Fall garden cleanup started

Picked the Sweet taters!

I dug the potatoes in the big patch Friday evening.  That ground was fairly wet and HEAVY! UGH.  Sweet potato tops looked really good here, but the results under the ground were less than exciting.  I am guessing that there is too much nitrogen in that soil.  Also, the plants ran for about 4 feet in radis from the center of the plants!  It was a lot of digging for not many taters!

The potatoes on the right are from the paw-paw patch.  They looked better!

The nest morning I got up and dug the potatoes in the paw-paw patch.  I had less hope for them since the tops of those potatoes didn't look so nice and they were overrun badly with grass and weeds.  Well, I was surprised.  I got some fairly nice potatoes!  I am planing to pressure can the bad ones and try to save a few for seed potatoes for next year.  Next year I figure I will only put them in the paw-paw patch - on the upper side since that is where the soil is well drained.

Pie-time!

I am out of blackberries but I have some rhubarb left in the freezer!  So I grabbed a bag and got some frozen strawberries (purchased) and made a pie.  I was not real pleased with the flavor though - just didn't taste like I remembered them!  Maybe I will get enough strawberries from my own plants next year to make a pie.

Strawberry-rhubarb pie.

Castor Bean seed collecting

I cut the seed "spires" off of the castor bean plants and placed them in the dehydrator.  They were a bit damp so I wanted to get them dry to they wouldn't mold or rot.  I put them in the dehydrator at 90F and ran it all weekend.  I kept hearing them popping the whole time!

Those pods are prickly!  I had to use gloves to take the pods off the spires.

I took them out of the dehydrator an removed the pods from the spires before I left, but I will have to wait until later to separate and shell the rest of the beans.

More UTV issues

Actually, I guess its really the same issue again.  I took the beast out Friday evening when digging the sweet potatoes in the big patch.  When I got on it to go back to the house, the shifter was REAL mucky - not at all easy to move - like pushing through bubble gum.  By the time I got it back to the house I couldn't shift at all!  I parked it in "H" for the night.  Next morning I checked it out.   I remove the end of the cable at the transmission side and determined that the transmission was able to shift just fine - it was the cable causing the problems - AGAIN!  I didn't have time to remove the cable and look for the problem.  I will get into that later.  Just a reminder that I had just replaced that cable the year before last!

Garden cleanup

With the sweet potatoes and tomatoes done the paw-paw patch and the front patch (the un-fenced part) were ready to be cleaned up.  So I removed the black plastic (no small task!), picked up the rocks, and mowed over the patches.

I am thinking about using some roundup on the fence line now since there is no worries of killing any vegetable plants.  The grass in the fence lines can get rather nasty.

Tomato patch all cleaned up.  Took a while to get all the rocks off of this patch!  Not to mention all of the staples an paper holders ( those red plastic ones).

More maple milling and wood chipping (and general cleanup)

I got the top part of an old maple tree and milled it up.  Got some nice wood out of it - not as much as I got from the bole last weekend - but still a good amount considering its age and the number of limbs.  After I got that log out from in front of the barn I decided to mow where those logs had been laying.  I got in the with the zero-turn mower and got wedged between the big log and the old barn door.  Darned if the old barn door didn't break!  Almost in two!  I had one board holding the entire weight of the door - and it was bowing quiet significantly!  I rushed back to the house to get a jack and a come-along (not to mention screws and power driver) and went about straightening the door structure and putting some new support boards in place.  Fortunately things turned out ok and I didn't have to rehang the door!  Whew!

Door is restored!  Better than it was last year now!

Cleaned up the weeds and grass where the logs were laying

Just a few more logs to go! LOL

After milling and cleanup (and door repair), I was able to do some chipping.  I chipped a the scrap from last week and this week as well as some miscellaneous stuff I had laying around.  The maple scrap had an annoying habit of jamming the chipper - so I had to stop and clear that - 3 times!

I am guessing that I got at most 1 cubic yard of chips there.  On the lighter side I might have enough saw dust now to finish mulching the blueberries!

More harvest

I picked more Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and a cabbage this weekend too.  There wasn't as much broccoli, just enough to steam and eat Monday night for dinner - for one person.  The cabbage will be put to good use as slaw - I am sure.  I didn't get a picture of the sprout plants, but they look pretty much like they did last weekend.  

Cleaned Sprouts, ready for blanching

Frozen and vacuum sealed

A very pretty cabbage!  This was in the "flood plain" and barely survived!

Hawk?

As I was finishing picking the sprouts and cabbage I looked up an saw this bird - pretty sure its some kind of hawk - but I don't know what kind.  I wish I had my camera and not just my phone.  I could have got a nice zoom on him as he sat there on the dead limb.

