D-Dawg and I are babysitting Anna’s hard cider. She’s in Portland for three weeks, taking a break from the peace and quiet around here. After a few volcanic scale eruptions, things seem to be settling down and the fermenting process is at a manageable pace.
Hard cider in the making.
cabbage
Asters provide fall color.
Come on, tomatoes! Time is running out!
Rainbow chard with deer protection.
Sugar Pie Pumpkins like to play hide and seek!
These are the wonderful and showy Teddy Bear Sunflowers you see throughout our garden pictures. They came to me as a gift in a seed packet my cousin Cheryl gave me several years ago. They have been the crowning glory in our garden this year, and will definitely be planted again next year. They last a long time in a vase, too!
Teddy Bear Sunflowers
Zucchini, peppers, onion, green beans, carrots…pretty much anything from the garden can be put in a jar with some pickling brine. It’s a great way to use the little bits of things that come straggling in toward the end of the season.
Before
After
This is D-Dawg, occasionally known as Jim. He loves the garden and is the one who builds these gorgeous boxes for our raised beds. He also does a lot of weeding around the property.
This is a great way to make a homemade face scrub with all natural ingredients, no packaging and no chemicals.
1/2 C Sugar
2 T Olive oil
1 T Vanilla (or other) extract
I personally will reduce the amount of sugar next time to make it a bit thinner but I love it and it works great. I also used a combination of coconut, almond and vanilla extracts in mine, mmmm. The olive oil makes your skin feel so wonderful. Mom used it on her feet and really liked that so I think it would work for the whole body.
We grew some mega-giant hubbard squashes this year! (By accident!) We have blue, green and golden ones and they are big. In fact, we weighed two of the goldens and they were 30.5 and 31.5 pounds!
Three colors of hubbards
Golden hubbard still in the garden
We also picked 17 buttercup squashes.
Buttercup squash harvest
Lucy Fur inspects the produce
Inside of a buttercup
We harvested some cabbage for a batch of counter top sauerkraut. I made applesauce from apples we picked on a tree near one of Waverly’s fields. Then we froze 3 large potato and zucchini casseroles, marking the end of our excess zucchini woes! (Classic, I know.) We got rid of a lot of it by dehdrating and freezing it, to be reconstituted later for soups and such.
Countertop sauerkraut
We also made some hoop coverings for some of our garden boxes out of rebar mesh, which we can drape with plastic or sheets for frost protection; it could frost as soon as tonight!
Angela
Anna
Jan
Loco Locavores 