.  I bought a couple of really cheap packets of  an Italian mix at the Dollar General.  I thought it would be a really skimpy amount of seeds, but I was pleasantly surprised.  They seem to be germinating well too.

I have also become intrigued with a new (to me) seed-starting method called winter sowing.  The idea is not so much to push the season as it is to use the winter downtime to pot up seeds and then leave them outside to sprout on their own schedule.  I have read that the result is hardy seedlings that you don't have to harden off before transplanting.  So I bought handfuls of dollar store seed packets to experiment with.  So far the bachelor buttons have sprouted and look good.  A vine called cardinal climber sprouted but then got nipped off by cold.  Possibly not all seeds are suitable for this.  It is frightening to me to be sticking tomato seeds outside in February, but winter sowing experts admonish beginners to "trust the seed".  You can read more at WinterSown.Org.  Below are my wintersown seeds in all manner of  repurposed containers.

By The Numbers

Crocus are blooming at Pleasant Places

We are doing a walk through the Bible theme with our church this year--well, really, hitting a book every week is more like a run through the Bible, but you get the idea.  This week we were in Numbers, which sounds like one of those books you might just be tempted to skip, but it was really interesting. 

Numbers:  In the second month of the second year since they had left Egypt, Moses was told to number the people, which he did.  There were a lot of them.  They had manna to eat every day and God's presence in the cloud to lead them around, but they grumbled anyway.  They grumbled about the food: So God gave them quail..lots of quail.  Miriam and Aaron grumbled about Moses: So God gave them a "talkin' to" and gave Miriam leprosy.  They sent 12 spies into the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey and huge bunches of grapes....and also huge people.  Ten frightened spies gave a bad report; only two, Joshua and Caleb, had faith to believe in God's plan.  More numbers:  Because of their unbelief, God said the Israelites would wander in the desert 40 years  until everyone over 20 died (except Joshua and Caleb). That averages to be about 82 deaths every day for 40 years.  The rest of numbers: more wandering, more grumbling, a lot of years--but they still always had food and always had God to guide them.

And here are some of my own numbers:  Today is the 5th day of the 2nd month of 2012 and I am 49 years old today.  It was 58 degrees today -- the sun felt warm on my face.  I didn't have quail or manna, but I did have local beef,  winter vegetables, homemade bread and a scratch cake for dinner, which was delicious.  And I don't have a pillar of fire or a holy cloud, but I do have God's word and His Holy Spirit to guide me, for which I am very thankful.    No grumbling here. 

On the farm since I last posted, construction on the garden beds has continued.  I have dug up the spot where I intend to put my culinary herbs this spring. The fruit trees have been pruned. I borrowed my neighbor's buck to breed two of our does, Bea and Hermione.  It continues to be warm and wet and the crocus are blooming.  We passed a little pond coming home last night and the peepers were already peeping...this is the earliest I ever recall this happening.  I am trying to decide what plants to spend my budget on this spring--grapes? more blueberries?  cherry or pear trees?  I just don't know, but it is time to decide.

Site for new culinary herb beds.  Duck pen in the background

"And the Lord said to Moses, 'Is the Lord's power limited? Now you shall see whether My word will come true for you or not.' " Numbers 11:23

Crepe Murder

There was a break in the rain today and we tried to take advantage of it.  It wasn't exactly warm, but it was warm enough that I shucked my faithful Walls jacket and worked shirt sleeved. 

Sprout and her dad began construction on the boxes for the raised beds in the new market garden.   This is a new enterprise here . Phase one will consist of several beds on this south-facing hillside.

Since they didn't seem to need my help, I decided that it was as good a day as any to start pruning.  I started with the crepe myrtles in the duck enclosure.  Most everyone else has already cut back their myrtles, but I don't think it matters that I am a bit late.  Dormant is dormant, isn't it?

Sprout came around the corner and saw what I was doing.  "My horticulture instructor called that practice 'crepe murder', "  she observed.  I have to admit it does look violent, and I normally wouldn't cut anything back that severely, but that seems to be the common practice here and well, everyone does it this way. ( And if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?)

