With fall upon us and frost and freezing not so far away, we’re hauling in the harvest by the crate load. On Saturday, Will went out to the Wolf Garden and cut and crated a whole row of Black Manitoba dry beans while I picked two crates of tomatoes to can up. Yesterday, I sat on the front porch and picked two five-gallon buckets of those bean pods off the vines so they would dry better.
Today, some of the folks from the homeschooling group that toured our gardens last week came over to help out and also get some of my books. The big bunch of us made really fast work of harvesting Simonet and Damaun sweet corns. Then we all sat down to husk all those crates of corn ears. It was a real, old-fashioned corn husking bee! What fun. While we husked, we explained a lot of corn lore, from what the silks do, finding corn ear worms, smut of a couple of the ears, and how corn is pollinated. I think everyone learned a lot, plus had fun. Thank you, guys, so much!
When we took a break, we all pigged out on some Oka muskmelons from the Main Garden. Boy were they ever juicy and sweet! Gee, it’s so tough, saving seeds! You have to eat all those melons. We were supposed to have a chance of frost last night. Will covered the melons but no frost. Thank you, God! Neighboring towns did get light frost though. Now we’re supposed to have another week that’s frost-free. Yea! — Jackie
That’s for sure. I still have lots of tomatoes to seed and can up. We are still very dry, with no decent rain for weeks now. But the weather’s warm so we are able to get a lot more garden harvested etc.
We sure appreciated our corn-harvesting help a whole lot!!!
Glad your harvest is going well! Hopefully no more problems for the rest of the year for y’all. I’m going out Saturday to collect some plants for natural dyeing and cat tails leaves for basket weaving. Going to be the first the first time I’ve done both on my own.
A bit of a sad note and a warning to all those that follow your wonderful blog Jackie. We had taken in a kitten three years ago who turned out to have Feline Leukemia. We were stupid and didn’t get him checked. We were dealing with health problems and packing to move. When we found he had it, we had his buddies checked. They didn’t have it. We thought we dodged a big bullet. Sadly no. At least three, maybe four of our cats have active cases of feline leukemia. We had taken them to our wonderful vet for sniffles and such. Two are 17 and one is 11. This is NOT an immediate death sentence. We are using additional things in their food and water that may prevent the rapid progress of the disease. I’ve not been able to take care of our furry mob as they need to be because of being sick myself. Both my husband and I were in the hospital for 5 days this summer. We also were given two kittens that needed a home just before we found out about the feline leukemia. They will see the vet for shots and tests this week. We discovered all of this after we had to put our 18 year old cat to sleep. She had toxoplasmosis as a kitten and it damaged her nervous system. Our vet said she was the oldest toxo cat he had ever seen or heard of, but sadly the arthritis in her spine was bad and kidneys had calcified. We didn’t want her to hurt and struggle anymore. So things have been difficult here. But please get your cats checked for feline leukemia and other diseases as soon as you get them. Bless y’all.
Wow Cat, I’m so sorry you are going through so much lately!! I will pray for you all, including your cats as I know they’re family too. Doesn’t it seem like bad things kind of clump up, all together?
I know. I lost my husband, Bob, found out I had a nasty cancer, inherited my elderly parents, started having our log house built then David got flesh eating bacteria in his arm. Luckily we all got through it all. Yes, I know how you feel. Kind of overwhelmed and smacked in the face. Hang in there!!
Planting time here in N. Central TX. Time for cool weather crops. Tomatoes from spring (that have yet to produce) are looking like they might produce! Time to plant garlic, swiss chard, spinach, lettuce, kale, collards etc etc etc. Summer is so blasted hard to get anything to produce. If it hasn’t produced by May/June, try to keep it going until fall. So nice to see cooler temperatures (less than 90!). Average first frost date………NOVEMBER! Everywhere has its challenges!
Boy, has it ever!! We still haven’t had a freeze even though we had a mild frost. Now it’s in the 80’s. Totally weird for northern Minnesota fall. But we love it as it’s letting us get caught up on a lot of projects.
Planting time here, but have had delays. First, a cold kept me from soil prep, second, an out of town trip, third, a huge tree fell across the garden and needs to be removed, now a hurricane will delay tree removal.
But, the tree will no longer shade a large part of the yard, or drop seeds everywhere.
Are you still writing fiction? Haven’t seen you mention it lately.
I have been planning the next Jess Hazzard Western but haven’t had time to get it on paper yet. Fiction’s my “fun time” and I’ve been too busy to have fun lately. No complaints though!!
LOL.. I see Sarge is on-duty – he’s eyeing that crate of corn like it might escape!
It may be into early October before we get a frost. Tomatoes are *finally* down to a crawl so we’ll break them down this weekend. Then till to plant garlic. We got close to an inch of rain (over a couple of days) so I plan to weed the perennial gardens (patches compared to yours). I think I see a poison ivy plant in the strawberry patch (of all places).
Did a bit of weeding this past weekend and found a tater we missed. I’m sure there are a few more. If we don’t find them now, bonus plant(s) come next year.
Another likely homeless cat in the yard today. I put out a bowl of food but s/he did not come to eat it. I’ll try again next time I see it. Might be setting up another insulated tote, we’ll see. Hard to tell if a barn cat from one of the farms nearby or could be a cretin dumped it.
Bonus help, who looked like they had a good time. You can’t beat it. Not enough good people helping good people these days.
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