Apple leather and nuts

 Apple leather 

We had purchased some eating apples from costco that tasted like crap, so I decided to use them instead to make some apple leather.  The idea was to mix the new apples with some of the old canned applesauce that I had up at the farm.  I really like fruit leather in that it is convenient to take as a snack to work and greatly shrinks the space needed to preserve the fruit. 

I did a number of estimates to get an idea of the caloric value of apple leather.  My best estimate is about 83 Cal/oz.  This is a bit higher than what is referenced in some databases.  I am considering mixing the apples with pumpkin or squash to lower the calorie count but keep the flavor non-squashy!

Here are some pictures of the apple-leather process.

This leather took a while to dry.  I set it to 125F for 23 hours.  I think I added some time though.

I read this label and realized that the canned applesauce from 2014 had a batch that I had burned!  We will see how this turns out!  Hopefully it won't be too bad.  Mising weird tasting new apples with burned applesauce.  Yeah, that sounds promising!

More hickory shelling

I worked on shelling more hickory nuts while the apple-leather dehydrated.

More nuts, landscaping, and winter squash harvest!

Shelling nuts - this will take a while!

They actually have a good amount of meat per nut.  It's just taking so long.

Woooo - a whole half!  Nice!

Oh, and more nuts too!

Of course, I had to go out and pick up some more hickory and butternuts!  Ugh.

Landscape - hole-filling around the house

I discovered a DEEP hole (far deeper than I realized at first) right next to the porch I had just moved a week or so ago.  I got a couple loads of dirt from the old garage excavation pile and filled and piled up dirt high over the holes I found.

There was a DEEP hole right there in front of those onions!  

If you look at the bottom center of this picture, you will see that a chipmunk has already dugout a hole there!  The bugger!

I also lifted some of these pavers so that melting ice wouldn't make these areas slippery later in the year.

Also, I finally got around to regrading the front driveway a bit.  The gullies were getting bad from all the rains we had this year.  The water washes the gravel to down near the drainage ditch.  I use the FEL (front end-loader) to move this around and regrade and smooth.

Winter Squash  - buttercup

Just before leaving I harvested the winter squash.  Not a great load, but actually just about right for us to eat before they spoil.  These look different than I remember, but they do taste right.  I may save the seeds.

Typical buttercup end.

More hickory nuts and a wrong date.

Shelling nuts.  I have a lot to go!

Shelling these goes real slow!  Kind of zen-like though.  Maybe good for practicing mindfulness?

Saving the shells for possible use in smoking meat!  We gave these to my neighbor in the city, he likes to smoke stuff!

Cabbage, eggplant and summer squash (!!!) harvest.

The cabbage are not very big, but I still got more than I could use.  The eggplants were just because we got the seeds mixed up in the cabbage seeds.  Of course, summer squash, I mean it's almost November!  Wow!

Wrong weekend for the yard sale

We got the weekends mixed up with regard to when the "big yard sale weekend" was supposed to be held.  Partly because when we were out at TSC last weekend at a sidewalk/harvest sale, one of the vendors had signs up saying the Grease, steam and rust show was this weekend - which normally corresponds to the big yard sale weekend.  Anyway, the big yard sale weekend (and the grease, steam, and rust show) are NEXT weekend.

Katherine made some nice signs!  I placed them out by the entrance to our road.  Didn't get much traffic though.

Hickory nuts (and butternuts)!

Nut harvest!

Well this was unanticipated!  Evidently this is a "mast" year - when the nut trees produce a huge amount of nuts to overwhelm the squirrels so they can get a chance at reproducing.   I had my eye on a couple butternut trees this year, but as I was going around and collecting the butternuts, I discovered that a lot of the hickory nut trees that I thought were "pig-nuts" (a variety of hickory nut that is flavorless and small) were actually true hickory nuts and quite good and productive!  So I went around and collected the nuts from around the trees on the edge of my big field.  I am sure that there are many more nuts in the forest, but finding the nuts and gathering in the forest floor would be much more difficult.  Also, how many nuts do I need?  They are a bugger to crack and shell out!

The more oblong nuts are the butternuts.  The rounder (somewhat smaller) nuts are the hickory nuts.

Strange tracks in the mud

I was out picking nuts and found this print in the mud.  I have no idea what it is.  Kind of looks like a dog, but its BIG!  

Compare the size to my foot in the lower part of the picture.  Fairly large paw print!

I couldn't find anymore decent prints.  Leaves covered too much of the mud to get anymore.

More pinto bean picking

It dried off long enough to get into the patch to pick more beans.    The weather did not help these beans any this year, that's for sure!  These beans shell so nicely!

These have stayed in the garden too long and have begun to sprout and mold due to the moisture.  Ideally I would have had these all picked 1-2 weeks ago, but rain had other plans.

More grape arbor posts rotting off

Found another post had rotted off at ground level.  I knew these posts were not in it for the long haul when I used them, I just didn't have any good options when I put this arbor up.   I did hope that they would last longer than 3 years though!  I put this arbor up in 2014 when I planted the first grape vines!  I hope the new posts that I used for the 2nd wave of grapes does better (those newer posts are treated with CuNap and I believe few are even locust).  Anyway, I need to get to work and save/mill some posts.  I will need posts not just for the arbors, but also for the fence I am going to build around the grapes.

These are the newer arbor posts.  They are treated with CuNap and some are even locust.  They should last over 10 years if not way longer!

The lower left one is the most recent to rot off.  It's probably going to be a pain to replace!

Some of the others are showing some signs of decay as well.

This one took a lot of bracing.