Today was a typical late summer day here on Honey B Farm! Harold was out cutting wood, fixing equipment, and doing outside chores. I was inside working with vegetables and fruits and canning. The cats were all busy hunting. We all had our jobs to do!
Instead of cutting up the logs right in the woods after felling the trees and stacking them on the back of the pickup, and then hauling them to the house to be unloaded, Harold now drags in big logs from the woods with the tractor and cuts them up right where they will be stacked. That saves a step or two. Old people have to work smarter , you know!
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| This maple log was 30 feet long, and Harold couldn't maneuver it through the woods from behind, so he had no choice but to drag it out backwards! |
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| He positions it right where it can be cut and stacked. |
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| The winter wood pile is getting bigger! We go through about 10 cords a winter. |
He also dug up some potatoes for me from the pasture garden, and put up a solar electric fence and a radio out there because the deer and the raccoon were eating the corn, pumpkins and melons! Putting a radio in the garden on a talk station seems to deter the animals, as they don't really know what a radio is and think it's a human out there. If that fails, the electric fence does the trick!
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| Some of our new potatoes. Unfortunately, as you can see we have a little bit of potato scab disease. It doesn't affect the taste of the potatoes, and they are safe to eat, but they just aren't pretty looking. Potato scab usually results from soil that is not acidic enough, and dry soil conditions, or too much water. We've had nothing but rain lately, so it is probably too much water. In spite of the scabbing, I still think the potatoes look nice. |
As for me, I was busy canning tomatoes in the morning, and I worked with apples in the afternoon to make 2 gallons of applesauce. I canned up 14 pints of delicious applesauce from a neighbor's apples. This won't last through the year, but our friend Joe Miller has some apples we will get tomorrow that I can make more sauce from. Homemade applesauce is SO good! It makes a great dessert all winter long, and is wonderful mixed with hot cereal like Cream of Wheat or Malt O Meal on cold mornings.
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| Jars of beautiful tomatoes I just canned. They come in handy for soups, stews, casseroles, rice pilafs, chili and chili mac, and for pouring over pork chops or chicken before baking. |
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| A 2 gallon pot of fresh hot applesauce ready to can up. |
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| Jars of applesauce cooling (one jar is set aside so it will seal quicker). |
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Not only were Harold and I busy today, but so were the cats! They daily patrol the farm, hunting and keeping all the unwanted critters at bay. In all the 12 years I have lived here on the farm, I have never seen a LIVE mouse or vole or shrew or rabbit or chipmunk or gopher. With anywhere from 12 to 18 farm cats (varies from year to year), those vermin critters don't stand a chance!
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| Some of my hard working cats enjoying a treat of warm milk this evening. If you look closely in the upper left hand corner of the photo, you can just see the remains of a freshly caught mouse. The kitties were doing their job! |
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| Some of the cats get right down into the milk! |
Well, this gives you a good idea of how our day went today! Tomorrow we will get more apples, Harold will cut more wood, and I will pick and work with more garden produce.
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