Even in today's gloom, I can tell that, murder or not, this opens up the small kitchen garden to more sun.  I don't think Hobbly and Heidi, the ducks, care for it too much.  They act like they miss the cover and are hanging out around their hutch.  I guess they don't realize that their whole pen is covered over with bird netting to protect them from owls and hawks.  Come summer I may need to add some shade cloth, though.

Everything is soaked through.  The ground squishes and sinks when I walk on it.  It is risky to take even the four wheel drive truck down to the barn, so I walk it...but that can be risky too.  It seems I slide down in the mud almost daily.  And warm!  Supposed to be in the fifties all this coming week.  My bulbs are up.  Some even have fat buds ready to bloom.  I try to tell them it is only January, but they don't listen. 

 More storms on the way tonight.

Of Mud and Bean Soup

This morning I was awakened by, of all things, a thunderstorm.  It was so warm I took my coffee out to the porch for a few minutes, a rare treat on a January morning.  It isn’t cold at all, but it is very dark and dreary and the fire in the fireplace is comforting. 

The weather is going to change, of course.  That is one thing we always know here in our mountains.  We can have three seasons in one day.    Late winter is always especially confusing for the plants, and of course, all the freezing and thawing and rain turns roads and farm paths to mud, mud, mud.  Can’t even drive the four wheel drive truck down to the barn at present.  

We ate the last lettuce in the garden last week.  It did finally get too cold for it.  Amazing that we had lettuce in uncovered beds this late.  My kitchen garden is truly in a very  protected spot.  We still have carrots and kale.  If the bunnies leave us any, we will have broccoli and spinach as soon as the days lengthen a little.  This is my first attempt at a fall/winter garden.  May I just say brussel sprouts alone were worth the effort! (Not that anyone else in my family agrees with that sentiment.)  If I had put forth a little more effort and covered everything every time I should have, it would have been even more of a success.

The seed catalogs are here again with their bright and hopeful photos and descriptions, and it is time to plan the next garden.  This year  will be very different in that our daughter plans to plant her first market garden on the farm in the spring.   I am helping her with the planning aspects of the project.  Her dad will be helping with the marketing.   I can tell already that while related to growing a family garden, it is different in ways other than just scale.  It will be an interesting undertaking, and will hopefully grow into a business for her.

The chickens were still managing to get themselves picked off by unknown predators.  In light of that and the fact that they will need to be kept out of the market garden, we have built them a bigger run and tightened their house so now they are back to being confined.   As soon as I think they have learned to come back to the hen house to roost, we will start letting them range for a few hours in the afternoons in good weather.  It’  a compromise on being free range all the time, but we can’t afford to feed chicken to the wildlife or garden seed and produce to the chickens.

The goats are in their  little pen as well.  We will be expanding that as we get funds.   We have found that for us the only truly reliable goat fence is made of sheep panels.  They are expensive and we will probably only be buying a few at a time.  We will keep the goat herd small as a result.  I have arranged to breed the three does in February which should give us July babies-- An odd time for kids, but February is when I can get the buck, and the kids will come during summer vacation from school so I will be here to help if needed.  We won’t keep all the kids for sure. 

Another storm is rolling through as I write this.   Thunder and wind.  Rain driving against the house windows.   For supper tonight it’s 15 bean soup and cornbread—hearty and cheap.  A good meal for a rainy night.

Our Family Tree

The tree itself is a little worn and leans a little.  It is not grandly tall nor perfectly shaped. It may even be missing a limb.  Some of the ornaments are tattered and chipped.  All are random and mismatched.
I admit that I have looked a little longingly and sighed at those beautiful "themed" trees in decorating magazines, ornaments all matching, elegant in ribbons, star on straight. Perfect.
Our tree, like our family, is not perfect...and yet it is perfectly us.  Nothing matches and yet all those odds and ends tell a story.  I guess the theme of our tree is simply "us".  It tells our story.

