Other tidbits...

Yesterday we bid farewell to our lovely round 2 of guests and embarked on round 3 - I told my Great Aunt Eleanor when picked her up that she was going to have to eat a lot and make a lot of noise to compete with the last crew occupying the in-law quarters. She said she'd see what she could do! So more on that visit, which is just starting, down the road. But for now, here are some other random tidbits that didn't fit neatly in the last two updates, but which are notable nonetheless! In no particular order:

Dolly has been spotted too in the seed sanctuary! So we know that both of our resident toads are still alive and considerably bigger than when we put them in to eat the bugs. They must be finding enough!

The pigs have been moved to their fall quarters where they will reside until butchering time. So no more pig moves every other day for now. Now that the nut grove rotation is complete, Jason will finish the final cover cropping of rye in there today.

While the food processing has slowed considerably, we are still tucking things away here and there. I had a great helper the other day working on drying MORE apples from the tree out front. We've been able to pass many apples along to others and now have just a fraction of a bushel left. A few more drying rounds and another apple cake or two are likely in our future before we come to the end of the box.

The ginger harvest is partially processed. Kali made our first round of candied ginger and I imagine there will be another made before too long. I now have on my mental list to grate the remainder of last year's harvest to try freezing it pre-grated to see if I can get into a habit of grabbing it more often in cooking. It still isn't in my regular routines, but we are getting enough now that it's time to move it there.

This past week was the end of sweet potato curing. So the three other families came and got their cured potatoes and we also managed the feat of moving nearly 700lbs of sweet potatoes from the crawl space curing room into the root cellar. Ivy was over the afternoon we weighed, sorted and tucked them away so we had a grand little assembly line of me, Alida, Ivy, Terah and Jason. Another "many hands make light [and fun] work!"

Once the curing room was decommissioned, the box fan was free again for a day of winnowing and jarring up many seeds. This was mostly Jason except for the brief time he had this little "helper!"

The corns are all still drying and the final paprika peppers have been dried and turned into powdered paprika. 

All the corn stalks are now moved from corn patches up to the pad and once dry will be chipped for chicken bedding. Yep, we are just moving stuff around again!

The number of fresh things to eat is slowly dwindling. We have a few greens - new kinds we haven't grown before and so I'm again not in the routine of harvesting and using them. There's an itty bit of parsley and then some other frost hardy herbs, as well as tea. And nettles, so so so many nettles. There's an abundance of turnips ready any time. And we are savoring the last of the kiwis and still getting a few white and red raspberries. 

And there are a few things sprouting giving us reminders of the 2023 season to come. We have the loveliest stand of spinach we have had in years. I'm obsessing over it a tad - watering daily to monitor if I'm seeing a reduction in little plants. We've had such trouble with slugs and grasshoppers and crickets and who knows what else this year. But so far, it's looking like a pretty perky patch!

And, finally, I'm just loving the fall colors. The mountain in front of us is more oranges and yellows, but our sumac helps add the red hues to our landscape!

And the lilac out back seems a little mixed up as it is blooming beautifully. This comes by way of my cousin and originally from my great uncle Warren's lilac bush. Apparently there are probably hundreds of people that are now growing Uncle Warren's lilacs. I'm glad we are one of them!