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!