A story of...

Beginnings...

And journeys...



 of Beloved pets...

And Farm Life...

Our ornaments do not match.  They are...

Handmade by  co-workers and children now grown up...



And by friends now passed on...

Collected over time, lovingly preserved, they preserve our history.  Each a story within a story. 

The annual ritual of trimming the tree re-tells and reminds us who we are. Where we have been.

What matters.

And a miracle takes place.  Our tree, now dressed in our imperfect past, becomes somehow beautiful and...

Perfect.

"All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose."  Romans 8:28

Weird Fusion

Beautiful day here...warm, indian summer afternoon. Golden light filtering through golden leaves.  The capris and flip flops come back out, briefly. But just this weekend we had a hard frost.  I covered the peppers, but their tops got bitten back anyhow.  The grass is now almost completely brown.  With the help of my mom, who was visiting, I unpotted and stowed the banana trees, the bromeliads, a few others.  I have more tropicals to move inside.  Why do I always put this off?  I know it will frost more and more frequently now until mild days like this are just a memory.  I don't dread the winter, but at this stage of my life, there is something in me that wants to prolong summer--and maybe that is as much a metaphor as anything else.

In the kitchen tonight, I have put together quite an eclectic supper.  I am a firm believer in using up what's on hand and in season, and what was on hand this evening was quite diverse. Tonight's menu includes :
collard greens-- harvested, with permission, from a friend's flower pots at school.  She was growing them outside her office.  I've never been a big eater of collards, though I should be.  I grew up way down south and then spent my early married years in eastern North Carolina where they actually make cornbread and collard sandwiches. 
turnips--cubed and carmelized.  Why don't we eat more turnips (I mean the root part) in the south?  They are a perfectly agreeable vegetable. These grew happily in my friend's pots and now are simmering in one of mine.
Cajun rice and sausage--Had a pound of sausage.  Always have rice, an onion. Peppers, both hot and sweet from the garden. But I lacked the red beans that would have gone well in it.  Still filling and good.

A Tale of Two Critters

A couple of nights ago, we lost one of the male ducks to some kind of predator.  My research into the way the drake met his end revealed that our culprit was either a possum or a raccoon.  We haven't seen any raccoons around the house, but several possums visit nightly, waddle onto the front porch and consume whatever is left of the cat food.  We can hear them crunching and usually turn on the light to identify which of the several ones around has come to dinner. Silky?  Blacky? Stubby?   But I digress...

I was not happy about the loss of the drake and was totally unwilling to lose another.  The ducks are really close to the house, the idea being to deter predators.  I turned on the outside light and tried to keep watch.  Indeed a possum did show up just after dark, but all he was eating was leftover duck food.  I ran him off.

Last night, I sat in the den with one ear cocked.  I'd moved the duck food hoping the possums would stay away, but then just after dark again, I heard a duck in distress.  I flew out the side door, down the steps, tripped over the garden fence, lost my reading glasses and confronted an awful sight.  A possum, finding no leftover duck food to munch, was chewing on the duck's leg instead!  I flapped my arms at him and he reluctantly let go and backed off.  My yelling brought my husband and daughter.  Hubby volunteered to either shoot or remove the varmint, but I know he didn't really want to have to shoot it.  I was torn.  "He's a duck killer!  He should be shot...Oh, just catch him and get him out of here." 

He was fairly easily cornered in the duck shelter and transported out of the pen by the tail.  We depositied him into an empty bucket with a tight lid.  We were in the process of deporting him a couple of miles down the road when we had to swerve to miss a small round feathery orb in the road.

"Was that an owl?  I think that was a screech,"  my husband said backing up the truck.  He hopped out and by the light of the headlights rescued the stunned bird, placing him in yet another bucket with a lid that I had in the truck.  (Which just goes to show you can never really have too many buckets).  The bird flapped around in his bucket while we went on to the release site and let the surprisingly calm, duck-killing possum free. I hope no one around there has ducks.