Weekend update: potatoes and tomatoes

Just a quick update to try to keep the record keeping straight:

More Mowing Issues

Before I go off on the food preservation I want to mention that I replaced ANOTHER spindle on the Huskee (TSC's "brand" of riding mower/garden tractor).  Grass really needed mowing in the orchard - which I did once everything dried off a bit.

New (?) Hawk sighting!

I saw a Hawk out in the paw-paw orchard Sunday morning!  I hope he sticks around and that the insulators that the utility put up last week work!  I got some nice pictures!

Backhoe finally got picked up!

Saturday afternoon, Joe Hines and his dad showed up with a big truck and trailer and got the backhoe.  Joe asked if I was still interested in the Club Cadet zero turn model mower we talked about before. I told him that it depend on the bill for the backhoe!  I didn't tell him that it also depended on if I actually got the portable saw-mill this guy in Michigan keeps hinting at building and delivering for me!   I am hoping to get the needed repairs done on the backhoe for under $4K.  I haven't heard back from Hines yet.  

Last of the Elderberry

I picked the last of the elderberries for the season.  I got about another gallon.  I cleaned them and placed them in ziplock bag in the freezer for processing later.  We are too busy with canning tomatoes and other stuff to process them now!

Canned Chicken

Katherine got some chicken leg-quarters on sale at safeway last week.  They were $.80/lb so she bought 8 packs of roughly 4 lbs each.  We tried our first attempt at canned chicken!  I have done venison and pork before, but this is the first try at chicken!  We cold packed it in wide mouth pint jars, placing 1/2 tsp salt in each jar and adding water as needed to insure there were no air-bubbles.  Pressure canned at 15lb for 1 hour 15 mins.  We tried a jar the next day - the bones became so soft you could eat them (although the shaft of the bones aren't very palatable, the ends of the bones are good!).  We got 32 pint jars of chicken canned! The pressure canner holds 16 pints per load.  We did two loads.

Tomatoes

Picked many more tomatoes.  They are really getting gripe fast now.  Katherine canned 19 quarts of diced tomatoes this past weekend.  I don't think she took pics, but they all looked good to me.

Squash, pumpkins, cukes and sunflowers

Picked the last of the squash.  I pulled the plants and removed them from the garden due to Squash Vine Borer (SVB) infestation.  Still got a good 40 lb of squash.  Katherine wants to shred and freeze at least part of them so that she can make zucchini bread in the winter.  We already have 3-4 gallon containers full of dried squash!  I picked more cukes - they are almost done I think, but still have a bus tray full of them.  Katherine said something about making relish with them.  I picked more pumpkins.  They are about 2/3rds done I think.  I got a couple that were in need of processing - I want to try making pumpkin leather.  I need to take the vitamix up to the farm and do that next weekend. I need to look to harvesting sunflowers soon too, by the looks of them!

Potatoes

I finally got started digging the potatoes.  It rained Friday and Saturday so I wasn't able to get started until Sunday.  The driveway side of the front patch yielded some potatoes, better than the big patch last year by far.  However, the side opposite the driveway was EXTREMELY productive!  Since I was not able to de-weed and mulch or otherwise care for the potato plants this year the rows were hard to find to dig - I ended up just digging up the entire area where the potatoes were.  Ugh!  Hard work.  Here is a picture of the first bunch I picked.

Mostly white potatoes - i am not sure if these are Kennebec or Yukon.  I might have another variety too, but I am pretty sure I only have Kennebec and Yukon white potatoes

This is a potato fruit!  I never saw them as a kid.  I told mom about finding this and she told me that she used to pick them off as she found them on hers because she heard that leaving them on caused the potatoes to be smaller and less productive! 

Corn

I went over to mom's and picked sweet corn from my patch there.  It was a bit overripe so I decided to preserve it by drying!  The corn there was also seasonally afflicted - lol - it was too dry there!  Anyway, I got about 10 pints which I blanched, cut off cob, and put in dehydrator at 120F for 24 hours.

Almost exactly 2 quarts dried corn from roughly 10 pints (5 quart) of "wet" corn.

I got some recipes for corn casserole type dishes that I remember as a kid.  I don't know which one I liked though!  Or even if I liked mom's or grandma's  or which grandma's grrrr.

Here are some pictures from mom's recipe books:

Also, while over at mom's, we picked up some frozen black raspberries that mom and dad had put away in the previous years.  Mom doesn't eat them - dad used them for his cereal in the morning.  She was afraid they would get freezer burned if they didn't get used soon.  I took them and plan on making them into jelly.