Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Summer's End Harvest, Early September

I haven't been diligent or scientific in my tracking of our farm and garden's productivity this year, but some preliminary numbers for food harvested and put by so far are-

Apple Cider - 3+ gallons
Hooker's Sweet Corn - 1 bushel (so far)
Poppy seeds - 1/2 cup :\
Cucumbers - About 4 gallons (pickled - does not include what we've eaten fresh or fed to the bun-buns)
Carrots, tomatoes, radishes, beets, peppers, beans and peas - no idea! ;\
Sugar Baby Watermelons - 2 (so far)
Pumpkins - 4 (so far)

The garden was somewhat feral this year. With everything going on in our lives, it was really a miracle that we even had a chance to plant anything at all. This is the very first year ever that we didn't have any summer squash at all. The ducks that live in our garden ate our squash and sunflower starts multiple times. We ended up with ONE sunflower! For all their cuteness, ducks can also be selfish little jerks...

This week or next I hope to get out and forage for apples, pears and hawthorn berries. I haven't made hawthorn jelly in a few years and I think that it's about time to remedy that. ;) I'd also like to start putting up some food for the critters, in the form of dehydrating some corn, seeds (pumpkin, mostly) greens (beet tops, bolted collards, kale, etc.) and herbs to dole out sparingly over the dark months. I'm no longer working full-time plus, and am absolutely relishing the reprisal of my full-time farm-wife role.

Tentatively slated for early October - harvesting our Muscovy ducks. Based on the horror stories I've heard about cleaning and plucking ducks, I'm pretty nervous about the process. Oy...

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