Well here I am still having a hard time getting back into the swing of blogging regularly. I will try to improve on that. Now I find that it is autumn and am wondering where the summer has gone. Is it just me or does time fly by this fast for everyone? It seems I get less and less accomplished each year that goes by. Each morning I get out my to do list and it seems to take days or weeks to get a couple things crossed off. Not sure what to do about that. However, I do keep plodding away and hopefully someday I will see some progress. I do love autumn though and I am very glad it is here.
With the arrival of autumn, my thoughts naturally turn to home and the holidays. We decked out our house with a hay bale, pumpkins, and all sorts of harvest decorations. The mantel is all decked out as is the book case and the back door. The nights are cool and the days are sunny and warm. The leaves are starting to turn. It has been the perfect October so far. Next will be Thanksgiving and Christmas and all the joy those holidays bring. I can smell the turkey cooking as we speak. One thing about living in the mountains is the smell of wood burning permeates the air. Our currently home does not have a wood burning stove as our other home did, but we plan to install one at some point. I do miss the wood fires. They keep the house so much warmer and cozier than any other type of heat. We currently have a propane stove which looks like a wood burner and for now, this will have to do, but it just isn’t the same.
Our little maple tree
My little corner bird garden
Our hay bale display in the front of the yard
Our little mantel above the propane stove
Our back door
So what exactly have I been up to you might wonder, besides decorating for fall. Good question and I ask that of myself frequently. I have been busy in the kitchen, although the garden results were not as spectacular as I had hoped for. But there is always next year. Here are some of the things I did get accomplished.
I got a few jars of green beans actually canned and we had steamed green beans on several ocassions. The chickens also got to partake in some green bean eating as well. I also learned how to make homemade apple butter. We were lucky to get some fresh apples from the trees at my work and viola, I made applebutter. I must say I am quite pleased with myself as it is delicious and I had no idea I was such a good applebutter maker.
Fruits of my labors!
The tomatoes did fairly well this year, which was a blessing after last years diaster. We had blossom rot on every single tomato last year. It was truly depressing. We were really getting into making spaghetti sauce with our crop this year and then weekend before last it happened. It got cold. We had sleet, frost and snow. That was the end of our garden. So now we are trying to ripen about 10 dozen green tomatoes. Wish us luck.
The zucchini did ok, but not as well as expected. I think I had them in too shady of an area. Next year they will be moving up front to the claw foot tub I just put out there this weekend. We did get quite a few though and I have a stock pile of zucchini bread in the freezer as well as about 2 dozen packs of grated zucchini frozen for future use.
My claw foot tub in it’s new home in the front of the house. Soon to be home to zucchini with blueberry bushes on either side lining the fence.
The cucumbers did ok, but we didn’t get enough to make pickles. My husband ate the whole crop so there was no loss there. The corn did nothing. It barely got knee high, so it will be moving from the front to the back next year as well. I didn’t do that well last year, but it did better than it did this year. The cantaloupes grew and grew but never got any fruit on them. Big disappointment. We actually got on watermelon, but it never developed enough to eat. The pumpkins and squash got tons of blossoms, but not fruit either. Is this a bee issue? I don’t know, but we are considering going into beekeeping in the near future.
The herb garden did fairly well. I have lots of basil dried and stored. One can never have too much basil. The rosemary is flourishing and we have parsley, sage, thyme and oregano drying as I speak. The spinach didn’t do well at all and the lettuce did ok, but I think I had it in too hot of a spot. We also got a few carrots, but none of them grew to more than bite sized. So we have had some successes and some disappointments, but we will press on and try to do better next year. We have plans for installing some permanent trellises and I am hoping to get in an arbor so we can add grapes. Our raspberries are growing well and I am thinking that next year we may get more than a handful of berries. We also have blueberry bushes on our spring list of plants to buy and as always, we keep trying to expand our strawberry patches.
So all in all, it was a good year. Lots of room for improvement though. One thing we really need to get going is a compost pile and a rain collection system. So lots to do and lots to think about. I am trying to track down some 55 gallon drums so I can get started on my rain collection system. I eventually plan to have every roof collecting rain water.
