Tuesday, September 27, 2016

where did september go?

where did september go? i honestly have no idea! although there were many river days...



it's been grey and cloudy the last few days...with a bit of rain...still lovely days though...


the harvest is coming in...


as my tomatoes are indeterminate - and we like them that way - i don't get a glut of them all at once. it's pretty much every day a few here and a few there, enough for us to eat each day and then freeze the rest until they are all ripe and i can make home-made canned tomatoes just the way we like them. and have beautifully-preserved delicious home-grown tomatoes all winter/spring...hopefully enough to get us to the summer when we can start harvesting again

here's some local mushrooms fried with brown and wild rice - yummeh and buttery! with some pickled veg from the garden and turnips pickled in beet juice.


15 pints of home-made chili....this chili has a ton of beans, hamburger, chunks of chuck roast and a ton of mushrooms....15 pints of this added to other stuff we already have canned will see us nicely through winter. it's nice to make your own meals and can them...no need to stock up on tinned food.


growing your own food is hard work but so worth it in the end. here are carrot seeds from our carrots that we grew last year. carrots are biennials so they don't produce seed until the second year.


last year we harvested our carrots and ate them all winter. then used the last of the scraggly dried up carrots and re-planted them this year to let them go to seed and go to seed they did. that's way more than enough seed for next year. no more buying carrot seed.

that's the place that we are trying to get to - no more relying on seed companies for seed. we've got potatoes, carrots, various lettuces, a whole whack-load of herbs, peppers and tomatoes and a bunch of other stuff that we don't have to purchase seed for anymore. i think that's becoming pretty self-reliant.

here's sorted and dried garlic from this year's harvest that will be planted in the next few days - another saving of seed from our own and thereby not needing to rely on anyone but ourselves for the seed.



we like to eat seasonally so here is a beautiful plate of roasted veg and the pickled peppers i made for jambaloney from our own peppers.


and then there is foraged food. check out these blackberries that just grow on our land without any help from us.


this year they have been coming in like crazy and although it's end september they have already put out a second harvest.  we have a ton of fruit in our freezer for the winter and have steps to be able to preserve it and/or maintain it if we lost power for an extended period of time. same for all of our meat. and all of the beautiful fish that jambaloney caught this season.

it's a transitional time of year...still harvesting, gathering and foraging...but getting ready to plant and re-plant a bunch of stuff. it's hard work but so enjoyable when on a cold blistery day, you just want to read your book with your warm sweater on sitting in your chair, not really wanting to cook something, so you just go to your pantry and figure out whether you want smoked trout and crackers, some stick-to-your ribs chili, or a variety of home-canned soups. it's a lovely feeling!

11 comments:

  1. I'm certainly glad to see September over with for personal reasons. Though if I could sit out on that water in that photo for awhile and gaze into that really blue sky it might make things better. You post some of the better photos out there. I never get tired of your sky photos.

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  2. I absolutely love those packs of dried cranberries you can get, infused with pomegranate. I wonder if you could do the same with the blueberries.

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  3. Sounds like you're getting ready for the winters snow! Today, I planted some tomato seedlings. May I'll have some for Christmas dinner. :-)

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  4. Ya September has gone way too fast. Not sure I got enough time now to finish what needs to be done since I put so much off due tot he constant rains.

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  5. Right? I am already having to think about fall and winter gardens and the fact there is not much time to plant them.

    The chili looks delightful.

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  6. So true! I just pulled out a jar of chili from last year that I will enjoy this evening with some GF pasta and grated carrot and raisin salad. Yum! There's nothing like your own.

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  7. Yay for everything! Weather, food, wild foraging, river days, tomatoes, it's all good.

    Luv and hugs to you both!

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  8. It does seem like September just flew by. The summer dragged on and on, but now that it's turning cooler and the days are shorter, time is moving on.

    42 degrees on the porch this morning at sunrise. Got up and spent several hours trying to put my tool shed in order and get it ready for winter. It's about 1230 now and I figure I have done enough for the day.

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  9. What happened to your blog roll, Kymber?

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  10. It was 80F today but will be dropping to around 60F in a day or so. Indian summer. Hard to believe it is nearly October!
    -hobo

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  11. I'd like to get to the same place with seed saving, one thing though mske sure that you save the seeds offas many cafrlts as possible to maintain as much genetic diversity as possible or in a few years you'll see a decreased yield. I saved parsnips this year as my first biannual crop and unfortunately we've already eaten all our carrots so no seed saving from them next year,I really need to increase my growing space as I think we could pretty much eat a field of carrots! Send me a email if you have my addressand I'll send you someseed out that youmight like growing.

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