No wonder I'm tired...

I just downloaded pictures from the last two or so weeks, not thinking there would be all that much to report on. I was wrong! I'll start with what is freshest and that is the fun we just had going out for a sweet potato greens extravaganza! Will it become an annual event (or something we do multiple times before digging the sweet potatoes?). We set a timer for 30 minutes and each had a 5 gallon bucket and a clippers. We blitzed through the patch getting whatever leaves looked tasty and came in with 3 full 5-gallon buckets. I've reduced that now to just over 8 stuffed quart containers of blanched greens. That should be enough for us to decide if we like using them over the winter. I must say that if we do, trying to grow enough spinach to freeze will soon start to seem a little pointless.

 

But backing up considerably, I realized that I never included at least mention of having enough grapes from our vines to do a load of grape juice again this year. Just one juicer full, so we'll savor it. We kept out enough for Mom to treat us to grape pie.

This update will more or less be focused on food, but I'll just put a quick plug in for what I've been taking in while making cheese, chopping veggies, washing load after load of dishes, etc... After having multiple people recommend it to me, I began listening to the Seeing White podcast. I just finished it up yesterday and am now eager to recommend it, particularly to any white person that has yet to listen to it!

We continue to be drowning in fresh raw milk for making a whole range of dairy products. Some are made as needed or as requested, and also I pretty much get a cheddar going any time I see a day where it can fit in. So the counter often has cheddar rind drying to make our "Tangly Woods parmesan" and the shelves in the root cellar are near capacity with aging cheeses.

In order to get back to the cheese shelf, I walk past the rest of the canning shelves. The shelves are probably as full as they will get until they have a fresh round of lard on them in December. Other than a few more rounds of hot sauce, I don't think there will be any more big canning days any time soon (fingers crossed!). 

Now most of the things we are harvesting are the crops that won't have to be frozen or canned. Terah (and briefly Alida, not pictured) got in on the hazelnut harvest recently. Jason got 3 bushels of hazel cobs off of the tree he's picking in the photo and cumulatively about 5. 

They are now drying down in our back kitchen, along with black and other beans, buckwheat, and popcorns, in the new drying trays Jason recently constructed for said purpose. The tower is even taller now than when it was photographed here. 

With plenty of rain lately and 2.5 inches in the most recent wet patch, the grass is growing FAST! And that means that the butter we are making is once again bright yellow and we have egg yolks that are changing from yellow to pale orange to a deep reddish orange. A whole bunch of those eggs went into a humongous patch of green noodles that Alida and I made recently. Our pantry is stocked with homemade pasta for a bit. There is beautiful amaranth coming up in the pig paddocks so Jason picked us a generous bowl full and I used it all, making for a whole lot of noodle cranking. I was glad for good help!

Some fall harvests are happening more on a daily basis and we just accumulate them over time. Most recently that included black walnuts (about 15 5-gallon bucketfuls total, still in husks; two bushels after husking), daily chestnut picking up to try to beat the squirrels and now adding in persimmon perusing also daily to beat the chickens to them. 

I must pause here to celebrate a new found method for roasting chestnuts! Discovered today and I'll never go back. I'm not sure if I had never looked this up before or what, but this season I realized that I really needed some tips. I love eating chestnuts but do not enjoy prepping them for roasting OR peeling them. So my feelings, as the quart containers of chestnuts build up in the fridge, is mixed. Then my internet poking around let me to this site with step by step instructions. I found it the other day when I was putting some in the oven so I did the "wrap in a towel" part at the end but that was it. It might have helped a little? But then today I did it "by the book" and it was MAGICAL! I did just one slot across the top, put them in cold water and brought them to a boil, fished them out right away and popped them into a hot oven (425 or so degrees) for about 15-20 minutes. Then I wrapped them in a towel for 15 minutes and then popped them out whole from the shells. I was honestly a bit flabbergasted by how well it worked! So glad to keep learning new things...

So tomorrow is sweet potato digging and we'll see what the yield is like. After a kind of sad white potato harvest, we had another superb delicata squash harvest. That one is going up each year - with a total of 5 bushels this year. And they are so colorful! We've only eating seconds so far and the fact that even those were good is exciting.  We were able to harvest the delicata squashes before the rains came. This was fortuitous for a number of reasons. The rain laid over a good portion of the amaranth that had been standing up all perky and tall adjacent to the delicata patch. It was nice we didn't have to wade over fallen amaranth to harvest the squash.

We ate the last of our summer carrots recently and were sad to see them go. But so thrilled that growing summer carrots with shallots/onions is working. Now if only we could figure out what nibbled our new seeding of fall carrots as they emerged from the soil here recently, we'd be glad. We resorted to starting some inside in flats and are having better success inside but still not great germination. We love carrots so much, so we'll keep working at it! This is probably a good time to shift from food updates to a few people updates (not that food and people updates aren't mostly intertwined anyway). 

A few nights ago, Terah was sitting on the futon eating a popsicle when she burst out crying. She couldn't get words out right away but finally holding her mouth she said, "My tooth hurts. I think I bended it." Alida was nervous about whether she was ok and ran from the room as I checked things out and sure enough felt one of her front teeth "knocked loose." In that moment, I felt a little rise of panic and stayed calm externally telling her we'd just watch it and check it tomorrow. As the words came out, something felt odd and then it dawned on me. "Wait, how old will be you be soon?!," I blurted out. Then it all made sense - our almost 6-year old has her first loose tooth! Kali was wondering why I was seeming at all concerned because, of course, she knew immediately what was going on. The tears turned to giggles because this gal has been very eager to lose her first tooth. And I wondered at myself for completely losing track this third go round on what happens when!

A few other happenings worth noting:

Mom and I enjoyed a beautiful morning walk up to Hensley's Pond today. What a gift to both be in good enough health to do it together. 

Recently, Kali and Jason went together to donate blood and both came back with the arm bands and smiles denoting success!

And on that same day, we enjoyed the only full family swim of the year in our friend's pool. AND Alida learned to swim! It never ceases to amaze me how all of a sudden it seemed like everything was in order in her brain and body and it clicked! I won't leave her alone in the deep end quite yet, but I imagine she will soon be a very competent swimmer. Terah's got a little ways to go yet but our friend had these new little weights that are used for some kind of pool exercise thing and they made perfect floaties for Terah. That was a very fun way to spend a few late afternoon hours together.

We topped off our spontaneous family night (planned only a day or two ahead constitutes "spontaneous" for us these days!) with a trip to Smiley's Ice Cream. 

Ok, if I wrap this up now, there is time to squeeze in a short Sunday afternoon rest before the evening fun ahead of us. After I meet with the couple I'll be accompanying as a birth doula any day now, I'm cashing in a coupon for homemade coffee ice cream, made by Kali. I've made some chocolate squash brownies to go with and I imagine they'll be some games alongside the food - maybe I can convince all 5 to go with a word game tonight?! We are heading into Jason and my birthday week and I'm happy to have been able to take off work for the week. I hope to have more mornings like today, when I took my time a bit more while doing chores and even stopped to take in the beauty of the goldenrod!!