Finally, some real rain

Rainy day

It rained Saturday,  up at the farm.   I stayed inside and put the old canned goods on the oak shelves I made this spring.   I got them all on the shelves,  but with almost no room to spare.

The "clean" storage room where the canned goods used to be.  This became the storage location for the wine making supplies...

The wine making supplies used to be here in the guest room!  I may or may not move that dehydrator out.  

Orchard care

I finally got the spiral tubes that I had ordered and brought them with me this weekend.  I placed them on the fruit trees.    Well, most of the fruit trees.  Some of the cherry trees were too small.  I will have to trim the tubes to fit.  Hopefully I will get to that next time....

The orchard trees have white spiral protectors on now.  Hopefully these will dissuade the deer and rabbits from damaging the bark

I cut off the two dead dwarf apple trees that died this summer - if you are wondering why the trees aren't planted all the way tot the top of the orchard hill (below).    There are two crabapple trees (which you can kind of see in the pic below - they don't have spiral tubes on them - 3rd row from the left) that are looking rough.  I think I will replace them with new trees next spring.  They not only have bad bark damage but are infested with white aphids.

I put a full front loader bucket of wood chips around the newest apple trees (those that survived the summer anyways)  I want to put this much wood chips around all the trees to help keep insect damage down, keep soil temperatures under control and help maintain moisture.

Most for the cherry trees have spiral tubes now.

These little ones need a special fitting.  I also need to put wood chips on all of these.  I hope they survive the winter!  Wood chips should help I think.

Sweet pickled Jalapenos

Before I left the city I picked the jalapenos peppers.  I didn't grow as many as I did last year, so I only had enough for these three pints (I may have more - they aren't ripe yet - not sure I will bother though as I have so many canned from last year...).

So pretty!

These should be good on sandwiches.

More tomatoes for pasta sauce

I picked the tomatoes again - this may be the last time (I keep thinking that though - so we will see!). I got quite a few from the volunteer tomatoes in the front patch.  Almost a third of the juice that I made into pasta sauce came from the volunteer tomatoes!  I didn't get pics of the tomatoes that I processed into the sauce - they looked like the other tomatoes I have shown already!  I did sort the tomatoes though.  Some of these weren't quite ripe yet so I saved them to make sauce with later when they do ripen.

After the sort.  These will be made into sauce later when they ripen a bit more.

10 more pints of pasta sauce!  I used the Mrs. Wages mix like before.  Looking at about $7 worth of mix (I got the mix at Southern States on the way back from, they are a bit pricey)

Last of the Green Beans!

I went down to the beans patch to pick a few beans for dinner and after I saw how many (and how ripe they were) I decided to just pull and pick them all!

I started out just planning on picking a small bag full.

Then i got serious!  I ended up with two full grey trays of green beans!  I would not be surprised if they canned out to 12 or more quarts!

Other things

I harvested the last of the cucumbers.  Those plants are dead for sure now... or if not dead then at least not producing more fruit!

I also harvested more eggplant.  They were a bit on the small side.  The weather has turned cold (in the 50-60's this weekend) and things aren't getting big anymore.  Well, except for the brussel sprouts - they are looking good!  I got a little bit more broccoli - which I processed and froze,  I could have got more kale - but frankly I am tired of eating it and we have so much left in the freezer from last year!  I picked a few bell peppers to take back.  We really dn't need them though.  We already have 21 pints of sweet bell pepper pickles.

I was looking over the castor beans and noticed that a bunch of the seed pods were missing.  I at first assumed that the animals had got them.  I did find one pod intact and shoved it in my pocket so I could save some seed.  Well, as i was driving along to moms place I felt a "pop" in my pocket - starlted the heck out of me!  Felt like a little party popper novelty going off.  The castor bean seed pods acutally explode to distribute the seeds!  I did not know that! Very neat.  But i will have to put a bag or something over the remaining seed pods so that I can collect the seeds for planting next year.