Back home we opened the bucket and removed the screech owl with gloved hands.  They can deliver quite a hurt with claws and beak.  This one was fairly calm and probably a little dazed. We are guessing he was bumped by a car.  After taking photos and dubbing him Owl Gore, we left him on the porch with the bucket on it's side as shelter.  We kept an eye on him for a couple of hours, but sometime around 10:30 he must have gotten his wits about him and flew off into the October night. At least we hope that is what happened and that he didn't become the latest victim of the killer possums.

The chewed duck is recovering.

Owl Gore

Today From The Porch

It's good to live in the mountains...especially in October.

Preparing for First Frost

I thought we were temporarily out of harm's way.  I thought that the night to fear frost during this, our first dip into fall's chill, had passed and we were safe.  I thought wrong.  I just checked the weather and, indeed, we are under a frost advisory tonight.  Maybe it will. Maybe it won't, but I was out the door to the garden in a flash, picking off peppers and spreading out remay frost blankets "just in case".
What a beautiful weekend it has been.  If it frosts now, who could complain?  We have enjoyed an abundant summer garden.  A promising fall garden is in the ground and growing.  We may lose peppers, basil, a few tired tomatoes, but the lettuce and peas love the cool weather. And we gain cooler temps, radiant trees, apple cider and pumpkins in the bargain.   One pleasure gives way to another. Most likely this will be a false alarm, or the a frost so slight that the thin "blanket" will protect and the plants will live on a few more weeks.  It is three good weeks shy of our "average" frost date.  At any rate, I have done my best by the peppers and tomatoes.



My not-so-scary scarecrow watches over the fall garden...mostly for artistic effect

Rescued peppers

Romaine and brussel sprouts well underway

My garden dons an early halloween costume--a ghostly cloak of Remay which I save and use as many years as possible

Lasts and Firsts

Today I harvested what may well be the last of the sweet corn for the year--a few little nubby ears on some pretty stunted looking stalks.  I guess we just didn't have enough rain.  The first planting was good, but this second one...well, Bea, the goat, and her daughter, Luna, seem to be enjoying them anyway.

But the garden is not "done" yet. Not by a stretch. The fall peas (above) are looking good.

 One of the ways we make efficient use of our small garden beds is to keep planting.  Above a fall planting of mixed leaf lettuces is just getting started.  Late potatoes and some carrots are in the background.

 Today's small harvest of corn, beans, Italian squash and cayenne peppers sits alongside starts of red cabbage and broccoli.  One season in the garden ends, but another begins.  a fall garden in our climate zone stretches the growing season into November or perhaps beyond with cole crops, lettuce and greens. 

Autumn Abstract

The rain stops, takes away heat and leaves autumn in it's wake. We lose 20 degrees by the thermometer.   Giant puffballs squat like fat toads on lawn and pasture.  The grass greens from the rain, but the trees begin to choose their wardrobe from a different palette--yellow, red, orange. I move my lounge chair from the back to the front porch vowing to find time during the next few weeks to sit and view the spectacle. I hear crickets chirp in the daytime, and that is always the moment I know autumn has arrived on our farm.  They are to fall what katydids are to high summer. 

The summer squash and the tomatoes slowly give out, but the brussel sprouts and romaine shoot up in the cooler nights, and I finally succeed in getting cabbage and broccoli to sprout.  It's time to plant garlic.  And meanwhile we continue to harvest and put up for winter all the goodness we have been blessed with this summer.

A stray shows up in our yard, but not the usual kind.

Eggs slow down a bit as days grow shorter and the barnyard is a flurry of feathers as my hens enter moult.  I have always found it strange that they moult right when the weather turns cool.  Wouldn't they want to keep their feathers then?  But they'll have a new down coat by winter I suppose.  We've lost one of the barred rock hens to a hawk or an owl.  Why do they always choose the most valuable poultry to snack on?

The goats are getting out of their pen...again.  I am remembering why we have gotten rid of so many goats in the past.

