This is all about bringing in the harvest. Should have posted this in November too but...
This is a pan of tomatillo sauce, some onions and garlic in the upper corner and peppers in the middle.
Roasted... so pretty.
And now all blended up ready to be canned..
Pretty tomatoes... This year the yellow and orange did much better than than the red tomatoes.
Canning from that day.
I guess Halloween is the other stuff! Aaron suggested I use some cookie cutters to decorate my pumpkin for Halloween..
Turned out pretty good. Unfortunately this is the only picture I got of our pumpkins... Emily's is to the right and shows a nice tree scene. It just doesn't show up in my picture. I think Emily got a good picture...
Emily got ambitions and made tons of Lucy bread (Lucy is our sourdough starter)! It was way good and the nieces and nephews were suitably impressed at Sunday dinner (not pictured, English muffins).
This is what happens when you wash all the aprons together...
more canning.. tomatoes, apples and apple juice. Aaron pressed it and I wanted to see what it would taste like if we canned it... tastes like apple juice!
Most Fridays I make pizza on Naan bread made with Lucy. WAY easy. and I put squash and fresh tomatoes on it when we have them. Also use our own Mozzarella.
More canning... Apples and salsa.
Applesauce, salsa, tomatoes, apple juice,
Apple jelly (used up the rest of our small cans)
Emily asked me to bring in the celery.
Look! It looks like celery!
There was quite a bit from the two she planted... it multiplied to the side.
We dried a bunch but its pretty sad to have all that work go into one small jar (not pictured).
So Emily canned cream of celery soup! It was way easy and tasted great in the green bean casserole Emily made for Thanksgiving. We will probably can more cream of soups since it was so easy and came out great.
We also stored 2 bunches in water in the fridge (the two with some roots left on them) so we could use fresh for Thanksgiving. There is still part of a bunch on our counter cuz it looks pretty and has started to grow more roots and leaves. Its an experiment on how best to keep celery.
This is us bringing in the corn stalk harvest for the goats...
Emily had bought a chipper.. the goats don't eat the stalks unless they are in smaller bits.
We got quite a few bags stored away for winter!
Since Jared helped us, Aaron and I went and helped him chipper up a bunch of his brush pile. Then we brought the chips back to our house and mulched some of our front garden beds.
Unfortunately the bees didn't work out again this year. Aaron opened up the hive to discover they had left rather than died as Emily feared. It appears the queen was killed the last time Aaron and Alec opened up the hive and they tried making a new one but for some reason it didn't work out so they all left.
It was nice to know the reason as to why it failed but as Emily says, this operation is getting rather expensive if we have to buy bees annually...
More canning... applesauce, tomatillos, and beets.
And just in case you are wondering, this is about how much our chickens weigh.
Aaron made a chicken feeder such that the chickens open up the lid themselves by stepping on a flat lever. This way Emily doesn't have to feed as many wild birds since chickens/ducks weigh more than sparrows/doves :).
I need to get a picture of the final product. Emily and Aaron are still working on getting the proper balance on the weights and having the fowl understand what they need to do.
K... hopefully next post will be about Thanksgiving. Try to get it in before more Christmas craziness.