The Blessing of Rain

"He gives rain on the earth, and sends water on the fields."  Job 5:10

It's raining.  Really raining.  Not just a spotty little shower, but a soaking, splashing, dripping, puddling rain. 

We needed it badly.  The pasture grass was getting crunchy.  The leaves on fruit trees and brambles were starting to curl.  The garden was drying up.  I had tried several times to start lettuce, broccoli and cabbage, but despite watering every day they just either didn't sprout at all or wilted as soon as they appeared.

And it's cooler too. Not even 70 degrees as I write this from our front porch.   

I know the naturalistic explanation for the rain:  Lee has churned us up some moisture from the gulf.  A lot of moisture.  I know, too, that the west needed this rain even more than we and didn't get much of it.  I am sure there are faithful people in Texas praying for rain that hasn't come.  I don't try to explain that. But I do pray for those people.

 What I can tell you is that every day for the last several weeks, as my family came to a dinner of summer's bounty, we prayed for rain. Rain means a lot to people who grow food and draw their water from a spring.   So for me, the rain is an answer to prayer.  It is mercy and benediction.  I see in scripture that the sending and witholding of it sit squarely in God's sovereignty.  I am reminded how dependent we are, all of us, on His sending it. How dependent we are on Him for everything.

Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful rain.

Saving Summer
Often even our small garden gives us more than we can eat fresh.  Today for example, as I surveyed my kitchen I realized I had a few tomatoes that need to be used up, some zukes, some green onions, and several bell peppers.  One of my super simple solutions to a glut of such vegetables is to prepare and freeze a vegetable sauce. 
You will need about half a dozen tomatoes to make this worth doing. More is fine. Wash, core, cut into chunks.  No need to seed or peel--the seeds and peels are good for you.  Put them in a blender and puree smooth then transfer to a saucepan. You could just use tomatoes, but I always throw in whatever else I have that needs to get used up.  Today I had a zuchini, a couple of bell peppers and some green onions. Eggplant is also a good addition.
 For the peppers I did remove the stem end, seed, cut out the pith and cut into chunks.  The zuke was young and not too seedy.  I just cut off the stem end and cut into chunks.  All those green veggies went into the blender to puree and then got added to the tomato puree.  I added a little salt, pepper and italian herbs.  Go light on your seasoning.  They will become stronger as you cook the water out of the mixture.  You can add more seasnoning later when you serve it if needed.
Bring the mixture to a boil and then turn it down to a simmer.  Reduce it (simmer the water out of it) by about half.  This way it takes up less room in your freezer and you can add water later. Stir frequently as you reduce and the sauce thickens.
Once it is reduced, cool it by placing the pan in cold water, being careful not to let water get over the rim of your sauce pan into the sauce.  Stirring will help it cool faster.
Once cooled, pack into freezer containers, label with contents and date.
You now have a taste of summer to add to your winter soups and stews or just to serve over pasta.  The sauce has a garden fresh taste that is unequaled by anything you can buy at the store. 

Garden Reboot
Time to make some tough decisions in my little garden this week.  In such a tiny space everything has to pull its weight...

So out come the zuchinnis. One because I think I have enough shredded and stashed in the freezer to make a winter's worth and of zuke muffins.  And two, because though the plants are still pretty healthy, their production has slowed way, way down.  So out they come to make way for fall crops.

And here's a trick for tired tomatoes:
My tomatoes are still producing well, but blight has killed the lower leaves and the vine is outgrowing its support.

First I removed the lower leaves from the tomato vine.  They were not in good shape and the fruit from the lower portion of the plant had already been harvested so nothing is lost.

Next I dug a trench across the bed and laid the vine in it.  This is just the bare vine part, not all the way to the

top.

Then I covered up the vine and watered it in.  Because of the design of my beds, I was able to just move the support pole to the other side and reattach the now much-shorter vine. Roots should form along the buried portion of vine which will give the vine a boost that should take it up to frost.